Advice For Transmitting Music All Through Your House

Lately more and more wireless audio transmitter devices have appeared which promise to bring the ultimate freedom of broadcasting music throughout the house. We will have a look at different products and technologies to find out in how far these products are effective for whole-house audio applications and what to look out for when buying a wireless system.

Infrared wireless audio products are restricted to line-of-sight applications, i.e. only operate within a single room because the signal is broadcast as infrared light which can't penetrate walls. This technology is frequently found in wireless speaker kit products.

RF wireless products will broadcast the signal as RF waves. These waves can without difficulty go through walls. RF wireless audio devices either utilize FM transmission or digital audio transmission. FM transmitters are the cheapest option. They offer decent range but the music signal is prone to audio distortion and hiss and is extremely susceptible to interference from other wireless transmitters.

Products utilizing digital wireless audio transmission, such as Amphony audio transmitter products, utilize a digital protocol in which the audio is converted to a digital signal before transmission. This conversion and transmission in the digital domain will make sure that the original audio quality is maintained. 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 extent.

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 ordinarily require purchasing a separate LAN card to be plugged into each receiver.

Powerline products broadcast the audio via the power mains and offer great range. They run into trouble in houses where there are separate mains circuits in terms of being able to cross over into another circuit. 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 commonly have an audio latency of several seconds as a safeguard.

Now we'll give you some guidelines for shopping for a wireless system: Select a system that supports multiple wireless receivers if you plan to stream audio to a number of rooms so that you don't have to purchase a separate transmitter for every receiver. Products with some form of error correction will be more resistant against radio interference from other wireless transmitters. 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. Make sure that you can purchase additional 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. Because you may want to connect the transmitter to several sources, you should pick a transmitter that can be adjusted to different signal volume levels to prevent clipping of the audio signal inside the transmitter converter stage.

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. Make sure the receivers can drive speakers with your preferred Ohm rating. Choosing a product where the wireless receivers have a small footprint and easy mounting options will help during the installation. Devices using the less crowded 5.8 GHz frequency band will commonly have less trouble with wireless interference than 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz products.