Wireless Surround Sound – The End Of Cable Clutter?
A new trend is the appearance of an increasing number of home theater systems with wireless speakers or a separate wireless surround sound Surround Sound kit. As multi-channel audio still is a fairly new phenomenon, older homes are not prewired for surround sound, especially with the most recent trend of 7.1 surround systems. As such a wireless option appears to seem like the logical choice. But are these wireless surround sound kits reliable enough for real-world applications and do they get rid of the dreaded cable clutter?
Some wireless surround sound kits, such as the LG or Rocketfish allow to connect 2 speakers to a wireless receiver unit. This eliminates the cables from the front to the back. However, still cables need to be run from the receiver to each speaker and as such the amount of cables is just reduced but not eliminated. Another wireless surround sound product from Amphony comes with separate receivers for each speaker which in comparison to the other products does reduce the cable clutter, albeit not eliminate cables completely.
Will the wireless have any effect on performance? Audio quality is a main concern. In picking a wireless system, one should choose a system where (a) the transmission itself does not pick up any noise or degradation in order to maintain the audio quality and (b) the wireless amplifier itself should be a high-quality amplifier with minimal distortion. Also, the size of the wireless speaker amplifier is a consideration as the receiver should be invisible.
Another issue to consider is that in a home theater setting is that the sound to all speakers should be in sync with the video and also in sync with each speaker. Some wireless units such as the Rocketfish will introduce a delay in the signal, apparently to cope with interference. As such you should investigate how much the signal travelling to the wireless speaker will be delayed. The Amphony product however specifies a delay of less than 1 ms which should be low enough for pretty much any real-world application. Finally, how reliable are wireless speakers and wireless surround sound kits?
But how well do these wireless kits work in a real-world scenario? One of the biggest concerns should be interference from other wireless devices. In the US, wireless devices are restricted to a limited number of frequency bands. Especially the 900 MHz and 2.4 GHz frequency band are increasingly crowded by WiFi, Bluetooth and an array of other devices making interference more of a concern. Picking a system working at an alternate frequency band such as the 5.8 GHz band would naturally reduce the impact from competing devices.
While wireless speakers and wireless surround sound kits are suited for use in a home theater setting, their use is not limited to that application. In particular setting up speakers in another room often poses a challenge in terms of running speaker wires or using speakers outdoors. Just imagine being able to set up a speaker in your backyard in minutes. The possibilities are endless.