After a long development and beta phase, Linn is now adding the new Kazoo to the well-known Kinsky app, initially on the iPad, Mac and Windows PC and later on iPhone and Android devices. Kazoo promises a fancier design, more convenience when choosing music and should completely replace Kinsky in the long term. Can the app meet these requirements? As a pioneer of digital music transmission, Linn has long relied on convenient control of the networked music system via an app. Most users of a Linn DS or DSM system will therefore be familiar with the Kinsky app. Admittedly, the graphic design of the Kinsky interface does in fact seem a bit outdated, and the functions are no longer up-to-date either. So an update was long overdue, but did it have to be a completely new app? And how well is the switch from Kinsky to Kazoo going? We took a closer look at this in a self-experiment.
The new app looks really damn good! As you would expect from Linn, the design is very clean and anything but overloaded. A first orientation is therefore very easy, and one of the most important changes immediately catches the eye, especially on a Retina iPad: the consistent display of all sections with relatively well-resolved cover images. Even a special view for classical music, sorted by composer, has been thought of. Which brings us to the first restriction, because it only works really elegantly if the music collection is managed by the appropriate Kazoo server. 
Another new convenience function of the Kazoo app, which is only available in conjunction with the Kazoo server, is a quick and easy search. Even while typing the term in the search field, the first results are displayed, quickly and reliably even in a moderately fast network. How nice it would be if this also worked with other servers or, best of all, all sources found in the network ... 
The second area that has seen great improvements over Kinsky is multiroom management. With just a few clicks or 'taps' it is now possible to control, group and manage different listening zones. Grouped zones play the same music synchronously and the volume can be controlled centrally. Keyword volume control: This is indeed ingenious. Via the volume symbol in the top right corner of the screen, you can call up an extra window in which you can control both the volume of the currently selected group as a whole and the volume of the individual zones in the group. In just a few moments, you can do what made some finger acrobatics and switching between different views necessary in the Kinsky app. 
With this, however, the list of innovations is already fully enumerated and recognized. What is still missing is the display of extended album information (extended in the sense of going beyond title and artist), not to mention the possibility of editing this information. On the contrary, compared to Kinsky, some functions have even been removed. You can add tracks to the current playlist, but you can no longer reorder them. In addition, the app's interface has really been redesigned from scratch. If you are used to dealing with Kinsky, you will be frustrated with the transition for a few days before you feel just as at home in Kazoo. 
In addition, as explained, you actually have to switch to the Kazoo server in order to be able to use the Kazoo app in full. Such a change will always involve a certain amount of effort, but the real disadvantage is another: Linn currently only offers Kazoo Server for Windows and Mac OSX, an 'embedded' variant that can run on an energy-saving NAS exists Not. So an at least rudimentary computer has to be running all the time in order to be able to use the Linn software to its full extent. If your own music collection is on your computer anyway, that's no problem, of course, but otherwise there have long been more elegant solutions.
Our conclusion is actually completely divided into two parts: If you already have a Linn DS or DSM system, are used to control via the Kinsky app and do not miss anything, switching to Kazoo is currently not recommended. That may change quickly, because Linn will certainly continue to develop the app quickly and add missing functions. But until then, the change is not worth it, especially since users of an iPhone or Android device do not have this choice anyway. If you are just entering the world of digital Linn systems, things will look different. Kazoo is basically a successful, stable app and certainly the future, so in our opinion you should control your system with it from the start. And if you don't mind that a computer has to be running to listen to music (after all, there are now fully-fledged mini-PCs that hardly consume more power than a NAS), the use of the Kazoo server is absolutely recommended, as the combination of the Linn system , Kazoo Server and Kazoo App on the iPad work very easily and conveniently and, above all, require practically no setup effort.