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Suggestions For Selecting The Optimal Wireless Audio Transmitter Product For Whole-Home Audio Streaming

By: Gunter Fellbaum

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A growing number of wireless audio transmitter products promise the ultimate freedom in streaming music all over the home. We will take a look at the most popular technologies for wireless audio and give some suggestions for selecting the best wireless audio product.

Running audio in your home can be a intimidating chore. Numerous houses are not wired for multi-room audio and getting the music from your living room to your bedroom can be quite a problem. Products which resolve this challenge are commonly based on the following technologies: infrared wireless, RF wireless, wireless LAN or powerline.

Infrared products broadcast the audio as lightwaves. Light can't go through walls. For that reason products using infrared, such as wireless surround sound kits, are restricted to a single room.

RF wireless products will send the signal as RF waves. These waves can without difficulty penetrate walls. RF wireless audio devices either use FM transmission or digital audio transmission. The least expensive option is FM transmission. Products utilizing FM transmission, on the other hand, have a number 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 susceptible to interference from other wireless transmitters.

Products utilizing digital wireless audio transmission, such as Amphony audio transmitter products, use a digital protocol in which the audio is converted to a digital signal before transmission. Some wireless audio transmitters will utilize audio compression, such as Bluetooth transmitters which will decrease the audio quality to some extent. Digital wireless audio transmitters which send the audio uncompressed provide the highest audio fidelity.

WLAN products are practical for broadcasting audio from a PC. However, wireless LAN was never designed for real-time audio streaming. As a result, products using WLAN will introduce some amount of delay to the signal. Also, some products require to purchase separate wireless LAN modules that are plugged into every audio receiver.

Powerline products send the audio by means of the power mains and provide 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. Another problem confronting powerline products are strong power surges and spikes. Such surges can bring about dropouts in the audio due to errors in the transmission. To safeguard against these errors, powerline products normally build a delay of several seconds into the transmission.

Here are some recommendations for choosing the optimum 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 extra transmitters when you start adding receivers in different rooms of your house. Some devices have some form of error correction built in which will help guard against dropouts in case of strong wireless interference. Select 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 require. You may need amplified speaker inputs, RCA audio inputs etc. Get a wireless system where you can buy 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. 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 utilized.

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 offer maximum sound quality. Check that the amplified receiver can drive speakers with the desired Ohm rating and that it is small and easily mountable for simple installation. Products which function in the 5.8 GHz frequency band will have less problems with wireless interference than devices using the crowded 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz frequency band.

Article Source: http://depositarticles.com/

Brian Fuller has been involved with engineering wireless and other electronic devices for over a decade. You can find further information about wireless audio transmitter products at Amphony's website.

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