PumpUpVolume

Playing music using the Music App on the iPhone and routing it to the AirPlay App on the NEEO/EA3 works well, except for two limitations: (i) this method can only play the music that fits on the iPhone and our entire music library is too large to fit on some/all iPhones in the house; and (ii) some members of household find it complex to select the music track/album on one device and then switch over to the other device for volume control... yes, they could use the C4 App on their phone, but they find that confusing. The rationale for getting the NAS (which is a Synology DS220+) was to be able to house the entire large music library in one place without having to manage partial libraries on various phones. Regarding Roon in Canada - I had read an FAQ that seemed to indicate Roon subscription was not available in Canada (because it requires US IP and US credit card), but with some further searching I see that Roon has a customer testimony from Dave in Toronto on the Roon site, so maybe the FAQ I saw is erroneous or obsolete or I misunderstood the reference. I might try to sign up for the free trial of Roon and see whether it works. Thanks for that suggestion. I actually did discuss the idea of using Plex running on our Synology for music with our C4 dealer and they recommended I stay with MyMusic. I don't recall the reason why, but I suspect it was disinterest in figuring out whether the Plex driver can be used on the NEEO. Is anyone doing this? If the Plex driver will work on the Halo Touch, that might be a viable solution. Insight?

Thanks for the suggestions for a better music player experience. Right off the hop, Roon isn't available in Canada where I live. You can use a VPN to mask the IP - not going there - and you also need a US credit card. Thus, that option is a non-viable option for me. What device would I run Plex on? Remember, the idea was to be able to browse the music collection from the single WiFi remote. If I am willing to use two devices, I have a range of options to AirPlay high res music in the existing system. That works, but it invariably requires at least two devices (NEEO and iPhone) and to get the best experience requires also using the TV as the display for the AppleTV (because then I can navigate the full music library that is on the NAS). If I suggest this as a solution to the family, the Bluetooth speaker will become even more popular than it is now. C4 was sold to us as on simplicity; we'd have one easy to use remote that worked reliably. FWIW, I believe the MyMusic bug could be very easily fixed by C4. It appears that a code developer erroneously referenced "track artist" in the code where they should have referenced "album artist". I do believe the fix is incredibly simple; switch one variable. Maybe it isn't as straight forward as it appears? I submitted a robust analysis of the issue to C4, but I doubt that will ever see the light of day. I am curious whether this issue is unique to the NEEO. I'd be pleased to see that the bug isn't carried forward onto the Halo suite.

While I tend to agree with the general sentiment of what you said, this dealer has the best reputation of all the C4 dealers in my city and region and C4 is highly dominant in this region (there are no dealers for most competitor products in the region). So, firing them is not an easy decision. To be fair, they have done some things very well. In my view, the dealer has been excellent to work with as long as everything was going smoothly. However, the moment we ran into something difficult or complex they ducked, dodged, blamed the couple components I supplied, and ran from the problem. When we ran into problems they blamed my existing network (which, arguably, is better than 99% of the residential ethernet/WiFi networks in this city), the ultra high HDMI cable I purchased, and my unusual music library for a range of difficult problems. As solutions have been found to the problems it has been demonstrated that none of the root causes lay in the items they blamed; the problems were caused by a defective network adapter on a TV, a bug in the C4 MyMusic program, HTR firmware, etc. And, I agree, I don't believe their technical knowledge is very deep. It is evident that they want to stick closely to what has worked for them in "controlled" environments in the past. Hence their reluctance to even sell the NEEO. This dealer advised me I needed to purchase a NAS to support MyMusic, which led me to spend $1,000 on NAS only to discover that there is major bug with the MyMusic implementation on the NEEO (I don't know if the same issue is present with other remotes), which makes for a terrible user experience (please, please, replicate the music browsing behaviour of an iOS device). The dealer blames my "unusual" music collection and C4 wrote up a customer request (they won't acknowledge it is a bug) and that went into orbit. So, I'm left using Composer to manually edit music metadata as a clunky workaround for the C4 software bug. My experience with C4 has been overall poor. My experience it that is an overpriced system for which the information is too tightly held to the dealer channel and customers are left fumbling around in this forum hoping to pick up scraps of information to self solve problems - that they probably can't solve themselves. C4's behaviour and response to the MyMusic issue was particularly disappointing. There was one reason I purchased a C4 system and that was to get a remote control that worked over WiFi. Look where that got me... a remote that periodically loses the WiFi connection and can't properly present music albums for playback. And, here's the acid test... my wife chooses to use her phone to send Spotify to a Bluetooth speaker rather than using the C4 system (which cost 100 times as much)... why? The Bluetooth speaker system is intuitive and reliable. She gets to listen to music instead of swearing at a remote that can't organize music files and can't keep a WiFi connection. edit addition - Adding an objective example of my C4 dealer experience... In all my discussions with my dealer about the NEEO issues, they have never mentioned the WiFi Never Sleeps setting for the NEEO. This was brought up in this forum thread as a possible solution. I couldn't find the referenced option on my NEEO where people said it would be (under device settings), but by fumbling around I eventually found this setting in Composer and I found that it wasn't selected. I've now turned on that option and am testing it. Clearly, this is something that the dealer, not the end user, should have been able to determine and try.

