LG Music Flow Review

Multi-room audio made simple

by hodg100
Hi-Fi Review

8

Recommended
LG Music Flow Review
MSRP: £499.00

What is Music Flow?

Now that is a very good question! Rather than Music Flow being a single product, it’s the collective name for a group of speakers and a system hub, allowing for a (hopefully simple) multi-room audio system to be set up in your home. We should say it quietly, but it’s rather like Sonos and the various Samsung systems. Specifically, we have the H7 and H5 which are two channel wireless speakers and there’s the one channel, and correspondingly more compact, H3. Then there is the soundbar element to Music Flow, in the form of the HS6, which is a wireless speaker bar and subwoofer package. Finally, and knitting the multi-room functionalities together, there is the R1 wireless multi-room bridge.

It should be stressed that you can buy each of the components separately, meaning you can build a system up over time. At full suggested retail prices (November 2014), the H7 is £349, the H5 costs £249, the H3 will set you back £149, while the HS6 soundbar system comes in at around £499.99. The R1 hub is then a further £49 on top. Naturally, there are plenty of package deals available but we would say that if you are going to mix and match, it makes sense to have at least two matching wireless speakers amongst them. There is a ‘surround sound’ feature (more on that later), used in conjunction with the soundbar that adds another dimension, so it would be best if the rears were identical.

Design and Connections

There’s a generally chracoal and silver theme running through the Music Flow range, with the H5 and H7 bearing the closest physical resemblance. Obviously, the H7 is the larger of the two but both pack in a pair of mid-range drivers and tweeters, arranged in a gently angled bipole design, which should help broaden the soundfield, as opposed to flatter designs. The H3, on the other hand, is a mono speaker and, given its small footprint, would probably make the ideal choice for the rear surrounds in the soundbar surround setup. As it happens, we were given one each of the products to test, which we’ll be honest in saying we weren’t necessarily expecting but at least it gave us opportunity to fully test the system!
Mix and match
LG Music Flow HS6
Each element of the system clearly has to have the ability to communicate over a WiFi network but they all have a LAN port, too, for a wired connection for when wireless reception is weak. All the speakers will perform more of an ad hoc connection using Bluetooth and there are NFC (Near Field Communication) tags on each, to initiate instant Bluetooth pairing. All bar the H3 have a 3.5mm stereo input for when wire-free isn’t an option but where it does have the edge is in the fact its power supply is built-in, where the others come with ‘power bricks’ that will require hiding for that true ‘lifestyle’ system look.

LG Music Flow HS6
Naturally, the HS6 Soundbar sports more connectivity options than the rest of the speakers. So, you get a HDMI input and output to take advantage of your TVs HDMI ARC capability, and there’s also a toslink digital audio input. The soundbar and subwoofer combo resembles very closely LGs NB5540 package, although the sup with the HS6 is slightly smaller.

Music Flow Setup

The key thing to getting the system running, in a multiroom system sense, is to get the R1 hub onto your home network. The R1 comes with an Ethernet cable which you slot into an available port of your router, but don’t worry if you don’t have one spare as the hub has a LAN pass-through capability, so you can just plug in anything you’ve had to disconnect from your router to it.

The hub should then automatically make itself part of your home network and its indicator light will shine white when it has done so. You then have the option of adding speakers, either wirelessly or using wires. The Music Flow app (downloadable from the Apple App Store and Google Play) is then central to the setup. You simply tell it which route you’re going down and it will guide you through the process.

In practice, if you go wired, you should just automatically see the various speakers through the app available to be added to the system. Using the wireless method necessitates your having to press the ‘Add’ button on the back of the speaker (on the top in the case of the soundbar), at which point the LED should then flash red to signify it’s ready to join the party. You then hit the add button within the app, at which point the LED should glow white and when the system is in full streaming action, all participants will display a green LED. It’s all fairly intuitive stuff, really.
LG Music Flow HS6
LG Music Flow HS6

We actually experienced a number of difficulties in the initial setup process but that was probably down to the fact the system had been elsewhere beforehand and not fully reset. The best advice if you experience difficulties, as ever, is to hard reboot everything in the chain, including your router and the hub. Once we had got over the teething difficulties, the system remained robust and steadfast.

Should you ever wish to extend the wireless range of your system, it’s a simply a case of adding another R1 in a strategic location and using it as a bridge. That’s all done through the app, of course, in a similar fashion to the way speakers are added. It is possible to have a mixture of wired and wireless connections, so the likes of powerline adapters might be a good choice, and when you’re streaming to a series of chained speakers (see App info underneath), it’s advisable to choose a wired speaker as the primary.
Spotify Connect is a winner!

Music Flow App

You will already have got the idea that the Music Flow app is absolutely crucial to the system and, for the most part, it’s quite a slick affair. The Home page is quite Spotify-ed and has a top panel dedicated to ‘mood’ playlists. Whilst under that are tiles for your favorites[sic], playlists and your most played content. Swiping upwards from there will bring up a screen displaying cover art for whatever is currently playing, as well as transport buttons and a volume control, which acts either overall, or by individual speaker adjustments.

There’s a search button to the top of the Homepage, which will scan your entire music library, although this is restricted to locally stored content at the moment. There will be Windows and Mac integration down the line, which will be a welcome addition for us, since we don’t store much on our phones or tablets. Fortunately there’s also integration with streaming services from Spotify (including Connect), Napster, TuneIn and Deezer, too, but obviously you’ll need to hold accounts with them. In the case of Spotify, that will need to be a Premium account.
LG Music Flow HS6
LG Music Flow HS6

Pressing the Menu icon (three horizontal lines), from any screen, will bring up all content and setup options. We’ve already talked you through adding speakers to the system but not how to control them, once they are. To do that, you use the ‘Connected Speakers’ menu which will bring up a list of all those on the network. Tapping on them individually lets you choose from renaming the speaker, changing its input source or chaining it together in a multi-speaker setup.

By using the volume control you can also alter the speaker’s output characteristics. In the case of the H5 and H7, they can be set to output Stereo or be either the left or right speaker, in a multi-channel setup. The H3 can either be used standalone, in Mono, or be a left or right in stereo configuration. We’ve not even touched on the Surround setup, involving the soundbar yet but more on that later.

We’ll have to admit that it took us a little time to acclimatise to using the app but once you get the idea it really just operates on an upper and lower tier, where the upper is used to access all the settings and the lower is entirely playback-centric; so it soon becomes second nature.

Music Flow Sound Quality

I’ll admit to having been a little bit uninspired by some of the audio products LG has previously sent for review but this system is another kettle of fish. LG’s audio engineers have clearly been hard at it and the results are a set of speakers which present rich, detailed and lively sound. Provided you leave the Sound Effects button in the app alone, there’s none of the shrillness or ear-fatiguing, almost imperceptible white noise we’ve sometimes noted and I ended up far more impressed than we expected.

Using two (or more) differently sized speakers in a multi-configuration, the app will automatically compensate for the lower output of the smaller speaker(s), which presents a very believable sound. However it would be better if, in practise, one of the speakers wouldn’t drop down to inaudible levels, requiring intervention either on the volume dial on the speaker itself, as we found they quite often did during testing.
We’ll feed that back to LG and hopefully they can sort it out, as it was jarring when it happened. We also got quite a lot of Bluetooth drop outs streaming to the speakers individually from PC and mobile devices, even when in close proximity, so that’s something we’ll report back too.
LG Music Flow HS6

Minor teething issues aside, the quality of wireless streaming, throughout our averagely sized home, was very impressive. Our primary source was Spotify Connect, via a non-aptX Nexus and an aptX equipped PC dongle, using a new Windows beta of Spotify. There was a noticeable improvement when using the Windows machine, which is testament to the audio capabilities of the H5 and H7s, in particular, with both possessing a surprisingly full and detailed low-end as well as plenty of finesse with higher frequencies and the mid-range.
Matching speakers are advisable as rear surrounds

Music Flow Surround

Since we had full opportunity to test this feature out, we thought we might as well. As we said earlier, this is only available if you have the HS6 soundbar package and a couple of the wireless speakers. We would suggest that you use speakers of the same size to act as rears as, like in our case, you get a bit of a mismatch in terms of sound dispersion and volume, although you can try and fix the latter using the app. Unfortunately, the balance control, present in stereo and chained modes doesn’t appear in surround mode.

For reasons we really can’t explain, the H7 refused to become part of the Surround group, despite reporting its availability in the App. Instead we had to partner the H5 with the little H3, which gave passable performance but it never sounded as well integrated as a more conventional 5.1 package. We would also only advise using the surround feature with content with actual multi-channel sound, as the processing the system puts on stereo sources to produce a surround field isn’t all that great.

We do feel, however, that given the impressive capabilities of the individual speakers and the soundbar package, that had we had matching rears we would have been far more impressed. The subwoofer is quite capable of hitting the real low frequency effects and the soundbar produces spacious and well localised sounds from the front, with dialogue crisp and distinct.

Conclusion

Pros

  • Easy to set up
  • Sound quality is great
  • Nice styling
  • Mobile app is very good
  • Spotify Connect

Cons

  • Some audio level problems
  • Bluetooth dropouts
  • H7 refused to join surround group

LG Music Flow Review

Should I buy Music Flow?


This is a tricky one to answer. If you were asking us - should I go all in and buy a combination of speakers and the hub so you want in on the multi-room audio experience? Then we think Music Flow is a fantastically easy to use system with a truly impressive set of components. Looking at it from the other side, as individual products, then the soundbar package and the H7 might look a little toppy, price-wise. The H5 and H3, on the other hand, seem like good value as standalone Bluetooth speakers and the R1 hub is also pretty inexpensive when you consider all it adds. All in all, though, it’s a big thumbs up from us, to Music Flow as a concept and as a system.

What Else could I buy?


By virtue of being comfortably first to break this market, Sonos holds something of a stranglehold over it. Their longstanding position does also mean their technologies are mature and at least equally as easy to use; so you need to demo them with your ears to make the ultimate decision. Samsung made their entry into the market earlier in 2014, and their system comprises a remarkably – or not – similar set of components. Samsung’s system boasts products including the M7, M5 and M3 wireless speakers which are priced similarly to the LG equivalents. It’s a toss-up in terms of sound quality but we thought the LG’s had generally a more full presentation.

Scores

Build Quality

.
.
8

Connectivity

.
.
8

Ease of Use

.
.
8

Sound Quality

.
.
8

Features

.
9

Value for Money

.
.
8

Verdict

.
.
8
8
AVForumsSCORE
OUT OF
10

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