REMOTE CONTROL
Starting the Dijit App reveals a splash screen and a region select. Pressing on the Europe button, you are asked if you want to add a remote for a TV, cable or satellite or AV receiver. Bypassing these automated screens takes you to the Adding A Device screen which lists different technology genres: TV, Cable, Video Accessory (such as a Media Player), VCR, Satellite, DVD, Receiver, Home Automation (from B&O remotes to Lutron lights to automated curtain rails from Silent Gliss) and, finally, the hi-fi genres listed as ‘CDs’ or ‘Amplifiers’.
    On offer, within the hi-fi section, is a pretty expansive support list. For example, within the amp section you will find Acoustic Energy, Akai, Arcam, Audiolab, Bel Canto, Bryston, Chord, Creative and Cyrus. And that’s just your ABCs! The list isn’t comprehensive, however, but that was always going to be a problem. Looking at my reference system, for example, there was no Densen or Aesthetix.
    The list of equipment is, nevertheless, long and takes a fair while to scroll through. If you wish to immediately find the hardware you are searching for there is an alternative. Above the scrollable list is a Search bar. Pressing on this bar brings up an on-screen keyboard. Typing in ‘Rega’, for example, filtered out the list during typing. Hence, hitting the ‘R’ key restricted the list to those names beginning with the letter ‘R’ and then ‘Re’ and so on.
    Within the amplifier genre, pressing on the Rega name takes you to a new screen that declares that the App had found a remote for a Rega amplifier. Pressing ‘Continue’ then takes you to the business end of this App, the actual remote control screen. This is where you should (hopefully) be able to control your equipment. Each screen will look different depending on the piece of hardware and some screens will be populated with more or less controls. There seems to be no particular rhyme or reason behind this and there doesn’t seem to be any relation to the number of options present on your chosen hardware. The amount of controls the Dijit can handle depends on the current ability of the App.
    In this case, to control my Rega Brio-R, I was faced with just four controls. An on screen, animated, rotary volume knob, two inputs plus a mute button. Before I went any further, my first task was to test each with a live Brio-R. The results? The mute button worked perfectly, as did the volume control. The other buttons, labelled Input 1 and Input 2 were a little eccentric. There are five inputs on the Brio-R and pressing Input 1 on the App triggered Input 2 on the Brio-R while pressing Input 2 on the App triggered Input 3 on the Brio-R.
    All was not lost, however. There is a Setting option within Dijit which allows you to edit the controls. A pop-up ribbon revealed more buttons that could be dragged to the remote control screen or immediately removed by pressing on the ‘x’ icon attached to each icon. Rather oddly, the buttons available included an Input 4, 8 and 10 plus an alternative rocker-type volume control. Dragging the rocker volume control worked well. In fact, it was even better than the rotary option while the Input 4 was a dud, Input 8 triggered Input 4 on the Brio-R while Input 10 on the App triggered Input 1. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a method of renaming input buttons to tally with the Brio-R.
    You are free to arrange the control buttons in any order on the screen and are provided with subtle yet effective snap-to lines that appear when you are moving each icon. You can even move separate icons to different screens which can be swiped to the left using gesture movements. Hence, my Rega control screen could be swiped to reveal two further, fillable, blank screens.
    So why the comparative mess of icons and their functions? Mainly because Dijit doesn’t differentiate between individual brand models. It generalises on the type of control codes used by a company as a whole, such as the Philips RC-5 code used by most European manufacturers.
    To prove the point, I changed the new Rega Brio-R amp to my ancient Rega Mira and the same remote control codes still worked. The Input commands were just as confused as those on the Brio-R, the volume control worked properly, as did the mute but the previously dud Input 4 on the Brio-R did a nice job of triggering the Tape Monitor on my Mira.
    My next test was with a Cambridge CD player, the Azur 650C and a Cambridge amp, the Azur 651A. Selecting the amp brought six different remote controls to try. You are encouraged to try each to see which one works best for you and your equipment. I selected Remote 1 and then dragged new inputs onto the screen during the editing phase, to control five of the six inputs, mute and volume. There was a custom activity option available to add new commands but this section was a little temperamental. I thought that I had arranged power on/off commands using the available icons but it failed to work.
    Not all remote screens are as wacky, however. The Cambridge CD player was almost a model of efficiency as the power button, eject, play, stop, pause, track skip forward/backward, random play and repeat buttons were all available and usable without problem. The fast forward and fast track reverse didn’t want to know, though.