Review: Pioneer A4 WiFi Speaker
I received the Pioneer A4 as a Christmas gift last year. I was so excited that I opened it to start messing with it before I even got home. After messing around for 10 minutes before finally playing the only audio file that exists on my phone (a voicemail) on the speaker. My experience quickly revealed several of the shortcomings I would be working through in the following weeks.The A4 has 5 speakers: 2 tweeters, two woofers, and a 4” subwoofer between them. Connectivity is via USB, Ethernet, WiFi, and an Auxiliary input. Music streaming is via either Airplay or dlna, and there is no Bluetooth connectivity. Following a firmware upgrade offered after I got the speaker, there is also an iPhone/Android app that runs Pandora and Spotify directly on the speaker.
Step one: Connect to the WiFi network.
Upon unboxing the Pioneer A4, I was met with the speaker, a power supply, and a getting started guide. The getting started guide is massive, and contains an incredibly complex flow chart which explains how to get started. After spending a good 5-10 minutes deciphering it all, I decided to use the quick connect feature, which makes the speaker its own WiFi access point. I was able to get that audio file to play on the speaker before I decided it was best to box it back up and try again when I was in my own house. Setting up the WiFi manually comprises activating quick connect mode, browsing to the setup page, setting the WiFi details, and rebooting the speaker. I chose to take a shortcut by connection my wife’s iPhone to it via USB. Upon connecting, the phone will ask if you would like to share the WiFi connection data. All you have to do is say yes and voila! It’s connected. This feature should be front and center in a much smaller getting started guide!Step Two: Play some music.
I’m an Android user, and I quickly realized from the getting started guide that Android devices are second class citizens on the A4. With that in mind, I decided we should start with the iPhone. My wife opened Pandora, started some music playing, and we noticed a little icon on the volume slider (the Airplay icon, of course). We touched the icon, and selected ‘Pioneer A4’, which was the only option. Within seconds the music stopped playing on the phone and was instead coming from the A4. Success!If I was an iPhone user, this would be it. I would be done, and it would be time to review the audio quality. There are two reasons why we’re not there yet. First, I’m not an iPhone user. Second, Pandora doesn’t exactly translate to high quality audio. There was one more (lengthy) step in this process.
I like Spotify. I like choosing the actual songs I want to play, I like listening to complete albums, and I like the audio quality. It’s still digitally compressed, but I don’t hear artifacts even in most cymbal hits, so I’m happy with the compromise of more music for less than CD quality. Don’t get me wrong, I can be incredibly objective and I’m sure if I ran a CD against the same tunes from Spotify I would hear all kinds of shortcomings, but it’s still a compromise I can live with. I wanted Spotify on my A4, and I didn’t want to make a playlist for every album I wanted to listen to. Yes there’s a phone app, but the phone app for Spotify free requires playlist creation and plays the playlist in random order. I really needed to stream Spotify from my laptop to the speaker. Thankfully there are several ways someone can do this, but I chose ‘Stream What You Hear’, which is a free dlna streaming application. Another recommended option was Air Parrot, but that was $15 and did a full display mirroring, so it was overkill and not free. I really wish this speaker supported Bluetooth, but there are inexpensive Bluetooth receivers available that can fill this void. I plan to get one soon.
Listening Test
So, now the speaker is in my bathroom so I can play music while I get ready in the morning. This is exactly what I wanted. The tiny iPod dock I had before was incredibly disappointing in so many ways, and it was time for an upgrade. I have music streaming to it from my laptop, which is playing anything I want off of Spotify, and iTunes can stream to it via airplay if I want to play one of my CDs which is ripped in iTunes (iTunes is on our iMac – I didn’t check to see if Windows iTunes supports Airplay). It’s time for the listening test!My first impression: Way too much bass! Where is the sub volume control? I had a hard time getting past this issue. There was no way I was going to be able to place the speaker 2 feet away from any wall, so that amplified the bass even more. Why doesn’t the A4 have a subwoofer level adjustment? Placement affects bass significantly. What if I had put this in a corner? It’s a small speaker. It needs to be adaptable to less than ideal room placements. I have great news, though. Pioneer designed the A4 with a pair of symmetrical rear-firing ports. While this probably makes placement issues worse, it provides an opportunity to correct them as well. How? With a sock. Yes kids, that’s right. Put a sock in it. I found that in my application I like to have a sock stuffed into one of the ports. Other people have reported stuffing a sock into both sides (you can still use the one sock for this), but in my application that made the bass a little too weak.
Don’t expect miracles from this little speaker, but do expect some quality sound and good volume capacity. Because there are enough speakers to share the burden, compression is minimal even at elevated volumes, both in the high and low frequencies. As expected, the subwoofer doesn’t get exceptionally low, but it is clean, not too boomy, and generally satisfies. I do experience some fatigue after listening for a while at higher volumes, but at this price range I would be shocked if I didn’t. It is competent playing anything from Eminem to Megadeth, and no issues have stood out sonically. The DAC, amplifiers and speakers all work well together and deliver a very enjoyable experience from a small wifi speaker.
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