Listener Review: Amphony 5.8 GHz Wireless Audio Transmitter

Hello from listener Ed, formerly of San Antonio. As I said in an earlier message, I would review the wireless speaker solution I bought for my surrounds for my home theater. Here it is...

 

As a part of recently building a new house, we elected to put up a curved wall near the front door to basically backstop the TV, etc. We put a 67" TV in, along with moving my 5.1 Pioneer system and BluRay, etc. in. However, I struggled with wiring for the surrounds. My "back wall" was open to a hallway and a stairway, with part of it curved. Lovely. In the end, I told the builder I would solve it another way. A year later, I have.

 

I looked at some of the wireless speaker systems out there, and read about various options and technologies. They seemed a bit pricey, and some had mediocre reviews. Then I stumbled on an ad from thinkgeek.com. While I elected to not buy their Baconnaise or their $2,000 OLED keyboard, I did like this "Class A wireless speaker solution".  I wanted something I could connect to the Klipsch SB-1s I used as rear speakers.

 

So,  I bought the Model 1520 for about $80 and decided to try it out.

 

The unit has a transmitter and receiver, with stereo capabilities, meaning you can send 2 channels over the link, in my case LS and RS. The transmitter is a small black unit with integral antenna and RCA and speaker cable inputs, so you can choose pre-amp or amplified inputs for it. The receiver is also rather small and has 2 pairs of speaker outputs. It has an integral amplifier, so you do not need powered speakers. The amp is rated as 15W/channels with .01% THD at 10W - not bad for $80. It says the audio is 128X oversampled, so they are converting to a pure digital signal for transmit.

Performance

I set it up, turned it on and started playing. Initially, I was surprised, as I thought I bought a tube-style AM radio - popping, clicking, really awful. I had to read the fine manual RTFM. Both the transmitter and receiver - which they call the amplifier - have gain controls. The goal is to set the transmitter high and the amplifier low if possible. That solved my levels, but not the static. Then I see the dreaded statement: line of sight is required. Of course, I am standing in the line of sight.........

 

I turned the page, and was relieved to see you can essentially bounce the signal off the ceiling, as long as you get the units pointing the right way. It worked and works to this day - 2 months later. Sometimes I turn off the receiver - amplifier - as it gets moved around when our cleaning folks come and then I get to hear from the aesthetics committee that the unit is bad again...not that the folks cleaning the house are unable to put things back where they found them.........

Conclusion

So, I would give this 4 stars out of 5. You can use with an enclosure, placement matters, etc. However, my AT&T 3G data card, Ipad 3G, Airport Extreme and DECT phones do not seem to bother this at all. In the end, I thought they would make this unusable but not so.....