OSD Nero Max12: 6-Zone, 6-Source Amplifier 80W Power, Multi-Room Audio Control, App Integration for iOS & Android, Expand up to 18 Zones, Control4 Driver Support

I purchased the OSD MX1680 as a multi-zone music distribution amplifier for my home to replace an ELAN 1650 digital amplifier that died last week. I currently have speakers installed in 7 rooms and one set of speakers on our backyard patio for a total of 8 zones. I use Google Chromecast audio devices as audio inputs to allow apps such as Spotify to cast music selectively across the 8 zones. While I have only had the MX1680 installed and working for the past week, so far I am very impressed with the quality, the features and the ease of configuration/use. Shipping was prompt and the OSD MX1680 arrived in great shape two days after placing my order. Packaging was excellent with the manufacuturer box securely fit inside the shipping container (i.e. double boxed) . The MX1680 is much smaller and lighter, delivers more power and has many features that make it superior to the ELAN 1650. Each zone of the MX1680 has as slide switch that allows easy selection of line input, BUS1 or BUS2 inputs. I connect the Chromecast audio units to the two BUS inputs and set the slide switches to direct a common audio signal to specific groups of speakers so that the same music track plays in multiple rooms. This is very easy to configure and change if I wish to group the speakers differently. The sound quality is excellent with plenty of power (50W or 80W/channel into 8 ohm and 4 ohm speakers, respectively). I also really like the audio sense feature that activates channels when the input signal is present and turns off the channel after a few minutes when the no input signal is present. This should prolong the life of the unit and minimize heat generation when not in use. While I only had the unit for about a week, so far I am very impressed with the quality, features and performance of the MX1680 and would recommend the unit to others looking for an multi-zone music distribution amplifier. One item to remember, the channel volume controls on the back of the unit are all set to zero by default, so remember to turn up the volume settings as you install the speaker wires. Hope this is helpful....enjoy!

I purchased this amp for a "zone 2" application - 6 separate patio and pool speakers. The flexibility of the configuration of the amp is superb. You could power up to six separate stereo outputs (12 speakers) or as in my case, bridge each channel and power six speakers with a high power output to each speaker. Keep in mind that in bridged mode, the speakers must be 8 ohms or more. The input flexibility is also superb. There are two separate bus inputs, as well as individual inputs for each of the six stereo channels. Each channel is individually selectable; bus A, bus B or dedicated line in for that channel. Additionally, each channel has its own gain control, so individual channel volume can be adjusted, allowing for a perfect balance of volume to each stereo pair. In my case, there are six speakers total, three stereo pair. I have fed the Left zone 2 preamp output from my receiver (Yamaha RX-A1080) into Bus A and the Right zone 2 preamp output into Bus B. I then assigned the six bridged channels to Bus A and Bus B alternating; Channel 1 to Bus A, Channel 2 to Bus B, etc. and used those to power the left and right speakers respectively. This arrangement gave me three stereo pair to different areas of my patio/pool, with each output individually adjustable. The sound quality is crisp and clear. I'm sure this amp is good enough to pair well with audiophile grade speakers, as well as high quality ceiling mount and outdoor enclosures as in my application. It's not a massive powerhouse, but for my application, the power is more than sufficient. The only complaint I have is that the auto-on feature requires a significantly high input level to fire. I sometimes have to turn the zone 2 volume on my receiver up to about -20db to get the amp to turn on, and then adjust the zone 2 volume back down to my desired listening level. However, this is better than the sensitivity being too low, and having the amp turn on when it's not supposed to. The auto-off feature works perfectly...the amp goes into standby after a few minutes of no input. Build quality is also impressive...it has some heft to it for sure. Overall I'm very pleased with this amplifier and highly recommend it for similar multi-zone applications.

The unit itself works perfectly for my whole home music sound with 18 speakers, whole home paging, whole home door bell, and whole home drive way alarm. The directions were not that good for where i needed it to be. My whole home paging, whole home door bell, and whole home drive way alarm are all triggered by 12vdc and the direction dont state that the page trigger is that. It could have been simply contact closure as my last unit was. I had to literally guess and if i guess wrong may have fried the unit. Also, the documentation did tell you that its mutes all other sources while trigger is occuring. This was disired functionality so i was relieved when my testing proved out. Lastly, the app on iPhone is simply terrible - dont even try it -- but works perfectly fine on Andriod. Lucky for my i had an old Android tablet i was able to use. The install for the app on android has to be side loaded to install which caused a few additional steps to install. Hopefully they fix the app behavior on iphone. In terms of the wall controllers, they work as expected with provided remote control. The remote is cheap AF so i quickly programmed my universal logitech remote so it works for me now instead. I kept the original in its box for safe keeping. Bottom line i recommend the buy.