Single WAP for the entire house: Netgear WAC720 NEEO is used in very close proximity to the WAC720

I'd really appreciate any further insight you can provide. My C4 dealer doesn't want to have anything to do with the NEEO issues I'm experiencing. They simply state, "it must be your network"; and they don't want to have anything to do with "my network". And, that is all the help I've been able to get from them. Apparently, I am the only customer to whom they've ever sold a NEEO - and only at my request. Some additional information related to your comment: I see the message "Loading - Getting the latest settings" every single time I change rooms on the NEEO; I've always assumed this is normal. Is it normal? The OS version on my EA3 is 3.3.2.651293-res We have a simple system (one TV, one HTR, one cable box, one ATV, one ultra-blu-ray, three zones/rooms, two of which are audio only) and, according to my C4 dealer, there is a lot of remaining capacity on the controller; we don't use C4 for anything other than the one TV; all our home automation is handled by other systems. If I run system diagnostics in Composer I see very light CPU usage and less than 25% memory usage What are "shelly" drivers? The error messages and spinning wheel we see when this problem onsets are depicted below re shown below.

In the situations that you are describing, would the NEEO start working again if you rebooted the NEEO? I have experienced a very specific pattern: NEEO works fine for about ten days than suddenly is extremely slow to do any operation, with spinning wheel and a couple of error messages; this is only rectified by rebooting the WAP; rebooting NEEO changes nothing. Also, what are symptoms of a project type problem? What behaviours would cause you to investigate the project as the possible cause?

Yes, something like that... and one of my theories is imperfect implementation of the security protocols (e.g. WPA2). I've run into a security protocol implementation issue once before where I had a particular device (Carrier Infinity Control) that wouldn't stay connected to a particular model of WAP (WAC540). In that case, although the root cause of the issue was likely in the client device (thermostat), an upgrade to a newer WAP with more modern security protocol implementation (different chipset) resolved the issue. The security protocols are a combination of hardware and firmware and prone to this kind of issue. If the NEEO used an older WiFi chip, this could very well be the issue; it may have an imperfect implementation of WPA2. If true, this might explain why it has been helpful in some cases to give the NEEO it's own SSID. This theory is academically interesting but practically useless in that hardware and firmware are not in the end users control. So, if this is root cause of the issue one or both devices need to be changed. I'm inclined to suspect security profiles versus co-channel or cross-channel interference, guard interval issues, etc. - partly because some of us have demonstrated that we change these parameters and the behaviour remains the same. Security protocol issues could also be linked to the never sleep WiFi theory as well. It's just a theory, but it is based on some real world experience and it seems to suit the collective observations.

