Lately more and more wireless music system products have emerged which promise to deliver the ultimate freedom of broadcasting music throughout the house. We will research if these newest products are suitable for whole-house audio. Also, we will give crucial tips for choosing a wireless audio system.
If your residence is not wired for audio then you face quite a problem when you want to get your music from your living room to your bed room. Often the audio source cannot be moved. Running speaker wires between rooms will be expensive and for that reason many people are looking for other options. The following technologies are used by devices solving this problem: infrared, RF, wireless LAN and powerline.
Infrared products broadcast the audio as lightwaves. Light can’t go through walls. For that reason products using infrared, such as wireless surround sound versions, are restricted to a single room.
RF wireless products send the audio as RF waves – either by using FM transmission or digital transmission – and can as a result without problems transmit through walls. The least expensive choice is FM transmission. Products utilizing FM transmission, however, have a number of drawbacks. These include degradation of the audio quality due to static or hiss and audio distortion. In addition, FM transmitter products are also quite susceptible to interference from other wireless transmitters.
Digital wireless audio transmitter products, such as products from Amphony, make use of a digital protocol. The audio is first converted to digital data before being transmitted. Some wireless audio transmitters will utilize audio compression, such as Bluetooth transmitters which will decrease the audio quality to some extent. Digital wireless audio transmitters which broadcast the audio uncompressed offer the highest audio fidelity.
WLAN products are practical for broadcasting audio from a PC. However, wireless LAN was never designed for real-time audio streaming. As a result, products using WLAN will introduce some amount of delay to the signal. Also, some products require to buy separate wireless LAN modules that are plugged into each audio receiver.
Powerline products utilize the power mains to distribute music and provide great range but run into problems if there are individual mains circuits in the home in terms of crossing between circuits. Powerline products have another challenge in the form of power surges and spikes which can cause transmission errors. To prevent audio dropouts, these products will normally have an audio latency of several seconds as a safeguard.
Here are some suggestions for choosing the perfect wireless audio system: Try to find a system that can run several wireless receivers from a single transmitter. Ideally an unlimited number of receivers should be supported. That way you don’t need to purchase extra transmitters when you start adding receivers in different rooms of your house. Selecting a product with some sort of error correction will help mitigate against strong RF interference. Such interference can be brought on by other wireless transmitters. Digital RF audio transmitters will be able to preserve the original audio quality. If you have time-critical applications where sync of the audio is important then you should get a transmitter with a low audio latency. An audio latency of less than 10 ms would be appropriate for most scenarios.
Pick a transmitter that has all of the audio inputs you require, e.g. speaker inputs, RCA inputs etc. Choose a system where you can add receivers later on which offer all of the necessary outputs, e.g. amplified speaker outputs, RCA outputs etc. Pick a transmitter that can adjust the audio volume of the input stage. This will give you the flexibility to connect the transmitter to any type of equipment with different signal levels. Otherwise the audio may get clipped inside the transmitter converter stage or the dynamic range is not fully utilized.
Ensure that the amplified wireless receivers have built-in digital amplifiers with low distortion figures. This will keep the receiver cool due to high amplifier power efficiency and offer maximum sound quality. Check that the amplified receiver is able to drive speakers with the preferred Ohm rating and that it is small and easily mountable for simple set up. Products which function in the 5.8 GHz frequency band will have less problems with wireless interference than devices using the crowded 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz frequency band.
You can get additional details about wireless audio systems as well as other wireless audio product types from Amphony’s web page.

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Music,
Music Business,
hardware