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Wireless sound buyers guide

Photos of music and movie setups have nary a cable in sight, but even so-called 'wireless' systems are tethered in some way or other. Thomas Bartlett examines four solutions that help cut the ties that bind.

When I was a kid, 'wireless' was the name commonly used for radio. That has now fallen by the wayside and seems to have come to mean... 2.4GHz. That is the frequency band allocated by governments around the world for a wide range of uses within homes and businesses, including Wi-Fi.

And it is also used for wireless hi-fi. That now has nothing to do with radio, but primarily with connecting loudspeakers to your home entertainment system.

Why would you want to do that? What's wrong with wire?

Well, often surround speakers are six or so metres from the rest of the system, often mounted high on a wall. There are plenty of cases where running wires to them - especially in an aesthetically pleasing way (aka: invisibly) - is extremely difficult, if not impossible. The ways of doing so can, in some cases, become ridiculously expensive, what with the need to drill holes and feed cables through insulation-stuffed wall cavities.

So plugging a transmitter into the electronics at one end, and a receiver with amplifier next to (or inside) the speaker at the other end, makes a lot of sense.

But there is a certain important requirement before this is acceptable. That is, that high fidelity standards are achieved. Importantly, wide audio bandwidth must be supported (that is, a frequency response from 20 hertz to 20,000 hertz). Even more importantly, the system must not introduce noise.

I have long been wary of wireless headphones for this reason in particular. Far too many generate a quiet, but noticeable, hiss that is intolerable for high quality listening.

Digital technology deals nicely with both of these requirements. By turning the signal into a digital signal, it can be transmitted on the same frequency band as wireless networks. Furthermore, it can share the same 'channel hopping' technology. In Australia there are 13 channels in Wi-Fi communications (these are spaced at 5MHz intervals between 2.412 and 2.484MHz, thus the 2.4MHz generic term). I'm not sure that these are the same channels used by the systems under review here, but they are pretty much the same kind of thing. Essentially, the systems monitor the clarity of the channel they are on and if problems arise, switch to another, clearer, channel.
With suitable data redundancy (error correction information is sent along with the basic signal) the original signal can be reconstructed to a very high quality.

Another technology that has boosted wireless speakers has been the introduction of digital amplifiers. These are compact and highly efficient, producing very little heat for their outputs. All four of the systems under review in the following pages offer quite high power outputs (starting at a minimum of 50 watts with matching high fidelity specifications).

Your choice will be what sort of system you want. For example, if you have your heart set on a particular set of speakers that are not endowed with Wi-Fi capabilities (that is, most of them!), then the KEF Universal system could meet your needs.

But if you need multiple sets of high quality speakers operating in close proximity, then the Canton speakers could just do the trick.

Starting out? Then both Panasonic and Sony have useful, low cost systems.

Clearly, wireless has moved on since I was a kid.

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In this article

• Wireless sound buyers guide
• Wireless sound system reviews, conclusion and summary