Polk Audio Omni A1 75W 2-Channel Wireless Amplifier

2019-09-27T20:00:00

I bought two years ago hoping to have a improvement on the app but still the worst investment I ever made.

AP G.

Originally posted at

2017-12-10T19:00:00

I got two of these for use with ceiling speakers. I think the look is fine but I really don't care since I have these on the basement. It's a big house and getting access to them on the far corner of the second floor might not be that great. That is why these should have an Ethernet port but they don't have it. They support a lot of music services and internet radio stations but I cannot send the audio from youtube in neither Android not iOS. Having no support for Airplay is why it cannot possible get more stars. I got them because I bet on Play-Fi to be supported in the future and plan to add these as atmos speakers (ceiling speakers). I think that having the subwoofer output is great but since they are in the basement I cannot really use it. I got a couple if airport express units and use the omni utility to set the input to AUX and stream whatever I want using Airplay. They work fine like that but need to use an additional app via additional hardware... :(

Martineau

Originally posted at

2016-02-07T19:00:00

I have 3 room with in roof speakers, where the wires are terminated in a terrible spot in one of my upstairs rooms. I put the Omni A1 there in hopes to be able to use them. It was easy to set up and as long as I had it on a 5G wireless connection (lot of 2.4 interference in my area) it worked like a charm.

ChimpyChimperson

Originally posted at

2015-12-28T19:00:00

It's drive my Celling MC60 and the sound is very good, but when I use the watch TV I put in Optical Input and I can command the sound with my Polk App.. Need to get up and push the button... It's frustrating.. but for listen music with my DLNA server and Spotify is very good

LagZebu

Originally posted at

2015-09-09T20:00:00

Have a Bar Room and was looking for a way to hookup two Polk Tower speakers I have sitting around, to use as the audio for the bar tv. This was the perfect solution! Its small enough to tuck behind the tv so its not visible, powers my two speakers and plays tv audio through a digital optical connection. The bonus, I can now stream sirius xm to the bar also!

Phil23

Originally posted at

2015-01-10T19:00:00

I purchased two Omni A1’s and an Omni P1 just after the units became available in early December 2014. My experience with these units, and particularly the Polk Omni App and Omni Utility App, has been somewhat frustrating and disappointing. Initial setup was easy - both Omni A1’s and the P1 quickly recognized and connected to my secured wireless network. The Polk Omni App was intuitive enough that I was streaming Internet Radio and Pandora within about 10 minutes of powering everything on. Unfortunately this was the end of the easy part. The Polk Omni App would not connect to my music library on my DLNA-enabled Windows 7 PC. After a full day of failed attempts and App crashes, I e-mailed Polk Technical Support. To Polk’s credit I received a near-immediate and helpful response, recommending that I try either the Plex or XBMC (now Kodi) media servers. I downloaded and installed both Plex and Kodi. I also copied some *.mp3 files to a NAS device running Twonky. The Polk Omni App recognized all three servers – Plex, Kodi, and Twonky. The Polk Omni App does a poor job of organizing and displaying media metadata (e.g. album titles and cover art, artist names, song titles, etc.) complicating the ability to find the music you want to play. When using Twonky the songs appeared and played in alphabetical order rather than track order, which I find to be unacceptable (I tried the *.xml editing fixes recommended on the net – didn’t get them to work, and more hours wasted). Kodi worked the best, but even with Kodi the Omni App’s ability to receive, organize, and display media metadata remained far from satisfactory. The DTS features within the Polk Omni App worked as expected – I was able to set up speaker groups, and independently control volume of the whole speaker group or individual speaker pairs. However in working with the App I found it to be unstable, and experienced a multitude of crashes. I tried the App on both Android and Apple iOS devices, and observed generally the same unstable behavior. I also found the brown-gold-maroon color scheme of the Polk Omni App or Utility App to be visually unattractive, so much so that I have now switched to using the Phorus App. The sound quality produced by the Omni A1’s was fairly good right out of the box, perhaps slightly thin in the mid-range and a bit too crisp in the high frequency range. The Omni A1 is to have custom EQ capability for Polk Speakers, settable using the Omni A1 Utility App (which was not available until after January 5, 2015). The Utility App has extremely limited functionality, and does not provide graphic equalizer-type of capability for fine tuning speaker performance in specific frequency ranges. Instead, the App offers about 10 selections pre-set for different Polk speaker models. This significantly limits the user’s ability to fine tune their audio output specifically for their speakers, room, and ear. The EQ settings cannot be applied while music is playing, making it more difficult to hear the difference between EQ Settings “On” and EQ Settings “Off”. I also experienced stability issues with the Omni Utility App, particularly when attempting to change an EQ setting then switch to the Omni App to see how the change affected sound quality. The Utility App’s user interface is horrible. In the end, I got so frustrated I reverted to “Default” EQ settings and attempted to get optimal sound quality by adjusting the volume and crossover of my subwoofer. Wireless Reliability: I have a newer model Wireless-N router from an industry-leading company, and both Omni A1’s and the P1 are all within 35 feet of the router, all on the first floor of the house. Other wireless devices have streamed over this network very reliably in the past. My Omni components have exhibited several instances of wireless dropout. Sometimes I can’t even make it through an entire album. I have not had enough listening time to fully assess wireless reliability, but I suspect ultimately it may be less than satisfactory. At this point I am seriously considering returning my Omni products. I took a risk as an early adopter of this technology. While the hardware is generally functional, the hardware-software integration and software user interfaces are unstable, unattractive, and provide significantly less reliability and capability than what would be expected from a Polk product. My alternative is to wait and hope for some very major software updates. And Polk, please bring the manufacturing of these (and all) products back to the U.S.A.

JazzDaddy

Originally posted at

2014-07-01T20:00:00

I was looking for a replacement for my busted TV speakers and found good reviews of Polk Audio soundbars. I went to the audio store to audition the SB9500, and I was stunned and blown away by how great the SQ is. Great buy indeed

matty75

Originally posted at