The newest series of wireless audio transmitter devices promises streaming of music throughout the home without limits. We will investigate if these latest devices are suitable for whole-house audio. Also, we will give crucial guidelines for choosing a wireless audio system.

If your residence is not wired for audio then you face quite a challenge 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 costly and for that reason many people are searching for alternatives. Products which resolve this difficulty are mostly based on the following technologies: infrared wireless, RF wireless, wireless LAN or powerline.

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

RF wireless products broadcast the music as RF waves - either by using FM transmission or digital transmission - and can for that reason without difficulty transmit through walls. FM transmission is cheap but quite prone to noise, audio distortion and susceptible to interference.

Digital wireless audio transmitter devices, such as products from Amphony, make use of a digital protocol. The audio is first converted to digital data before being transmitted. This conversion and transmission in the digital domain will guarantee that the original audio quality is preserved. On the other hand, this is only the case of the data is sent uncompressed. Some wireless audio transmitters will apply some type of audio compression. Such products include Bluetooth audio transmitters. Audio compression will degrade the quality of the audio to some degree.

Wireless LAN (WLAN) products are useful when streaming from a PC but will add some amount of latency or delay to the signal since wireless LAN was not originally designed for real-time audio streaming. WLAN receivers often do not have built-in network access. As a result, such devices frequently require buying separate LAN cards. These cards are then plugged into every receiver.

Powerline products utilize the power mains to distribute audio and provide large range but run into problems if there are separate mains circuits in the house in terms of crossing between circuits. Powerline products have another problem in the form of power surges and spikes which can cause transmission errors. To prevent audio dropouts, these products will generally have an audio latency of several seconds as a safeguard.

Now we'll give you some pointers for shopping for a wireless system: Pick a system that supports numerous wireless receivers if you plan to stream audio to several rooms so that you don't have to buy a separate transmitter for every receiver. Some devices have some sort of error correction built in which will help guard against dropouts in case of strong wireless interference. Choose a digital RF audio transmitter to make sure that the audio quality is preserved. Make sure the audio delay is less than 10 ms if you have a real-time application such as video.

Pick a transmitter that has all of the audio inputs you require, e.g. speaker inputs, RCA inputs etc. Get a wireless system where you can purchase additional receivers later on. You should check that you can get receivers for all the different applications you have. Such receivers may include amplified receivers for passive speakers or line-level receivers for active speakers. Given that you may want to connect the transmitter to several sources, you should choose a transmitter that can be adjusted to different signal volume levels to prevent clipping of the audio signal inside the transmitter converter stage.

For high amplifier power efficiency and best sound quality, verify that the amplified receiver has a built-in low-distortion digital amplifier. Choose a system that offers receivers that can drive speakers with the preferred Ohm rating. Make sure the receivers have a small form factor and are easily mountable. This will help during the installation. Devices which function in the 5.8 GHz frequency band will have less trouble with wireless interference than devices using the crowded 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz frequency band.


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