Installing Cambridge Audio Streamer - CXN100

[dave2010]

I struggled with this for most of the day. chatGPT was a help - though not by any means a perfect one or an infallible one. I don't think I'd have managed otherwise. I may still have some changes to make to the network to keep other things intact.

One gotcha is that the setup procedure - if doing wi-fi - gives up very quickly. This is an appalling design feature. I started with wifi - as I wanted to see/hear what things were like quicKly. Also I was using my Android phone.

Effectively I ended up having to do a factory reset - which is not obvious without a useful manual, but basically hold the button for 20-25 seconds or so. Also if the wifi is not going to work, then it's pretty pointless, so don't bother with that.
The wi-fi setup is supposed to be enabled by holding the 'i' button down for 5 or so seconds, but at that point it gave up.

I had to patch in a Powerline network link, and remove a unit from the other end of the building. That may cause problems so I may have to put that one back.

Once the wired connection was in place - even with Powerline - it started to come to life. One problem was that it immediately did a firmware upgrade. I would never have found that with wifi.

Presumably if there hadn't been an outstanding firmware upgrade I might have got the app to work with the wifi - but it was clearly blocked by that. That is a seriously bad design "feature".

Once the firmware upgrade was done, and the wifi started to work, I gradually added and tested other parts. It still took until around 3pm to get things working with the Android phone.
For several hours I could not get any sound out of the thing. I still don't really know why, but I ended up rechecking the wiring, and eventually turning the volume control knob way up started to give results.

Having succeeded with the Android phone it took perhaps yet another 45 minutes to get the iPad version of the app downloaded - and yes - it didn't work! It would only work if the wifi is set to exactly the same wifi channel as the router.
Seems obvious - but not actually as we use a mesh network linked to the router to make sure there is a good signal throughout the house. The router wifi doesn't always penetrate to the far end of the building.
Most people in smaller houses will possibly not have all these problem issues, but for a device which eventually seems to be "rather good" - though at a significant price - round £800 - the set up and procedures are abysmally awful.

There may still be some configuration and even rewiring to do, but it's getting close now.

Radio 3 - BBC - is really rather good. Also tried Swedish Radio P2, which to my surprise came up as 48kHz 24 bit Flac - so presumably a seriously high bit rate.

That's probably enough for today.