Audio Pro Addon C5 (below)
FOR Detailed and expressive sound; app is easy to use AGAINST Nothing
It may have taken longer to get connected than your gran, but Audio Pro’s Addon range of wireless speakers has finally got the internet – and it won’t be using it to Google knitting patterns or make Skype calls to its relatives.
Much like your gran, however, the Swedish manufacturer could tell you how it’s managed just ne all these years without it. The Addon T3 was our wireless speaker Product of the Year in 2015 and held onto its Award the following year, while the T5 earned a ve-star review. As a producer of aordable one-box Bluetooth speakers, Audio Pro has an enviable recent history.
Audio Pro’s products have been so good that the option to place its speakers through the house in a multi-room set-up makes perfect sense. Thanks to two new speakers, the Addon C5 and C10, and a wireless hub named the Live 1, that is now a possibility.
The great thing about these is that current Addon users needn’t replace their existing units to incorporate them in the household set-up, with the new speakers able to act as a sort of parent and control Bluetooth-only gear through the Audio Pro app.
Better behind
The first of these new releases to receive the What Hi-fi? treatment is the Addon C5. In effect, it’s an Addon T5 with internet and multi-room capacity. From the front it looks identical, with its familiar eyes-and-nose configuration of a 10cm woofer straddled by 18mm tweeters.
Things start to differ as we peer over to the roof of the Addon C5, with a large circular volume control flanked by sets of four smaller buttons: for power-on, play/ pause, input selection and Bluetooth pairing to its left, and pre-sets to its right. Here’s where you’ll find the aux-in jack, which will save you having to tip the speaker forward and fumble around at its rear to find a connection.
Inputs on the Audio Pro’s behind are reserved for those likely more permanent fixtures – the power cord, ethernet cable and RCA – alongside outputs for sub-woofer and USB device charging, as well as a toggle switch for optimised playback depending whether you’re using wi-fi or anything else.
Of course, a multi-room speaker cannot be judged alone without its app. It’s rare to find these apps being difficult to navigate, so we aren’t surprised to find Audio Pro’s simply laid out, with no real searching required to find tabs for streaming services and any external NAS drives.
More commonly, the problem with multi-room apps is that they can be buggy – especially new ones that have had less time to iron out creases. Such idiosyncrasies can range from a tad frustrating to absolutely infuriating, so we’re pleased to report we find no such problems here.
Great organisation
We had an inkling that its sound might be exceptional, so we set ourselves up for a party with The Rapture’s Echoes. In eect, our test is over within a minute of Olio: the heft is there in the kick drum, which thumps with metronomic precision; textures are exposed in the synthesisers and Luke Jenner’s wail spans dizzyingly in between.
The Addon C5 can’t be tripped up: not in its organisation of Heaven’s discordant vocal harmonies, or its off-kilter rhythms, not by the searing treble of the guitars in the album’s title track or when Open Up Your Heart pleads for delicacy and nuance.
This range of speakers has always been blessed by its musicality but, as part of a multi-room system, the range of tasks the Addon C5 is asked to perform is likely to be wider: talk radio and podcasts, perhaps even to act as an upgrade to TV speakers.
“There aren’t many wireless speakers we’d want around the house as much as these”
So let it be known that such talents – its expressive dynamics and low-end stability – are entirely transferable.
Talking the talk
We listen to Bob Mortimer and Andy Dawson’s football podcast Athletico Mince, for example. The Addon C5 is as happy expressing the irreverence in Mortimer’s tone – and the desperation in Dawson’s as he attempts to say something funny – as it is laying down the grooves on Echoes.
Turning the Addon range into a multi-room system may have been a no-brainer, but we’re thankful Audio Pro has done it so well. There aren’t many wireless speakers we’d want around the house as much as these, and we’d put a penny on you feeling the same way.