Mine didn’t come with a remote. The app is primitive and won’t allow adjustments needed to make usable. Spent a lot of time getting everything set up for a pool party that turned out to be a poop party with no awesome music! Constructing a user friendly app can make all the difference. The app was not functional at the time of this review, wasted a lot of time researching solutions with no results Try any other product!

I've been pretty happy with this amp. I'm using it to control several outdoor speakers around my yard and pool area. Some tips for those of you that say the app doesn't work: - You're probably using a VPN, and the device can't be discovered when connected to a VPN even if you allow your VPN client to access local network resources. The app's logic seems to take your current IP address, which if connected to a VPN would be a non-routable IP address on your local network, and then attempt to scan for the device. So turn off your VPN, then scan for your Nero Max 12. Once you've discovered the IP Address, you can manually set it in the app settings and you can then re-connect to your VPN. This caught me up when I first got the Nero Max 12, but has never been a problem since I discovered the solution. In addition I was able to find a way to hook this into my Home Assistant setup and truly tie it in with the rest of my smart home. To do this, you can use the Home Assistant "Monoprice 6-zone amplifier" integration, and enter "socket://<nero IP address here>:8080" during the integration setup. This is a completely undocumented feature that took me some tinkering to come across. The only thing you cannot control with Home Assistant is the mixer, which is fine because it's not something that you always want to tinker with. So just use the phone app for the mixer configuration when you setup your speakers and use home assistant to control the zone power and volume for each zone channel. Another pro tip for people looking for a way to stream music across your multi-zone audio system. It's as simple as buying a device that can stream and connecting it to one of the Nero's source inputs. For me, I purchased the Audio Pro Link 2 (available on Amazon) and connected it to my Nero using the optical input source. This works flawlessly for me and have been very happy. You can also hook the Link 2 up to Google Assistant and then add it to one of your speaker groups if desired. Spotify sees it and streams to it perfectly and then it's just a matter of turning on the zone(s) I want to hear my music over outside. One other thing to note that is not documented anywhere in the manual that I came across when tinkering. There is a network configuration page where you can setup a static IP address for the device if desired. This seems to be for the rs232 controller that's baked into the amp. Simply goto http://<IP Address of Nero>, and the user & pass is 'admin'. I have no need for any of the advanced configuration there since I setup a DHCP reservation for the device on my home network so I have a consistent IP address for the device, but wanted to share the findings. One more thing to mention is that for me at least, there is no wifi antenna as depicted in the product images, just an ethernet port. That was not a big deal for me, because my Nero is racked in my home network rack and I directly connect the device to my network switch over ethernet. I didn't attempt to see if it has any wifi capabilities, but as mentioned in the previous paragraph, it appears you could potential setup a wifi connection using the advanced configuration page (I found this documented in the MAX12 connection and quick guide PDF). Finally, if you really want to geek out, you can connect to the device over telnet and send commands over command line. I did find all the commands documented in a manual (MAX12 connection and Quick Guide). Just run 'telnet <your nero IP address> 8080', and then you can start running direct RS-232 commands, which you can read about in the aforementioned manual. This could maybe be useful when building a custom automation via a script or some sort of a custom integration, and is basically how the Home Assistant integration works.

I read all the reviews on how hard this would be to set up and use the App. Setup was pretty straight forward. The product is ethernet wired only. There is no Wifi, so you will need to have it wired direct to your router. Don't get confused with Groups and Zones. The zones are the 6 zones that you have wired to the amp. The groups are only if you are running more than one ODS Nero Max 12. You will need to go into the App and into the connect / Info upon setup. Mine was able to find the Nero under Group 1 when I selected Auto Device IP. You will need to initially set the zone volume levels, treble and bass settings for each zone. You can do this when you name the zones. All zones sound pretty good. In each zone setting you can set the default source that you want to run on. I put all zones on source 6 and ran it off of a google chromecast connected to a HDMI extractor feeding an optical output. I connected the chromecast to my google home. Spotify sees it when connect. I can use my Google home to turn on and off the music. You will need to app to turn zones on and off. The system rocks with all zones playing.

Works great with sufficient power via a denon x3800h receiver. Powering 5 outdoor polk 6 and 8 speakers. It runs cool and id proving to be reliable. Would strongly recommend.

The small green Pluggable Terminal Blocks Sockets are not included

I've had this product under 2 years now, at first everything was working as expected. but since 2 months the fan has started making lots of noise, I tried cleaning it, moving it but noise still persist.

I got one of this item. its perfect. Unfortunately doesn't fit inside my shelf and I have to return it. But cost of return is really big money. Thank You

Works well so far

screwed by them and Amazon... zone started to went out then it actually flamed and fumed... great buy it you want to loose $600 bucks. plus the crazy thing is that for that purchase, Amazon will not replace or refund after 30 days... which absolutely doesn't make sense.