Friday, November 22, 2013

Some Recommendations To Help Select A Cordless Surround Sound Product

By Scott Humton


Several Helpful Hints To Help Choose A Wireless Surround Sound Package Recently more and more wireless surround sound transmitter devices have appeared which promise to deliver the ultimate freedom of broadcasting music throughout the house. We will investigate if these latest products are suitable for whole-house audio. Also, we will give important guidelines for selecting a wireless audio 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. Often the audio source cannot be moved. Running speaker wires between rooms will be expensive and consequently a lot of people are looking for other options. There are a number of technologies solving this problem. These include infrared wireless, RF wireless, wireless LAN (WLAN) and powerline.

Getting audio from your living room to your bedroom can be quite a challenge in particular in buildings which are not wired for audio. Devices which solve this challenge are mostly based on the following technologies: infrared wireless, RF wireless, wireless LAN or powerline.

RF wireless products send the audio as RF waves - either by utilizing FM transmission or digital transmission - and can consequently easily transmit through walls. The least expensive option is FM transmission. Products utilizing FM transmission, on the other hand, have a series of drawbacks. These include degradation of the audio quality due to noise or hiss and audio distortion. In addition, FM transmitter products are also rather prone to interference from other wireless transmitters. Products which use digital wireless audio transmission utilize a digital protocol. Such devices include transmitters from Amphony. In this protocol, before transmission the audio signal is converted to digital data. This method guarantees that the audio quality is fully preserved. Some transmitters utilize some type 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.

Products which employ digital wireless audio transmission employ a digital protocol. Such products include transmitters from Amphony. In this protocol, prior to transmission the audio signal is converted to digital data. This method guarantees that the audio quality is fully preserved. Some transmitters use some type of audio compression, such as Bluetooth transmitters, which will degrade the audio to some degree. Transmitters which send the audio data uncompressed will attain the highest 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. WLAN receivers typically require buying a separate LAN card to be plugged into each receiver.

Powerline products use the power mains to distribute music and offer 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 avoid audio dropouts, these products will generally have an audio latency of several seconds as a safeguard. Here are some recommendations for selecting 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 buy additional transmitters when you start adding receivers in different rooms of your home. Products with some form of error correction will be more resistant against radio interference from other wireless transmitters. Choose a digital RF transmitter to maintain the original audio quality, preferably one with an audio latency of less than 10 ms in case of video or other time-sensitive applications.

Make sure the wireless transmitter provides the audio inputs you need. You may need amplified speaker inputs, RCA audio inputs etc. Make sure that you can purchase individual receivers later on as you expand your system. Check 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 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 used.

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 offer optimum sound quality. Verify that the amplified receiver can drive speakers with the desired Ohm rating and that it is small and easily mountable for easy set up. 5.8 GHz wireless devices typically have less problems with interference from other wireless transmitters than devices working at 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz.




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