BluOS Controller

This was once a great app and I loved it (past tense). It worked great and was easy to navigate. That was over a year ago. In the past 18 months or so they have made “quality of life” updates to the interface that have actually had the opposite result. My user experience has actually declined with each major change recently. One example is that when I started the app, I used to be able to immediately enter my music library. Not anymore. That is an extra step now. These little irksome changes were bearable since it is all I have to run my home system. Well, the last update I installed destroyed even that situation. My system is basically useless now. They bricked it. iPads (and iPhones) can be used wired over your home network with an Ethernet to USB adapter into the Apple camera adapter. This Ethernet functionality is included with iOS by default. So, how did BluOS brick my system? A page would pop up when no WiFi was detected, BUT there was a “Close” button to remove that missing WiFi screen so I could access the app and use it to play music on my system. It functioned normally without WiFi over a wired connection. I also have a CD player connected to my system by optical cable that I cannot use because I cannot access that input either since all I see is a missing WiFi page now. BluOS, WHY would you do that? Even if someone doesn’t use a wired system, it would still be nice to have access to the app. What if their WiFi is down or broken? They still might want to go into the app and play with the settings. PLEASE return the option to CLOSE the WiFi screen, and scold the genius who thought to remove it. Not everyone operates the same way. Thank you for your time in reading this.

Connect to a pair of Beoplay 18s through a Node 2i. This app has actually been a bit of a pleasant surprise as I’ve used so many terrible music apps before, by B&O, Yamaha, etc. in contrast, this one actually works and plays both music from my NAS as well as from Tidal without any issues, very stable (fingers crossed). My only feedback would be that the app itself is better on iPad than on iPhone — unless you understand how the logic of the app works (which isn’t completely intuitive) it’s easy to get lost on the iPhone app. Two main things, you have your Library which is a type of home in the app, but that’s only for local files, if you have a music streaming service like Tidal, that ends up hidden behind a hamburger menu. If you enter there, you go into a type of “second home/library” just for Tidal. The app does a good job of replicating Tidal’s functionality. The separation also makes sense on some level but would be nice to have a direct link to Tidal from the home screen. Unless you know it’s there, the “playlist” is not intuitively present or obvious. Would be nice to be able to swipe left and right on the full screen play screen to get to the playlist. Here, it would also be useful to be able to drag and drop to change the order of songs in the playlist — feels like a pretty basic functionality.

This is truly the most mind-numbingly challenging app I’ve ever used. I was sold on the quality of the speakers at a high-end audio store, where the manager showed me the vast difference between the quality of Sonos and Bluesound speakers. It was unexpectedly stellar, and after some research, decided to pull the trigger.I didn’t realize how much the dysfunctionality of the app would discount my customer experience. The one and only reason I still have this app is because it is essential to operating the Bluesound speakers, but otherwise, I would have deleted it long ago. It drops the WiFi connection intermittently (frequently); often when I pull up the app no features even load, other than Settings and Add Player - better yet accessing any of the music services I’ve connected to it. And often it does not make any connection at all with my turntable (connected via cable because the Bluesound Bluetooth functionality is atrocious), even when the app is miraculously working other places.Bluesound has to have some sense that their app is failing so much that it is impacting sales and returns (as evidenced by some of the reviews herein). They need an entirely new app development team starting from scratch to make this app half as functional as its key competitor, Sonos, and then I would happily revise my assessment. In the meantime, I’ll continue to wake up every morning just hoping that the app rises from the ashes to become something I can use to operate my $300 investment in a speaker.