Recommendations For Selecting The Best Wireless Audio Transmitter Device For Whole-Home Audio Streaming

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

If your house 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. Frequently the audio source cannot be moved. Running speaker wires between rooms will be costly and for that reason many people are looking for alternatives. There are several technologies solving this problem. These include infrared wireless, RF wireless, wireless LAN (WLAN) and powerline.

Infrared is limited to line of sight since the audio signal is sent as lightwaves and consequently devices utilizing this technology, such as infrared wireless surround sound products, are limited to a single room.

RF wireless products send the music as RF waves – either by utilizing FM transmission or digital transmission – and can therefore without difficulty transmit through walls. FM transmission is inexpensive but rather prone to noise, audio distortion and susceptible to interference.

Products using digital wireless audio transmission, such as Amphony audio transmitter products, utilize a digital protocol in which the audio is converted to a digital signal prior to transmission. This method guarantees that the audio quality is completely maintained. Some transmitters use some sort of audio compression, such as Bluetooth transmitters, which will degrade the audio to some degree. Transmitters which broadcast the audio data uncompressed will attain 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 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 often require buying separate LAN cards. These cards are then plugged into every receiver.

Powerline products broadcast the audio via the power mains and provide large range. They run into trouble in homes where there are individual mains circuits in terms of being able to cross over into another circuit. Powerline products have another challenge 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.

Now we’ll give you some pointers for shopping for a wireless system: Go for a system that supports numerous wireless receivers if you plan to stream audio to several rooms so that you don’t have to purchase a separate transmitter for every receiver. Selecting a product with some form 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 crucial then you should get a transmitter with a low audio latency. An audio latency of smaller than 10 ms would be appropriate for most scenarios.

Select a transmitter that has all the audio inputs you need, such as speaker inputs, line-level RCA inputs etc. Get a wireless system where you can buy additional receivers later on. You should confirm 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. If you go with a digital audio transmitter, select one with an input audio level control knob to prevent the audio signal from clipping inside the transmitter audio converter. This will ensure optimum dynamic range regardless of the signal level of your equipment.

Make sure 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 provide optimum sound quality. Select a system that provides receivers that can drive speakers with the desired Ohm rating. Make sure the receivers have a small form factor and are easily mountable. This will help during the set up. Products using the less crowded 5.8 GHz frequency band will normally have less problems with wireless interference than 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz products.