Review: Phorus PS1 Speaker and PR1 Receiver

For those who crave a wireless audio experience in the home, you have two distinct options. One is to use Bluetooth, which is remarkably stable, but limited in range and quality – it makes Wolf Parade sound like Wolf Mush. The other option is to use a Wi-Fi speaker which sounds great, but forces you to deal with the hiccups, dropouts, proprietary limitations and other stupid tricks.

The new system from Phorus promises to provide the best of both worlds: Wi-Fi-level audio quality and Bluetooth-level stability. It uses a technology called Play-Fi that was developed by DTS to stream lossless audio, either from an Android device or from a networked DLNA drive, over a home Wi-Fi network. It employs some load-balancing in the streaming (akin to quality-of-service on a router) to make sure your stream stays glitch-free. Everything can be controlled by native Android apps.

It uses a technology called Play-Fi that was developed by DTS to stream lossless audio, either from an Android device or from a networked DLNA drive, over a home Wi-Fi network.Phorus provided a multi-room system – three PS1 Speakers ($200 each) and a PR1 Receiver ($150) – for me to test. The company is also offering some bundled pricing through the end of May, starting with a speaker and receiver together for only $300.

If you hook up one receiver in your home, you can spread multiple wireless speakers throughout the different rooms. The speakers look like triangular cones, and the receiver is a flat, dull-as-paint base. Both are all black and made from a less-than-high-end plastic material.

I distributed the PS1 Speakers in different areas: the living room, the bedroom and the kitchen. I planned to connect the PR1 Receiver to a Denon receiver in my basement, but I started by setting it next to my router. Normally, you have to put a wireless speaker in "network" mode and connect to it from your computer, then follow the setup. With the Phorus, however, you can do all the setup tasks from within an Android app, an important distinction.

At first, the lights on all four units started pulsing rapidly. After a few seconds, the lights all started pulsing more slowly. This means they were able to find my open Wi-Fi network and latch on to a signal, but that they were waiting for the app to continue the setup. I installed the Play-Fi app on my Samsung Galaxy SIII and fired it up. In an instant, the app found all four Phorus devices and walked me through the rest of the setup. One by one, I enabled each device and picked a room name (bedroom, den and so on).

Since I live in the country where Wi-Fi snoopers aren't a problem, I don't use a network password so I didn't bother with the secure setup. But connecting it to a secure network is still very easy – just launch the app and enter your network password, and the Phorus components will join your LAN. If your router supports Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS), you can just press the Wi-Fi button on the front of the Phorus and it will connect to your network without requiring you to enter your password.

The PS1's speakers gets as loud as 90 decibels and pumps out 15 watts through a pair of class D amps, but the audio quality is only passable. The speaker uses dual neodymium drivers, a computer-modeled Energy Port that monitors sound waves inside the speaker and amplifies accordingly, and dual-core digital signal processor to keep distortion from creeping in at higher volumes. While that all sounds impressive, the PS1 sounded just OK. The saving grace is that, after streaming several full albums from my phone, the audio never stuttered or paused, which is a testament to Play-Fi's stability. Phorus would not provide details about how it works, but said both the app and the speaker help make sure the lossless stream does not degrade.

The Play-Fi app lets you play music stored locally on your phone, from a DLNA server (say, your Windows 8 computer), from a network drive, or streaming from Pandora radio (the only streaming service DTS has named as a partner for now). You can't stream your Google Music collection directly to the device. Nor can you use any other apps to stream music from your phone via Play-Fi, like Spotify or Rdio, as you can with AirPlay speakers. Oddly, while there are both a USB port and a micro-USB port on the PS1 Speaker, they are for charging your phone, not for playing music. There is a 3.5 mm input for connecting an iPhone or another device. And while you can't beam lossless music from your phone using a direct Wi-Fi connection – a Wi-Fi router is required to keep both the Phorus and your sound sources on the same LAN – you can connect your phone over Bluetooth in a pinch to play music directly at lower quality. EQ is adjusted automatically; there are no manual controls.

The PR1 receiver doesn't have any speakers or amps inside, but as I mentioned earlier, it does have a stereo line out, so you can connect it to an existing system and stream music to your favorite stereo directly from your phone. This requires wires: you can only connect to your A/V receiver (or any other stereo source) using the included 3.5 mm-to-RCA cable. But audio sounded crisp, loud, and accurate when connected to a Denon AVR-4520CI surround-sound receiver and a set of Boston Acoustics M350 floor-standing speakers. The PR1 Receiver never stalled or sputtered while playing two full albums, and the other Phorus speakers stayed in sync.

The final conclusion, though, is that the Phorus PS1 Speaker and PR1 Receiver do work for smooth Wi-Fi streaming. Play-Fi accurately managed the audio on my phone and on my computer for high-quality streaming, which played in sync on the three speakers and the receiver for hours at a time.

But while the system works well, it accomplishes nothing beyond creating an easier, more stable way to stream networked music files over Wi-Fi from an Android device. The PS1 Speaker's quality can't touch the Sonos Play:3, Logitech's UE products or the recently released JBL OnBeat Venue. More troubling, it only serves as a player client for the files on your networked devices – other than Pandora, it can't play streaming radio or audio from any of the other subscription services. Sure, you can use Bluetooth to connect to one speaker and listen to streams from anywhere, but you give up the lossless audio and the multi-room syncing features.

It seems the Phorus system is meant to prove the value of Play-Fi, and to show off DTS's hard work at creating a stable system that's easy to set up. In that respect, it works. But it's too limited to recommend over other systems.

WIRED Very smooth Wi-Fi streaming with no stuttering or stalls. One of the best ways to play music from a networked server using Android phones and tablets. Super-easy setup. Plays MP3s and FLACs up to CD-quality (16-bit/44.1kHz). Multiple Android devices can stream different songs to different rooms at once.

TIRED Speaker is only of average quality. Most of the best audio apps are not yet supported – just Pandora, no Spotify, Rdio or Google Music. More of a proof-of-concept for the Play-Fi platform.