Andover Audio Songbird Plug-and-Play Hi-Res Internet Streamer

I'd been looking at "audiophile" streamers in the upwards-of-1K range and then coming back to a Bluesound product, which costs around $600, after hearing it at someone's home. I think its popularity (the Bluesound) is partially a testament to many people sharing the same concerns (about the prohibitively high costs of other models). Still, what I read most often about Bluesound was that it looked nice, worked well, had a great app, sounded very good, BUT ...*insert choice of criticism.* (There was so often a "but.") People would run their Bluesound device through something else (their own DAC, etc.) before amplification. Why would one pay so much to not be fully happy with a device on its own? I wondered what else was out there, and I read some very good reviews of this little Songbird.Obviously, I ended up choosing it, and I'm here to tell you: it's great. At this price you'll have zero regrets, and I can honestly say that my own system has never sounded so good. I was in shock. Sure, there are criticisms to be made, and you'll see some fair ones outlined in other reviews. HOWEVER, let me tell you: this is "cheap," easy, small, and sounds absolutely terrific. The app works very well (WITH Amazon Music HD/UHD available as a native option after software update, btw, in case you don't see that in the product description).I'll say this on where it lies in the audio world: generations have enjoyed music through millions of different products. Some sounded better than others, and some sounded better than that, and some still better. There's nothing at the bottom of the audiophile rabbit hole except endless wishes to hear what else is possible. Exciting -but irrelevant for enjoying music past a certain point. This is right where you want to be. You can enjoy your high-res music VERY much with this. Don't give it a second thought. You'll have saved a lot of money which can easily go toward other high-value improvements. Try it first using the analog out. Hard to beat. Five stars.

I am a Sonos since 2007 user but they just dropped support for all the devices I have and so I looked for another source of products. I found this and have used it for over two months, in fact this is the second one I bought. The pro is that it does everything my Sonos does, and better, in terms of sound quality. I use the phono out to my amp so that the amp DAC is used and I stream at 24/192. there is an optical out also. This device is small and connects seamlessly to your wifi system. I can say that I have never had it drop a connection ever. You can have 5 devices running at the same time too.Con: The software is not as slick as Sonos for sure but then Sonos made the connection so bad the unit became inoperable and I now use SonoPad as an application on iTunes. The Andover software is V1.0 and it shows. All the streaming devices are listed with the only exception being Pandora at the time of this review. Spotify works but only when you have the premium service. I use Amazon and that is easy to access as is Tidal. The problem is that making playlists is not easy, switching between tracks and services is not easy and creating a set of tunes to play is almost impossible. These things are minor to me but a more disappointing feature is that there is no gapless function. So albums that run from one to track to another have a gap between them.All this said, at $149 for this device compared to Sonos at $495 (Port), it is an amazing value.

Some difficulty in getting the app to connect to the Songbird, part of the problem is that the directions are not the clearest. Also not clear on how to find the local stations, but found them under tune-in. But once it is all set, the sound is very good and the WiFi signal hasn't been lost. If I could do one thing, it would be to tone down the LED brightness, had to tuck it behind the receiver to avoid the glare.

UPDATED review I after a few days of use. Interesting product, but some concerns.Two minute installation via 3 simple connections: power, Ethernet (works with wifi also) to my LAN, and fiber to one of the optical inputs of my amplifier and the device was operational. The device is physically very small so it is very easy to place behind your audio gear. Once installed all activity is via the app. Downloaded and installed their very responsive and feature rich iOS app and within minutes I was listening to 24bit/192 kHz HiDef audio on Qobuz (works with Tidal and many other services also).After a few days of use, though, I have lowered my rating for a number of reasons:1) On the company’s website it now indicates the device does not support gapless playback. At this price that is understandable, but a major disappointment. Why does this matter? Best example is to listen to the second half of the Beatles “Abbey Road” from a HiDef source without gapless support . . .a major let down.2) Even when connected directly to Ethernet the device’s wifi radio remains on, but in “hidden mode” . . .which can be problematic for a number of reasons3) buggy admin functions . . .if you change the devices SID name the wifi name no longer will be hidden (even if the UI says it is)4) no admin security of the device’s web interface5) oddly while the analog output from the internal DAC supports to 192k, the optical only supports to 96k :-(I have contacted the company. Hopefully they will respond and I can update this review accordingly.

Excellent value for money and highly recommended. I was tempted to buy a second BluSound Node2i, but based on the price (less than quarter of price if Node2i), positive reviews, and lack of need for an integrated DAC I decided to give this a try. Connected it to my old Marantz PM6005 integrated amp and KEF Q300 speakers, streaming from Amazon HD Music using Andover’s Songbird app on iPhone, and it sounds great (probably no worse than $550- Node2i on this setup).First order (shipped by GRAMOPHONE) had issues; missing cables and instructions, but worst of all, despite 1hr of attempts, I was unable to connect via WiFi (only via Bluetooth which I wasn’t planning on using). Ordered a second one (also shipped by GRAMOPHONE) and It contained all cables/instructions and I had it streaming via WiFi in <5 min. Can only assume poor QC on reshipping returned/defective item from GRAMAPHONE), which was disappointing. Amazon free returns saves the day.Difficult to pick faults with device at this price, but 3 minor ones.1. Agree with others who commented that having power supply plug into front looks strange. I decided to use the supplied Velcro strips to attach the device to the side of my amp so it’s essentially out of view.2. While the Songbird app is fine, it would be good to add AirPlay streaming to provide the option to not have to use dedicated Songbird app, but rather stream directly from apps like Apple Music.3. Short optical cable was a nice addition, but I could not use it as it had a fixed mini-toslink on one end and I needed standard toslink on both. Recommend using a standard cable and then providing a detachable mini-toslink to cover all needs.