Ideas For Sending Music Throughout Your Home

The newest range of wireless audio transmitter products promises streaming of music throughout the house without limits. We will check if these newest devices are suitable for whole-house audio. Also, we will give important guidelines for choosing a wireless audio system.

Infrared products send the audio as lightwaves. Light cannot go through walls. As a result products utilizing infrared, such as wireless surround sound kits, are restricted to a single room.

RF wireless products will broadcast the signal as RF waves. These waves can without difficulty penetrate walls. RF wireless audio products either utilize FM transmission or digital audio transmission. FM transmission is inexpensive but quite prone to static, audio distortion and susceptible to interference.

Products using digital wireless audio transmission, such as Amphony audio transmitter products, make use of a digital protocol in which the audio is converted to a digital signal prior to transmission. This method ensures that the audio quality is completely maintained. Some transmitters employ some type of audio compression, such as Bluetooth transmitters, which will degrade the audio to some extent. Transmitters which broadcast the audio data uncompressed will achieve the maximum fidelity.

Wireless LAN (WLAN) products are useful when streaming from a PC but will add some amount of latency or delay to the signal because wireless LAN was not originally designed for real-time audio streaming. Also, some products require to purchase separate wireless LAN modules that are plugged into each audio receiver.

Powerline products utilize the power mains as a medium to send the music. These products typically offer excellent range. On the other hand, they face problems if there are several separate mains circuits in the house. In this situation the signal will have trouble crossing between these circuits. Powerline products have another problem in the form of power surges and spikes which can cause transmission errors. To avoid audio dropouts, these products will normally have an audio latency of several seconds as a safeguard.

Here are some pointers for picking the optimum 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 begin adding receivers in several rooms of your house. Choosing a product with some form of error correction will help mitigate against strong RF interference. Such interference can be caused by other wireless transmitters. Pick a digital RF audio transmitter to ensure that the audio quality is maintained. Make sure the audio latency is less than 10 ms if you have a real-time application such as video.

Choose a transmitter that has all of the audio inputs you need, e.g. speaker inputs, RCA inputs etc. Make sure that you can purchase separate receivers later on as you expand your system. Verify that you can get receivers with speaker outputs for connecting regular loudspeakers as well as receivers with line-level RCA outputs. Pick a transmitter that can regulate the audio volume of the input stage. This will give you the versatility 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.

For high amplifier power efficiency and greatest sound quality, confirm that the amplified receiver has a built-in low-distortion digital amplifier. Make sure the receivers can drive speakers with your desired Ohm rating. Picking a product where the wireless receivers have a small footprint and easy mounting options will help during the set up. 5.8 GHz wireless devices usually have less trouble with interference from other wireless transmitters than products working at 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz.