Philips WAC7500/05 Wireless Music Center 80GB

I purchased the WAC7500 (the 80GB center unit) and the WAS7500 (The station). First of all I did a bit of digging on the unit and checked on philips site for any information. First thing I did was install the latest firmware which is 1.30 and also install the latest Gracenote database etc.

Once thing I will mention is that the center unit automatically picked up the Firmware once I entered my router details and the installation seemed fine; I mean there was a point where it just sat there stating it was working and then the system rebooted. I then updated the gracenote DB on the center this seemed to be similar issue, the webpage said it was updating, but the main unit just sat there, only after awhile the system mentioned it was doing something, although it did not mention it was updating the gracenote db. It came back to the HD icon after completion.

So, far so good. The next step I restarted and the center and station would not connect or find each other. So, I checked Philips and it said to restore factory settings. Which I did, anyway after which point they found each other, but hold on..., the two units i.e. the center and station just sat there stating that center found and 1 station found. Anyway, I waited as it seemed to me that they were doing something. Also, in the documentation it mentioned that the center unit would stream the Firmware update and gracenote db to the station. Anyway, I left this running for 30min (yes, that is right a good 30 minutes). At this point the station restarted a few times and then it mentioned that the firmware is being upgraded, the station actually shows the percentage completion(which is good), the center unit didn't(well, not that I noticed it did)

After this point I set everything up, copied a few songs and tested it all out, this included the internet radio etc. It all worked as it should. Shutdown the whole lot and unplugged etc, left it idle for 2 hrs and put it all back on again, the 2 units found each other, connection to the internet all normal, only thing it doesn't keep is the time, but that is minor.

It all works as it should and the internet station access is very good, only had to put my details in once and it remembers everything. The wireless connection strength looks very good for both units and I don't notice any drop-outs etc.

Bottomline, it's a very good system. It looks wonderful and sleek, people mention what it is and are intrigued when I show it to them.

I do feel that maybe it could possibly a bit technical for older folks. But, in my view it was a straight forward set-up. During the station setup and firmware and gracenote DB installation it seemed to be doing things but very slowly, but it did work. Maybe, if people are impatient then a reboot could have possibly caused more problems. As with any firmware installation can cause the system to hang or not respond correctly.

Anyway, I'm happy and it does what I'm looking for and looks the business.

It does need time to get used to, but after that it does exactly what it's meant to. Ohh, also I can stream music from windows media player etc. So, thoroughly recommend it.

It was the thought of having wireless sound and the opportunity to copy my CD collection to a hard drive that drew me to this system. It's a nice looking piece of kit, however, that's where the positives end! Having followed the instructions to the letter, everything was working beautifully. I'd made contact with the additional station I'd purchased for the bedroom, the main unit was talking to my modem in the next room, I transferred the odd song from my pc in the same room, internet radio was working fine. I was very happy...for a short while! The following day, I switched the system on and - the main unit couldn't make contact with the station in the bedroom, the main unit wasn't talking to the modem in the next room and internet radio wasn't working fine! I switched off, waited, tried again, nothing, switched off, waited - contact made - for half an hour, then no contact, then contact, then nothing. This was the rigmarole for most of the evening and, considering I live in an apartment and the lounge and bedroom are literally next door to each other, my frustration around the unreliable wireless set up grew and grew. FOUR HOURS LATER, having gone back to the drawing board, reset everything back to factory settings, I gave up, packed the whole sorry lot back in their boxes and the following day they were en route back to Amazon.

I have got to say first off when I first got this piece of kit I was over the moon for I was hunting
for something I could use to consolidate my vast collection of CD's, tapes and MP3's into a coherant
modern system, and I could at last retire my collection of seperates.

I bought the WAC 7000 base and 2 stations and after a day I had it all wirelessly networked into my victorian townhouse, not an easy task since some walls are 4 feet thick. After various positioning attempts, I had all 3 boxes configured and available in my home LAN setup.

Next, load the CD's. The problems began. Some older and even new CD's would not read on the base station, so I resorted to ripping to my PC, then wirelessly transfer to the base station. A slow and laborious task. Next, renaming the tracks that were not quite correct. I soon learned the easiest way was to do all this renaming was using a 3rd party piece of software as the supplied Music Centre Suite didnt actually make any changes to albums and tracks in the library. I eventually de-installed all the supplied Phillips software from my PC and now rely entirely on this 3rd party (freeware) software.

After months of loading music via my PC, cataloging, putting into genres, playlists etc, I had over 600 albums all neatly accessableon my WAC setup. The hi-fi was consigned to the attic. The system worked for about a month then mysteriously, the stations would fail to connect to the base station on a regular basis. I found I had to go through the network setup and Scan for Stations functions almost every time I turned any of the things on, which was not that often as I spend a lot of time away from home. I estimate the total usage of the system was around 50 - 60 hours. Eventually, only the base station itself would work OK so I resigned myself to using this and leaving the stations as they were. At over a hundred quid a pop, seemed a great shame and I felt a bit peeved.

The real problem came when I attempted to upgrade the Operating System. The WAC base station, after accepting and installing the new version of software wanted to reboot itself. It got hung, went into the restart loop and never exited this mode for 3 days. After a few calls to Phillips helpdesk, I was advised to return it to the service centre for checking. Result? the hard disk was corrupted and needed replacing and if I had no backup of the tracks, I would have to input everything again. Total cost : 75.00 postage and collection and 120.00 for a new hard drive. The base station was out of warranty (typical) and I felt really let down as I am a big fan of Phillips kit and was even more miffed as I had hardly used the thing. Right now, the refurbished WAC base station is boxed up at home as I have no time right now to go throught the whole loading process again. My Library Backup? I had the whole library backed up onto an HP laptop that died for no reason in March 2010 losing not just my library but 2 months work. It was in for repair when the WAC blew up as well. But thats another story and I am now a convinced Apple fan.

Editing WAC track names. Using the supplied remote is only to be recommended if you feel the need to feel humbled. Almost impossible to work out how to do it. HINT. use a 3rd party software suite catering for the WAC to rename and recategorise everything before transfer to the WAC. And backup!.

TOP HINT. Use the base station remote to enter your network LAN code when you first scan for and add stations. The station remotes are fiddly to use and the base station remote has an LED screen, useful for seeing what the full code is before sending to the station.

Good points. It has a few. The functions "Music Follows Me" and "Broadcast" are really brilliant. The sound quality is really there. It just looks brilliant. No problems with the USB input. UPnP (Universal plug n Play) function will play tracks held on any wireless device on your network.

Since my repaired Base station is still boxed up and the stations failed to connect anyhow, I use the radio function on each station. Problem here is getting each unit to remember the radio stations you have scanned for!.

Overall I give the concept 10/10 but only 5/10 for the Phillips WAC 7000/7500 setup.