Thursday, January 2, 2014

Some Helpful Hints To Help Pick A Cordless Surround Sound System

By Scott Humton


A Number Of Good Tips To Help Choose A Wireless Surround Sound System

If your house 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 expensive and as a result many people are searching for other options. The following technologies are utilized by devices solving this problem: infrared, RF, wireless LAN and powerline.

Infrared wireless audio products are restricted to line-of-sight applications, i.e. only function within a single room since the signal is sent as infrared light which cannot go through walls. This technology is often found in wireless speaker kit products.

RF wireless music products send the music signal via radio waves. These radio wave signals can easily go through walls. The signal is sent either by utilizing FM transmission or digital transmission. FM transmitters are the cheapest option. They provide good range but the audio signal is prone to audio distortion and static and is very susceptible to interference from other wireless transmitters.

Products which employ digital wireless audio transmission utilize a digital protocol. Such products include transmitters from Amphony. In this protocol, prior to transmission the audio signal is converted to digital data. Some wireless audio transmitters will employ audio compression, such as Bluetooth transmitters which will lower the audio quality to some degree. Digital wireless audio transmitters which send the audio uncompressed offer the highest audio fidelity.

Powerline products use the power mains as a medium to broadcast the audio. These products usually provide excellent range. However, they face trouble if there are a number of separate mains circuits in the home. In this case the signal will have problems crossing between these circuits. Another challenge confronting powerline products are strong power surges and spikes. Such surges can cause dropouts in the audio due to errors in the transmission. To safeguard against these errors, powerline products typically build a delay of several seconds into the transmission.

Powerline devices use the power mains as a medium to send the audio. These products usually offer excellent range. On the other hand, they face problems if there are several separate mains circuits in the home. In this case the signal will have problems crossing between these circuits. Also, these products build in a delay of a number of seconds to safeguard against transmission errors during power surges and spikes which prevents their use in applications where the audio from wireless speakers has to be in sync with other non-wireless speakers or video. Now we'll give you some recommendations for shopping for a wireless system: Choose a system that supports multiple 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. Picking 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 less than 10 ms would be appropriate for most scenarios.

Pick a transmitter that has all the audio inputs you require, such as speaker inputs, line-level RCA inputs etc. Pick a system where you can add receivers later on which provide all of the required outputs, e.g. amplified speaker outputs, RCA outputs etc. Given that 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.

Check that the amplified wireless receivers contain built-in digital amplifiers with low distortion figures. This will keep the receiver cool due to high amplifier power efficiency and provide maximum 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 products typically have less problems with interference from other wireless transmitters than devices operating at 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz.




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