Surveillance Equipment

Guidelines For Choosing The Perfect Wireless Audio Transmitter Device For Whole-House Audio Streaming

The latest range of wireless audio transmitter devices claims streaming of music throughout the house without limits. We will look at various products and technologies to find out in how far these devices are useful for whole-house audio applications and what to look out for when purchasing a wireless system.

Running audio in your home can be a daunting task. A lot of homes are not wired for multi-room audio and getting the music from your living room to your bed room can be quite a problem. There are several technologies solving this problem. These include infrared wireless, RF wireless, wireless LAN (WLAN) and powerline.

Infrared wireless audio products are limited to line-of-sight applications, i.e. only work within a single room since the signal is sent as infrared light which can’t go through walls. This technology is frequently found in wireless speaker kit products.

RF wireless products will send the signal as RF waves. These waves can easily penetrate walls. RF wireless audio products either utilize FM transmission or digital audio transmission. FM transmission is economical but rather prone to static, audio distortion and susceptible to interference.

Products which utilize 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 completely maintained. Some transmitters employ some form of audio compression, such as Bluetooth transmitters, which will degrade the audio to some extent. Transmitters which send the audio data uncompressed will achieve the maximum fidelity.

Products using wireless LAN are useful when streaming audio from a PC. Their disadvantage is that they generally have some fairly high latency, i.e. the signal will be delayed by some amount since wireless LAN was not particularly designed for real-time audio streaming. Also, some products require to purchase separate wireless LAN modules that are plugged into each audio receiver.

Powerline products employ the power mains to distribute audio and offer large range but run into problems if there are individual mains circuits in the house in terms of crossing between circuits. Another challenge facing powerline products are strong power surges and spikes. Such surges can cause drpouts in the audio due to errors in the transmission. To safeguard against these errors, powerline products usually build a delay of several seconds into the transmission.

Here are some hints for picking a wireless audio system: If you plan to stream audio into several rooms of your home, be sure to select a system that permits streaming to multiple receivers at the same time. That way you don’t have to purchase a separate transmitter for every receiver that you are streaming to. Selecting a product with some form of error correction will help mitigate against strong RF interference. Such interference can be caused by other wireless transmitters. Pick a digital RF audio transmitter to guarantee that the audio quality is preserved. Make sure the audio delay is smaller than 10 ms if you have a real-time application such as video.

Make sure the wireless transmitter provides the audio inputs you require. You may need amplified speaker inputs, RCA audio inputs etc. Select a system where you can add receivers later on which provide all of the necessary 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.

Make sure that the system provides amplified receivers with a digital amplifier to ensure high power efficiency. This will help keep the receiver cool during operation. Also, make sure the amplifier offers low audio distortion. This is vital for good sound quality. Pick a system which offers 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. Devices utilizing the less crowded 5.8 GHz frequency band will generally have less problems with wireless interference than 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz products.