Definitive Technology W9 Wireless Black Speaker

Bought this for mother's day for my wife. She wants a wifi speaker system and after a month of research, I gave this a go. I have def tech wired speakers and they are amazing, and this unit is no different. First, there are a lot of complaints about the app - IT IS MOST LIKELY YOUR WIFI ROUTER, NOT THE APP!!!!! When I first got this unit, setup was a breeze and it worked great. I then bought another W9 and two W7's and had nothing but issues. Not all the speakers would connect, some would drop, some wouldn't even be found. I was ready to box them all back up and I decided to call Def Tech support. First thing the guy did was ask about my router. I read him the name and model and he immediately said that was the issue. Bascially, my two year old stock router from Time Warner wasn't power enough to run all four speakers. He told me the specs I needed and I ran to wally world and got a better router. Came home, hooked it up, BOOM - all four work great. I took it a step further and ordered a more powerful router off Amazon (netgear AC1750). Now, everything works perfect. So, before you complain, check your wifi router.My only issues with this system is using spotify. Spotify is just being a bully and you have to use their app. I have occasional issues with spotify not letting me drop or add a speaker, but I'm not holding this against Def Tech.As for sound quality, it's incredible. Two W9s in our downstairs are insanely loud and clear. If you buy another brand, you will be sorry.

Sounds best between 1/2 and 3/4 volume. Any louder, midrange gets louder, bass and treble do not. Midrange blares so you don't get the crisp clear punchy sound at full volume like you do at 1/2 to 3/4. App still drops out sometimes too. After three years, one of the woofers rattle at medium volume. Unacceptable for the price. Does not last.

I currently own two W7 speakers (setup for stereo sound) and one W9 and have been extremely happy with the sound quality. I initially bought the W9, Sonos Play:5 and Play:3, and Bluesound Pulse to compare and see which I liked better. To my family's ears, the Def Tech speakers were the clear winners on sound quality.The downside is the Play-Fi app, which is clunky and not entirely reliable on Android (works better on iOS). Sonos is in a league of its own when it comes to ease of use of the system and reliability of the app, so if you're looking for decent to good sound quality with an extremely easy to setup and use system, Sonos is far superior to Def Tech. But if your focus is on the highest quality sound, there's no comparison between the W7/W9 and the Play:3/Play:5, the Sonos speakers don't come close to the Def Tech sound quality. For anyone curious about the Bluesound Pulse, despite it's price tag equaling that of the Def Tech W9, I found the sound quality of the speaker to be worse than that of the Sonos Play:5, so I returned it almost immediately.If you're a Spotify PREMIUM user, thankfully the speakers now work with Spotify Connect, so you can avoid the Play-Fi mobile app altogether. Of note though, at this point Spotify is only able to play one speaker at a time, so there's no multi-room listening or stereo speaker listening available through Spotify, you can only direct the output to a single speaker at one time. DTS has indicated that multi-room (and presumably stereo speaker setup) listening for Spotify is "coming soon", so hopefully that is remedied in the near future.You can also avoid the mobile app altogether by installing the Windows app, which allows you to capture any audio from your computer and send it to the speakers. I tend to use this sparingly as I'd rather use my iPad or phone to control the music wherever I am instead of running back to the computer, but it does work as described. So for those who'd rather play from an iTunes or Google Music library, you could use the Windows app to play from your computer. No Mac app currently exists.if you're a true audiophile and want the best sound out of these speakers, use high-resolution audio files. I'm in the midst of converting my large CD collection into FLAC files on a home music server and the sound quality out of the speakers is significantly better from those files than it is from a Pandora or SiriusXM stream. Spotify set at the highest quality sounds much better than Pandora and SiriusXM and is likely just fine for most everyone, but if you're looking for the highest quality sound you can get, the FLAC files are superior (noticeably to my ears).Lastly, if you're trying to decide between the W7 and the W9, you can't go wrong either way. I have a W9 on my main floor which has a mostly open floor plan and at less than half volume, the speaker can fill up the entire floor of a mid-to-large-sized house with sound. The placement of the speakers in the W9 allows for decent stereo output, though certainly not as good as having two speakers in separate locations lined up for L and R output. But for general, high-quality music-listening and entertaining, it's great on its own. The W7's I prefer as a stereo setup, but due to the spotify limitation mentioned above, I have often used only one at a time and it's still a good enough sound for most rooms. I'd pick the W9 over the W7 for that purpose with all things being equal, but given the price difference, if you're looking to spend less you'll be more than fine with the W7.*** 08/10/2017 - UPDATE - Great customer serviceI wanted to add one update a little more than 2 years after I purchased this. Up until now, I had no reason to interact with Definitive Technology's customer service department as everything was working relatively smoothly, but a little over a week ago my W9 stopped working. I could not reset or reconnect it to the network, holding down the setup button for well over a minute never resulted in any sound as it should within 15 seconds.I called DefTech hoping the customer service department would have other key combinations to try that might allow it to reconnect. I was on the phone with an actual person within a couple minutes and as I hoped, that person had another key combination to try. When that did not work, he asked me a few questions, including when and where I bought the product, the serial number, and my home address. I answered everything honestly, notably that the W9 had been purchased more than 2 years prior to the phone call. DefTech warranties the item for only 1 year.After entering my information, he told me a new one would be shipped to me immediately and that he did not need the old one back. No arguments, no questions, no request for a credit card number, just a recognition that the product should have worked longer than it had and a new one would be shipped to me. Obviously the ideal scenario would have been a product that did not break, but I have yet to meet a piece of affordable technology that didn't have some kind of failure rate and the most I ask is for good service in response to that. DefTech more than made up for the W9 breaking by sending me a new one as soon as I identified my problem.