Thank you for sharing this. I think you've convinced me to shelve my efforts to *solve* the NEEO issue. I'll upgrade to the Halo Touch when it becomes available and will suspend my troubleshooting and problem solving in the interim. If I still have a problem with the Halo Touch then I'll need a new gameplan, but given what you and others have shared I'm going to cross fingers that the issues with my WAP magically goes away once the NEEO gets swapped out with a Halo Touch; i.e. this furthers my belief that the root cause of the issue rests with the NEEO, not the WAP.

Understand that I said all the same things about my Netgear AP setup (with one centrally located AP giving full coverage to 3,750 sq ft) for ten years with a wide range of devices until we introduced one NEEO. It would be interesting to see what would result if I could put my NEEO in your home. My point being, this may be a problem with specific NEEO units. It somehow has become a WAP centric discussion.

FWIW, I changed the channel width on my 5 GHz network from 80 to 40,which cuts speeds from 300 to 150 and no one noticed. For that matter, no one other than me notices whether they connect to the 2.4 GHz or the 5.0 GHz. The 2.4 GHz is currently set with a 20 MHz channel width so it is peaking out at ~46 MBPS... and notices which band they are on (other than me). You said it... that last 5-10% and the bragging rights that go with it are awfully expensive. There is also something to be said for mature firmware and problems/solutions that others have already documented. Being a bit behind the curve is not all bad.

Not to mention that you only need about 10 MBPS to stream 4K (I'm being very approximate here, I realize there are all sorts of caveats). I'm not suggesting that most people would be happy with 10 MBPS top out on their WAP, but if you are getting 300, even a reliable 160 MBPS improvements wouldn't be noticeable for most applications. If video streams flawlessly on 30 MBPS (it does on my 2.4 GHz network), it doesn't look any better if you give it 10x the pipe. All my high speed throughput applications are on Ethernet through a Gig switch, so all those devices (including everything in my AV rack) takes advantage of all the speed my ISP dishes out. The WiFi is reserved for those things that get carried around the house or are attached to a wall where there is no ethernet wire. My *old* Netgear equipment is providing 300+ MBPS, but I don't think there would be any real noticeable difference in user experience in our house by upgrading that. What would be an improvement is a NEEO that showed something other than spinning wheel or "Unable to connect". Nonetheless, I appreciate the low down on the Ubiquiti performance. Do you have more than one WAP and if so are you using a hardware controller?

For context to any other system/solution recommendations: I have 22 ethernet drops in the house and we use desktop PCs and have devices such as ATVs connected by Gig ethernet; I've recently added a few Cat 6a 10 Gig lines to locations where I might need that in the future. What I need from WiFi for the present is robust service. I'm not running around the house testing the speed with 3 antenna MIMO gaming laptops - we don't own one of those and it's just not my use case. The current system is fast enough; I normally see 300+ MBPS on 5 GHz in all living areas of the house - way more than adequate to stream high resolution video - and all devices work fine except for the NEEO. No one in the house has ever complained about the WiFi; the only complaint is that the NEEO remote isn't working. My short term objective is to solve the NEEO issue; a longer term project is WiFi 6 whole home coverage.

Clarification - I was speaking strictly about residential applications. Large Enterprise is entirely different kettle of fish. Residential and enterprise are different markets. I agree that there is a market for expensive, robust product for enterprise, especially large enterprise applications. I work in an industry with very serious cyber security threats... I get this. Residential is a different market. Not many homes are outfitted with Cisco; I fully expect Cisco has less than 1% of the residential market (and I think they are OK with that). When I bought my Netgear system a decade ago, there wasn't much available in the way of mid-tier systems... and, I'd argue that - at that time - Netgear had the best small business offering, which I used for my house. Arguably Ubiquiti is filling that void, but it isn't the same. The Netgear product came with true lifetime warranty and ProSupport, which gets you in contact with a network engineer in short order. Netgear ProSupport is totally in a different league from Ubiquiti support.

