MUZO Cobblestone Wi-Fi Audio Receiver - Stream Music From Phone, Airplay, NAS, Multi-room. Make Your Speakers Wireless

Let me first start out by saying I'm not your average techie, I spend my life enthralled with gadgets and networks, both personally and professionally. I originally purchased two of these devices to check it out and love the idea of what these devices are trying to accomplish. After a week of having two fully working (the first go around, I had to return because a firmware update malfunctioned and wouldn't connect to a network), I ordered two more for a total of four cobblestones I live in a 1200 square foot condo and desired to make use of various awesome stand alone speakers for a total home music playing power house. One of the main reasons I was really impressed with the capabilities of these is the smooth integration with Pandora.The static from the in-box stereo cables is ridiculous considering they are all junk straight out of the box (all four were the same), but I swapped out the cables for new ones and it wasn't a big deal.I had some hiccups from time to time with the devices not sync'ing to each other and occasionally had to reboot them, but hey, they're inexpensive and it's technology (things happen, I get it). For about 3 months, I dealt with the occasional glitches and applied firmware updates as soon as I was notified there was one.About a month ago (4 months after I had purchased them), things started going really wacky. Disconnects became more frequent and reboots started requiring every device to be reset several times before everything was back up and in sync, the sporadic loss of signal in multi room mode became almost intolerable and I just started using only single room mode which was a frustrating reality considering what I had originally set out to accomplish with them. I even tried creating a separate "Muzo" wireless network (completely separate vLAN on wired network for wired Cobblestones) and prioritized all traffic on my Cisco meraki router for the devices. I have a 350 Mbit connection at my house and have two separate ISP's with failover enabled. I only mention my home network config as it often would seem like they devices wouldn't just lose a network connection but would lose the ability to pull music from the Internet.After dealing with the more than frustrating issues, I noticed there was an iPhone app update and figured that surely an update is better, right? WRONG. After applying the update, Pandora completely disappeared from the App and in thinking I was crazy and perhaps missing something, I contacted support. To my surprise, Pandora isn't supported anymore. REALLY? I did explain the other issues in the email support conversation and was told they were working on a firmware fix for the issues described.Now, I have 4 devices that have become almost useless bricks as they don't stay connected at all and I've lost all hope for multi room mode. The app seemingly gets confused in discovering devices and the idea support provided to use AirPlay to play music is a horrible solution as I primarily use my phone for the app and if I leave my network or receive a call/text, the music is interrupted and the delay of music playback of this method is unreasonable (especially if you have guests that you're entertaining...very annoying to be a techie with something that doesn't work as it should!).I am still very much in love with the idea behind these things and am left baffled behind why "updates" would consistently make something worse or eliminate features that were advertised selling points of the device when purchased. I even get that sometimes updates can come with pitfalls but don't understand why they would consistently make something worse and provide no actual fixes.If you're thinking of buying these devices, take all this into account. I'm sorry and disappointed to write such a harsh review but it's worth the time spent so others don't make a mistake. I'd love to return all of them and would even repurchase once the glitches are worked out and features added back, but unfortunately for me, it's too late to return and I'm stuck with cute little white bricks...ironic they're called Cobblestones...

I work with Sonos all the time and its pretty good stuff, plagued by wifi stumbles and the limitation of not being able to play much of my personal music as I do not compress it before storing it. Bottom line for me is unless I want to stream online tunes, it is too limited for the premium price. Come the Cobblestone and it does not suffer from issues with my high def personal library, or have its own quirky wifi network that fights with my Airport express. I would like to say that its complicated and you need my help with an installation but it was a cakewalk. Two things, get a longer power cord and a better 3.5 mm to RCA cable and be prepared for a device that really delivers for reasonable money. Since the volume control on your compatible phone or tablet still works just fine, all you need is an amp and speakers. The audio quality is good enough for most users however if you need a true audiophile grade device, this device won't get you quite there for your $15,000 system, pretty close though. On the other hand if you want a simple way to bring your legacy system back in the game with small money here you are. No remote for that great Marantz legacy receiver? Bingo!!!

Pros: Very good sound quality, nicely integrated technologies when it worked. I wanted to love the cobblestone forever.Cons: Poor app support, doesn't support Pandora on the app. Muzo seem to focus their energy on iOS, not Android although Android by far has the dominant market share. I used to be able to access my PC music library over wifi (the whole reason I bought it in the first place) but no longer works since win10 came along. Very limited although friendly support.This was going to be my total solution for a pre-wireless audiophile-quality hifi system. I converted all my music to FLAC files and was able to play these as well as access Pandora through the Android app. Win10 came along and I can "find" my computer from the app but not the music. Shortly after that disappointment came the news the app no longer supports Pandora. It's hard to find a product that doesn't support Pandora.Now I use it in my garage with an older hifi system and stream iHeart Radio from the app. Shame.Update - I recently switched to iPhone from Android. Interesting - the iPhone app "perseveres" and allows me to navigate to my music files on my PC. The Android app could "see" my home PC but couldn't navigate to the music folders - it would just hang up.I'm adding a star. If they can only get Pandora back...

Its not what I thought it would be. I got this so I could have a WiFi access to send my music to powered speakers. After the first one had a 60 cycle hum and I had to send back I was worried about their manufacturing process for testing. The second one had no hum, and using their app on my mobile, I got it set up. Directing music to it, is a bit of a pain, their app, it seems is designed around web service, which is fine, but for local stored music on a network server it treats each album as a playlist. I got BubbleUpnP app and it works better on my cell as well as my desktop. I asked them about a desktop app since I don't want to tie up my phone or tablet sending music, its been 3 weeks now and crickets..