Phorus PR5 Receiver - 24 bit / 192 kHz Hi-Res Music Streamer with Spotify, AirPlay, Windows Streaming, Bluetooth AptX, and Play-Fi

I needed a good wireless home entertainment system. Sonos was too expensive and limiting, I don't have the Apple ecosystem, and the AirPlay solutions for Windows (e.g., Airfoil) were kludgey and impossible for anyone else in the house to use. I have a good receiver hooked up to good speakers already, so Play-Fi to the rescue! I got a Kindle Fire 10, loaded up the Play-Fi app, plugged in the PR5, and all was good...almost. The system needed an update before it would work, but as luck would have it my home wifi failed mid-update and bricked the system. Phorus tech support was great -- one email explaining my problem got a response with 2 options -- they'll send me a new one ASAP, or click on the link to try a USB hardware update. Long story short: the USB update worked and I was up and running in 30 minutes. The DTS Play-Fi app is not perfect -- it works fine but the user experience needs improvement (it's confusing) -- but technically it works great. I primarily use it for Pandora and also my purchased music collection from my Windows media server. Both work great, with excellent fidelity. There is no audible difference between Pandora Premium and the direct CD player (formerly) attached to the receiver. I'm thinking of getting a couple more, attaching them to my home theater system and soundbar, to get sound in other rooms as well. Great product overall.

I'm using this in my workshop, with the line-out connected to a Lepai 2020 amp, which is connected to a bunch of random speakers I have, and it sounds pretty good. My original plan was to use this in a whole house setup, but it didn't work well there... And it ignores the volume control on my phone for some reason! Why can't I remote control volume on this?? The initial Play-fi setup process took HOURS. I had to enable GPS location on my phone (why???) in order to get them connected to my wifi network. Then I had to download a gigantic update and apply that, then another, and after all of that, it only works on the named wifi network you specify, which is bunk when you have several interconnected networks. (I have my ISP's network, and a second router with 2.4GHz and a 5GHz networks, and this only works on the 2.4GHz because that's the one I set it up on. Everything else on my network works by IP address and doesn't care what the network name is.) Using wifi / Play-fi seems to sound much better, but the app situation is *horrible*. You can only use the Play-Fi app to use the wifi, and it's a disaster. I have ripped my music collection to my phone, and playing that from my phone is so difficult, because the app makes it cumbersome. It'll do playlists, but if you have things organized by album it'll just give you all of the folders in alphabetical order, with no way to sort them. And there's a several seconds long pause between every song, which is very annoying. It's more for streaming music services, but then why are you using such an advanced decoder with radio quality streams. The Play-Fi app for Windows is better, it'll allow you to use your favorite music player, but there's about a 5 second delay overall, instead of between every song. But if you want to restrict the output from just the music player, or play to speaker groups, you'll need to buy the full version of the app for $15. And wifi signal dropouts do not recover gracefully. If it loses signal for more than a few seconds, it gives up and you have to go tell it which speaker you want to play to. I have had to restart the speaker after using the microwave many times because after a minute it just doesn't seem interested in getting back onto the one wifi network it knows. I thought the bluetooth would be better than average with it having APT but it's the same as any other as far as I can tell. I have an old house with plaster walls and if you're behind one, forget keeping a solid streaming signal. I think this is probably a limitation of BT and not just this unit. So this is OK if you just want to add an aux/BT capability to an existing setup, but the Play-fi part is nowhere near as simple or robust as advertised.

Mostly a great cheaper alternative to Sonos. I upgraded my wifi to the Eero wifi system so that I have strong wifi throughout my house and yard. You need good wifi or this just won't work well. I have 3 Phorus PR5 and 2 polk omni SR2 speakers. I have an issue with one of the PR5s which is hooked to my Yamaha AV receiver RX-V381 in the man cave because of the digital processing on the AV receiver. I've tried turning off the processing on the Yamaha and it helps but is still slightly off, my next step after exhausting the owners manual is to call yamahas customer service. I only mention this because if anyone is having issues with lagging it might be your AV receiver. If you are having connection issues or dropouts you need to look at your wifi. My other PR5s are hooked to regular receivers and they play in perfect sync. I have 1PR5 hooked to a Yamaha R-S202BL stereo receiver outside in the pool shed connected to a pair of Polk Atrium 5 speakers. I have another older similar stereo receiver (can't remember brand) hooked to another PR5 in our outdoor covered porch connected to 2 pairs of dual LU43PW speakers. the sound is awesome and fills my yard. I use the portable polk Omni SR2 speakers as needed in the yard or house. I am about to buy one more PR5 for my soundbar in the family room. I love being able to be in the pool or porch and come inside and the same music is playing everywhere. It's been great at parties. I mostly listen to my music in ITunes, Amazon prime music, Iheart or Pandora. Just be aware with ITunes it won't play from the cloud, it need to be downloaded on your device. I use my IPad or my IPhone. Update: April 2019 I currently have 4 PR5 receivers hooked to 3 Yamaha R-S202BL stereo receivers and 1 hooked to a cheap Pyle sound bar. 2 are outside in sheds. ( I had to replace the 2 original outdoor ones within the past month because they wouldn’t power up. However they lasted longer than I expected in the Florida humidity. ) One of the new Yamahas is hooked up to a Polk atrium8 which sounds great! The other 2 speaker setups are listed in my original review. I also have a phorus PR10 which I love! I gave up trying to hook up a PR5 to my AV receiver listed in the original review. It would not play in sync. I plan to replace with a new AV reciever with play-fi built in. I do not like the Omni Polk portable SR2 in my original review, (1 died) so I do not recommend those any longer. Overall I love my play-fi system. It works consistently and sounds GREAT.