There are some well made points here and I'll add that the new Halo Touch has a MSRP Of almost double that of the NEEO. Today's reality is that home WiFi needs to be a commodity product/service that is inexpensive and not complex. It is now the backbone of everything the plugs into a wall or has batteries. Companies that focus on ultra high, uber expensive products are going to be playing in a thin niche market. WiFi is not a novelty, not fun, and should work without a fuss and not require a second mortgage. I have a number of cheap devices that never lose connection to my network. The NEEO sells for something like $800 in Canada. At that price it should have bullet proof networking capabilities. It shouldn't require packet analysis with WireShark with fingers and toes crossed to get to communicate with a quality WAP.

@SpencerT: did you mean to reference "TI chipset" on both lines above? The MAC of my NEEO starts with 4C:24... which series of chipset is that?

I'm pretty certain that there were other people on this thread that claimed to have the same issues with their NEEO that I am having - yet they are running Ubiquiti hardware. Could someone please clarify this... are you any of you who are experiencing the discussed NEEO issues running the Ubiquiti UniFi UAP-6 or similar?

Ruckus is a pretty obscure brand in Canada. I'm not going to switch to a brand that has no formal presence in my country.

I am inviting recommendations for different WAP hardware. Presently, I own three WAC720's but I have only deployed one. If I am to change hardware then I want something well suited to having 3 - 4 APs. I'm open to recommendations!

And, if someone can say for certainty, "you won't have this issue if you purchase and deploy Make X, Model Y of access point", I'll give that serious configuration - if no one else chimes in and indicates they are having an issue with that same make and model. As far as I can tell, the issue hasn't been isolated well enough yet to take such a position. In my case, whether others love or hate Netgear, my network is performing very well for me for all my devices except the NEEO. So, whether Netgear is awesome, mediocre, or crappy, it is meeting my needs in all ways but one. I'm open to making a reinvestment, but that decision needs be based on data and have a high probability of a better outcome. I really have absolutely no other complaint with my WiFi or ethernet other than the intermittent NEEO issue. I have young kids that are on screens continuously and I work from home somedays and my network supports all of this beautifully. I never have glitchy video, dropped connections or other issues... except for the NEEO.

I have considered contacting Netgear, but to do so I would have to purchase a renewal of ProSupport. My WAC720 has lifetime hardware warranty, but ProSupport is only for the first year or two. The ProSupport renewal is about $100 for a year. I'm open to doing that, but I'm not sure it makes sense if people are having the same issue with other brands. My thought is that if I renewed ProSupport maybe Netgear would have me do a packet capture for the NEEO's MAC and have me submit it for analysis. I'm reasonably knowledgeable about networking, but I'm not an expert and not capable of analyzing a packet capture. The WAC720 is End of Life, so if it was a firmware issue it wouldn't be fixed anyway. So, I might be inclined to replace my system with another brand if there was certainty that it would resolve the issue. On the other hand, buying a Halo Touch might be an easier and simpler solution... but there are no guarantees on that one either. If there is a body of evidence that this is a Netgear problem that I am open to renewing my ProSupport. That being said, I'd like some certainty that Netgear would support me with a packet trace analysis before throwing away $100 for nothing. Thoughts on all this?

If you read back in the thread, the guard interval was set at the shorter setting and the channel width was set at 40 when started the thread (i'm the OP). Others were convinced that changing channel width from 20 --> 40 and GI from short to long (there are only two settings) would solve issue. I get exactly the same behaviour with all combinations that I've tried. Furthermore, from a scientific perspective, those settings don't match the behaviour IMHO... works fine for two weeks and then one of twenty devices stops working. Regardless, I ran in the configuration you have recommended for the better part of a year and had no end of issues.

