Wireless Audio/Speakers - High Fidelity?

[kfbkfb]

I don't have any wireless speakers (or headphones). I've read that, in order to have low time delay (fast audio encoding and decoding), Bluetooth compromises the sound quality somewhat.

What's your experience with wireless audio/speakers and high fidelity (mono - stereo - surround) content?


Kirk Bayne

 

[quicksrt]

I'm looking at what is out there for a friend who wants spaekrs for another room in the house, but wants the option to set them outside on the patio as well for get togethers.

I am seeing WiFi models, rather the BT. But I still know next to nothing about these.

 

[jimfisheye]

I don't have any wireless speakers (or headphones). I've read that, in order to have low time delay (fast audio encoding and decoding), Bluetooth compromises the sound quality somewhat.

What's your experience with wireless audio/speakers and high fidelity (mono - stereo - surround) content?


Kirk Bayne

Bluetooth both compromises audio to the extreme and is laggy. It would be gross to try to use to deliver hi-fi audio. And then it's also not appropriate for just monitoring (ie for overdubbing in a studio recording setting) because of the lag. You can't do low enough latency for live performance.

The lag would only come up in a recording setting where you need the output of the computer to have no perceptible lag from the live real life here and now. If you are just listening back to something already recorded, lag is a moot point. It would be inconvenient if there was an hour lag between pressing play and finally getting playback (for an exaggerated example) but it would ultimately be a moot point if you weren't trying to play along.

 

[kfbkfb]

I was thinking about wired speakers for the front channels and wireless speakers for the surround (and overhead) channels, maybe good old analog FM (possibly with some sort of NR) would be suitable, good fidelity and no lag.


Kirk Bayne

 

[bluelightning]

FM is only ok fidelity and will also introduce some lag, perhaps not as much as BT, wifi, but you might able to adjust the time delay between channels in your receiver/processor.

 

[doity]

I still have this “wireless” speaker floating around somewhere that uses the electrical outlets in your home to send the signal. I am not kidding. I tried it a few times and it does work, but not something I would use for a stereo system. Imagine the electrical interference that it would pick up along the way to the speaker output. Dreadful idea.

 

[kfbkfb]

Actually, it seems like using home power wiring to both power the speakers and to transmit the sound is a good idea, could use frequency division multiplexing (FM w/dBx type NR maybe) for multiple channels.

Edit:
https://www.lifewire.com/audio-over-home-wiring-3134646^^^
HomePlug is a PLC standard that can distribute audio, video, and control signals via your home's existing electrical wiring.


Kirk Bayne

 

[François]

AirPlay is lossless AFAIK (it’s over WiFi, and it’s an Apple thing)

 

[timbre4]

For the living room system (not my "anything goes" space) we use an Atlantic Technology wireless transmitter / receiver setup to reach the surround speakers. It works very well without any sense of lag. It is subject to a brief dropout every once a while or a loud pop on occasion. (maybe once a month)

The next remodel may change which wall the TV is on and if this happens I will try to go fully wired so that I use all the amp channels in the Denon AVR. But the current setup works good enough for us.

 

[ubertrout]

I use a Sony Z9 soundbar with wireless subwoofer and rears in my living room, which I use for casual and social watching. It's...fine? Not audiophile grade but I don't notice a lag.

My folks use a Bose Soundtouch for listening to internet radio and they're very happy with it - it's full featured and works well for music. But I'm guessing your friend wants to use an array of speakers for home theater and then take them outside for use as wireless speakers for parties, which sounds much more complicated.

 

[jimfisheye]

If you're doing something maybe a little crude like listening to playback using a bluetooth wireless connection. If this is a combination of lagging wireless + some wired, the lag there can easily be added to the other wired channels with a delay to sync everything back up.

The comments around bluetooth's unacceptable lag are in a recording setting where you would be trying to monitor a live input over a bluetooth connection. It won't really work and you might as well stop. The lo-fi aspect would be acceptable for studio overdub monitoring - that wouldn't reflect a final mix. But the lag would be a show stopper.

For a listening system it's the other way around. Lag is a moot point. (As long as it's only a moment after hitting play. And it is.) The fidelity limit would be the sore point here.

The toyish stuff like soundbars would be a bigger fidelity hit than the bluetooth bandwidth. It would stack up though. You're not going to have a very 21st century experience with any of that FWIW.

 

[MidiMagic]

I HAD a system that sent audio over power lines. Then the power company started using those frequencies to read the meters.

 

[johnbs]

<https://buchardtaudio.com/products>

currently only do stereo, but 5.1 is on the way later this year

John

 

[Overture]

We've been playing around with wireless audio transmission - there is a TI set of chips that are used primarily by a company called Anaren, who do drop in modules, that do basically cd quality audio over 2.4ghz - it has frequency spectrum hopping to avoid noise, and depending on the situation you can sacrifice range and buffer / delay for quality and bump it up to.....I think it was 24/48 - and it could do four channels (hence interesting us at the time). We may yet go back to it I suspect. When we played around with it transmitting across the factory and through two walls, it was as advertised - cd quality audio wirelessly, which was pretty rad. The only thing was that it would add some delay, so if we were to use it in quad, we'd need to have all channels delayed by the same amount - even a small perceptible delay can really screw up a quad image, turns out.

 

[Owen Smith]

Dynaudio have quite a range of wireless speakers, using proprietary (or at least they don't say what it is) low latency lossless wireless. I have two pairs of Xeo 3 for my kitchen and study and they sound really good, they're fully active speakers with digital crossovers and separate class D amps for tweeter and woofer. The current range support 24/96 lossless over the wireless, mine only go up to 16/48 but that's fine.