So I got the Link a couple weeks ago and added a couple Echos in other rooms. I thought this was going to be the perfect solution for everything I wanted to do, which was to stream music through my powered speakers in my living room (and the rest of the house), and also run the signal from my TV to my speakers, through the link, using the optical input on the Link.Overall this has been a failure due almost entirely to the glaring omission of a remote control for the Link.I'm sure the Amazon development team is saying, "But you don't need a remote because the Link can be controlled using Alexa!" *Face palm*Let's say I'm listening to music and a song I REALLY like comes on and I want to turn it up. I say, "Alexa, turn up the music." While I'm talking, Alexa turns DOWN the music to listen to me, and then turns it up by some pre-determined amount which has about a 1% chance of being the exact volume I want it to be. So I can keep arguing with Alexa 1 minute into the song trying to get her to get the volume right, but she will never get it exactly right, and by then I've missed most of my song!My other option is to use the Alexa app. This means I pick up my phone, unlock it, find the Alexa app, open it (and wait for it to open), sometimes I can click on the speaker icon and adjust the volume, but sometimes this doesn't work and I have to click on the device and then adjust the volume. So this takes 20-30 seconds overall, which means that I'm highly annoyed for 20-30 seconds because if I had a remote I could have done all of this immediately without touching my phone!Why the heck didn't they include a remote! Ahhrggh! A remote control allows you to immediately adjust the volume to exactly what you want it to be without talking to robot or going into an app in your phone. The Apple iPhone only has four buttons on it, and one of those buttons is volume up and one of them is volume down. There's a reason for that! It's incredibly important to be able to immediately adjust volume to the precise spot you want it without any headaches! The $20 fire tv stick comes with a remote but the $200 Echo Link does not??My dreams of using this as an interface between my TV and speakers are also shattered, because of the lack of a remote! I would first have to change the channel using my comcast remote, THEN either have an argument with Alexa trying to get the volume right, or pick up my phone and go through the headache described above in order to change the volume! What a PITA!Just now I was listening to music, my cell phone rang and I told Alexa to pause the music. She didn't. Why? Dunno! I told her to stop the music, she didn't. I yelled at her a few more times and she never stopped it. I didn't have time to go in the app and try to stop it so I missed the call. Of course, if only I had remote control with a pause or stop button! Gah!!!So that's one bug I've encountered with Alexa. Sometimes she just doesn't obey commands and who knows why? My remote controls always obey!Some other bugs: The Link requires you to pair it with an Echo device. If this is the case why didn't they just build the mic into the Link? Who knows! One issue I encountered as a result of this: I'm listening to music on my "everywhere" group, I tell the Echo Dot that is paired with the link to play a certain song. The Echo Dot started playing the song on its speaker while the other song continued playing on the Echo Link system! WTF?Overall its really hit or miss whether or not Alexa is going to do what you want her to do. She's supposed to make my life easier but so far, seems to be more headaches.Another weird quirk about the Link all hifi music fans should be aware of--Yes, the Link is capable of streaming Amazon Ultra HD music. Awesome! BUT!!!!! If you use the digital output to connect it to your stereo, which most people would want to do, it only outputs it at 16 bit and 48khz!!!! The whole point of Amazon Ultra HD and the Link is to stream hi res audio, why the heck would it downsample it and truncate the bit depth! Seems like it would be easier for the device to just pass through the same 1's and 0's that came into instead of converting it. Makes zero sense! Besides the reduction of audio quality, if they know what they're doing (I'm not confident they do) they would need to add dither when reducing from 24 bit to 16 bit. I'm getting a little deep in the weeds here, but long story short, due to these shortcomings, this isn't a great device to take advantage of Amazon's own excellent Ultra HD music service. This is the same company, right??Another bug I have is when I use the TuneIn feature to listen to the radio, it cuts out on some speakers. I don't know why.One last complaint not directly related to the Link, but is related to the Echo music ecosystem. The nicest sound system in my house is the system hooked up my laptop and a DAC. I stream Amazon Ultra HD through this and it sounds great. Only problem? I can't group this with the Echo devices to fill my whole house with sound. Why not? Who knows!As it stands I'm not sure if I'm going to return all this Echo crap. One moment it seems brilliant, the next I'm dealing with some bug or have a headache because I don't have a remote.**2/3/2023 Update** The Amazon Music ecosystem has gone from bad to unusable. I can't listen for longer than 10 minutes without the speakers either going out of sync or just stopping the music.I made it my part-time job for two weeks trying to get them working. I talked to seemingly every Amazon employee in all of India, all they had were complete time wasting suggestions like, "reset your router" and other things I had already tried a million times. Nobody in all of the trillion dollar company called Amazon has any idea why their music devices can't play music.These devices were obnoxious to use even when they were working. Just terribly designed.Meanwhile Alexa is trying to get me to use her for grocery lists and talk to me about the stock market and a billion other things I have absolutely zero interest in. I've finally decided to give up on it and switch to something like Sonos, which is just trying to do one thing well--be a multi-room music system, instead of trying to be another member of my family like Alexa is. I really, really hate everything about the Amazon/Alexa music system! Just an absolute waste of money garbage system designed by knuckleheads.