The screenshots were posted previously; nonetheless.... The attached screenshot shows the current configuration, but I've tried fixed channel, auto channel and various other configurations with no difference in behaviour. No band steering configured. It is configured with unique SSIDs for 2.4 and 5.0 GHz. The SSID the NEEO uses is not set up on 5.0 GHz.

and that comment is constructive in what way? other people having this issue have indicated they are using other brands such as Ubiquiti. From my observations of the discussions in this forum, it appears that the issue presents with a wide range of brands. I'm running a relatively scientific test which is revealing some interesting insight into the issue. If someone can demonstrate conclusively that this is a Netgear problem I'd take that learning and replace my APs... but, from what I've seen here, the issue is not specific to any brand of WAP, but if there are specific brands that never have this issue then I want to know about it. I take advice a receive on forums with a grain of salt... there were a couple people in this thread that piled on my router as the probable cause - because I'm using the ISP router. That is "interesting" given that communications between the NEEO and the C4 EA3 route through the switch on the L2 network - they don't even touch the router. The router does DHCP and NAT and not much more as far as the NEEO is concerned. Netgear might not be everyone's cup of tea and it would be where I go if I am purchasing a new system today. However, ten years ago when I bought the switch and an earlier model AP (which got upgraded by Netgear to the WAP720), I think it made sense where I live, with the support available to me, for the cost of the products, etc. My interest is to objectively understand the root cause of the issue as best as possible. And, if it is some of my equipment, great to know, I'll look to upgrade it. But, I'm going to need data, not just brand preferences.

Netgear WAC720: https://www.netgear.com/business/wifi/access-points/wac720/ In combination with a Netgear 28PT GE POE Smart Switch: https://www.netgear.com/support/product/GS728TP.aspx

I'm presently running an experiment with my NEEO and my WiFi and the result so far interesting. The NEEO is normally connected to a business class access point (the marketing of the WAP is geared towards hotels, schools, hospitals) and that access point is normally the only WiFi access point enabled in the house (I plan to deploy more in the future, but the one is meeting our needs for the present). This configuration is rock solid for all devices except the NEEO even thought the NEEO is used in very close proximity to the WAP; Speed tests consistently result in approximately the maximum throughput one can expect for the devices in use. In this configuration, the NEEO sometimes works OK for a number of days, but, invariably, after several days it starts presenting all the issues discussed in this thread and those issues don't go away until I reboot the WAP (i.e. rebooting the router, the switch, and/or the NEEO doesn't change anything). As an experiment, I've temporarily turned off the 2.4GHz radio on the WAP and I've temporarily reenabled the 2.4GHz radio on the ISP provided router that sits in the basement storage room (which happens to also house the AV rack with the C4 processor,etc). The location where the NEEO is used is 50'+ and up stairs and down hallways from where the ISP router is located. I set up the same SSID and PW on the ISP's router and the NEEO seamlessly moved over to the 2.4 GHz radio in the ISP router. This configuration provides much lower signal strength where the NEEO is used than the normal configuration; however, after a week of use in this configuration everything has worked smoothly - zero communication issues. This is an interesting result given that I'm using the ISP provided router's WiFi, which most of you will say is the worst possible solution, and the router is located sub-optimally with respect to the NEEO. I also let the ISP's router auto select the channel and I can't configure things such as the guard interval on the ISP router. Riddle me that, Batman. Based on all my observations, by working theory is that there is some sort of problematic interaction between the NEEO and certain WAPs. I further suspect this problematic interaction is not something that be avoided by configurable settings. The behaviour suggests to me that is some sort of buffering issue. I say this because the problem will be not present for days and once it appears, I can't resolve it without rebooting the WAP. This behaviour is not consistent with simple co-channel or cross-channel interference or the like. I will let this experiment run longer and it is still possible that the same issues will present with the configuration. In the meantime, I'm certain that the issue with my NEEO is not related to my router, it not related to my switch, and I have strong doubts that it is something that can be resolved by any configurable setting. I wouldn't be surprised if it has something to do with the encryption security implementation on the NEEO's WiFi chip - and that implementation has some incompatibility with some access points. What ultimately triggers the onset of the communication issues? I have no idea....