Korean consumer electronics giant LG has entered the Multiroom networked audio space with a system which it calls Music Flow. Stephen Dawson looks at how it goes.

Technically part of the Music Flow system are LG’s two premium soundbars, the HS7 and the HS9. Also available is the R1 network bridge, just in case you need to extend the range of your home’s WiFi to stretch to the far bedrooms where some of the other speakers are located.

For reasons of space I am restricting this review to the smaller speakers that are almost exclusively dedicated to the Music Flow function. But I should note that LG has cleverly allowed the system to be configured so that two of the smaller speakers can operate as surround speakers in a system fronted by one of the soundbars.

The four speakers, in order of ascending price, start with the H3. This has a single 80mm woofer and 25mm tweeter in a near cubical enclosure. Like all the others it supports Bluetooth and dual band WiFi. It also has an Ethernet socket. On top is a touch sensitive ring for adjusting the volume, iPod Classic style, with a touch button in the middle for power and mode.

Next, the H4 includes a rechargeable battery, good for four hours. It is a compact bar with two 38mm drivers for left and right, with bass supported by two 38mm by 85mm passive radiators, one at the front and one at the rear. It lacks the Ethernet socket and its controls are physical push-buttons.

The H5 and H7 are similar. They stand as upright near-panels and each packs a pair of 25mm tweeters and a pair of bass drivers; 80mm for the H5 and 100mm for the H7. Each has a large bass reflex port on the rear. Each also has a similar layout of controls on the top to the H3, except that they are mechanical rather than touch. The volume ring rotates like that on an early iPod.

You will need a phone or tablet (iOS or Android) to go with the system to run LG’s Music Flow software by which these speakers are controlled. They operate largely in DLNA mode for local network music, but also support Googlecast on the apps that provide it. Up to 14 speakers are supported in one system, says LG, and they can be grouped into any number of combinations, with different music streaming to different groups or individual speakers. In addition, any group of two speakers can have one assigned as left and the other as right speakers in a stereo pair. This is particularly useful for the H3 speakers, which otherwise deliver stereo mixed down to mono.

The Music Flow system uses something that LG calls ‘Stable Network’, which relies on Mesh networking techniques to allow each device to pass on music to the other devices, increasing reliability.

Setting Up

The H4, H5 and H7 (but not H3) can be played simply by plugging in an analogue device, which is always useful if a friend wants to easily play a track from his or her device, or if you have an iPod Classic, or if all else fails.

All the speakers support Bluetooth – the SBC codec only, not aptX or AAC – and the H3, H5 and H7 (but not H4) support easy pairing by tapping on the marked spot, so long as your phone or tablet supports Near Field Communication. Operation in Bluetooth mode was not markedly different from with any Bluetooth speaker.

It is with networking that the power of the system is realised. Now I think I’ve got this right. The instructions really weren’t very clear, and a touch off-putting in their occasionally non-standard use of language. For example, I came very close to giving up trying to check out the stereo left/right mode for using two speakers. The instruction manual had only this to say about the matter: ‘Set your speakers to stereo sound with Music Flow Player Apps to enjoy movies and your favourite tracks.’ Ummm, where in the App? (Answer, found by lots of experimenting: select the group containing the two speakers; start a song playing, touch the song title at bottom of screen to make it full screen, touch the speaker icon at bottom left, touch the icons next to the two speakers repeatedly until one says L and the other R. That’s also where you’ll find the rather inconveniently located volume control.)

Anyway, I made the mistake of starting with a WiFi connection on the first speaker, only belatedly realising that at least one speaker (or the LG bridge if you’re using that) must be wired in via Ethernet if you want to be able to group the speakers.

So that involved running a wizard in the Music Flow app, at a certain point exiting it change the device’s wireless settings to use the access point offered up by the speaker, returning to the app and selecting ‘Next’. The app then found the speaker, connected to it, reconnected the device to the WiFi network and provided a screen for entering the network’s password for the access point. You can’t choose which access point it offers up if you have multiple available (as I do). To force the use of a particular one it would be necessary to make sure that the iPad is disconnected from all other APs within range.

So wire in the first one – the wizard worked swiftly to identify it – and then the wireless connections, all performed via the wizard, run much more quickly with the press of a button and no need to enter passwords.

