Setting Up...
One thing you don’t get here is quite the integrated smarts of most multiroom systems. Take the firmware updates noted in Dynaudio’s manuals as an essential first step when you’re setting up. Nearly all the other systems in this issue perform an automatic update by pressing a button on your smartphone and waiting a couple of minutes. Here it’s old-school — you visit Dynaudio’s website, download and unzip each firmware update, put each one on a specifically FAT32-formatted USB stick, plug it into the relevant speaker/hub and reboot the unit while holding some combination of buttons down. Aside from the Connect hub, the Dynaudio system doesn’t connect to your home network (and therefore the internet), and no internet means no automatic upgrades.
We also had trouble navigating Dynaudio’s various instruction manuals, which seemed focused on standalone operation and less on setting up a system using a hub device. It was unclear how to set the multiple switches on the speakers to choose zones, modes and colours, leaving us mystified as to why no sound was emerging. The online help FAQs offered so many different suggestions (try resetting the speakers and hub, try a different zone, try a different ID setting, try a different connection mode, try changing the Connect from High Resolution to Multiroom Mode) that it took us more than a day to get our Xeo/XD set-up working. In particular we were unsure exactly what the Connect was doing until we found the app recently made available (but not mentioned in any manual or even on the Connect page of Dynaudio’s website). With the app showing us the Connect’s status more clearly, we were able to sort out the switches and soon had the system playing. App development should be a priority for Dynaudio, adding DLNA and perhaps internet radio to the iOS app, and urgently releasing a version for Android users.
We were, however, very well supported by Dynaudio’s local team. “Some people seem to get it to work straight away”, they said, “and other times it can be difficult. But we’re always here to help.” You can’t say fairer than that.