Sources

For network music you have basically three options: DNLA-style streaming, streaming of various online sources, and Google Cast.

Initially I couldn’t get the Music Flow app to do any DLNA streaming, except for the songs physically located on the tablet I was using. The ‘Music library’ was quite devoid of songs. All my thousands of DLNA-served songs were missing from the LG app. I could send them to the speakers using other apps, but could not make use of the nifty grouping features. Eventually I stumbled across the solution while looking for something completely different. It turns out that you have to go into Settings, then Library, then Sync to choose the DLNA servers you want available. This kind of thing should be offered automatically.

The app also turned out to be fairly slow in loading the lists of artists, albums and so on, and it would only load partial lists until I scrolled to the end, then it would load the next chunk. Going through Artists I got to B, then C, then E then G and then I gave up. Nor were there short cuts to jump to the bottom or part way through long lists. The most efficient way to play music use was to use the Search feature. Enter an artist name and then after two to perhaps ten seconds I could select from the offered songs, albums, artists and so on. It is likely quicker for Libraries with fewer than the thirty-odd thousand songs in mine.

There were six streaming services on offer. Two were accessible from within the app: TuneIn and Deezer. Four rely on Google Cast with the app linking to them: Pandora, Google Play Music, TuneIn and NPR One (that’s US public radio). And Spotify (Premium only) works by launching its app from which you can use the Spotify Connect button to select the speakers.

I couldn’t get Spotify to work with grouped speakers so it was one at a time for them. I switched off the portable device once I’d got a Spotify stream going to make sure that it really was using the Spotify Connect system (ie. the speakers streaming directly from Spotify, rather than from the portable device), and the music kept on going.

When it came to Google Cast I had a few difficulties. Google Cast is Google’s own wireless streaming format, first developed for use with the Chromecast HDMI dongle. Note: it is not like Apple’s AirPlay. It won’t intercept all the audio on your Android device and send it on the speakers (or dongle). It has to be built into the app. I tried four. On the Google Music Play app, the speakers were listed for playback but when I selected them a message said something about not being able to ‘play a side-loaded song remotely’. Apparently you have to upload your music to the cloud to use this, which I refuse to do because it seems a ridiculous waste of bandwidth. Likewise BubbleUPnP is supposed to support Google Cast. This saw the speakers, but refused to send them the music because Google Cast requires its own weird format. The Android Youtube app is supposedly Google Cast enabled, but I couldn’t find the Cast button on it, so it seems it did not see the speakers.

I was just about to give up, but decided to have one last go with Pandora. This had the button, identified the speakers, and actually sent music to them. It took about fifteen seconds to connect the first time, and then about nine seconds afterwards. This worked both on Android and iOS.

Why bother? Why not just send the music via Bluetooth? Because if you establish a group of speakers in the Music Flow app then your Pandora stream can be sent to the whole group.

Sound

For DLNA streaming the system supports MP3, WMA, AAC (including iTunes style), OGG, FLAC, and WAV. All the way up to 192kHz, 24 bits. I tested that with my FLAC streaming, and indeed it worked even wirelessly on all the speakers. So source quality isn’t a problem.

The only thing that I didn’t like about performance was that tracks didn’t play back gaplessly. Instead there was a brief pause between run-on tracks.

Each of the four speakers sounded quite a bit bigger than they actually were. Even the H4, running from its battery, gave a respectable representation of music at reasonable volume levels. The H7 and H5 were capable of fairly dominating levels, while retaining reasonably composure. Audiophile performance no, but useful and tuneful, yes, with a decent grind in the upper bass and a good delivery of drums to induce some swinging in sympathy with the music.

The H4 did an impressive job in view of its size and portability. Again, the bass it produced was unexpected given its size.

I think I liked the H3 the most though. Although only mono (hey, why not get them two and link them as stereo) it produced an outsized, dynamic sound.

Conclusion

But have a listen for yourself. Most of the major chains carry these speakers. Take your music player and a 3.5mm to 3.5mm audio cable and make sure you like them. If the sound suits you, and you’re prepared to spend an hour or so trial-and-erroring on the app, you may have found just the Multiroom system for you.

(Disclosure: after attending the product launch earlier this year, LG gifted an H4 to each attendee including this writer.)