Distributing DBS Sound Channels

[DoyleS]

I found a nice box to help get all of those DBS sound channels out to a stereo in another room. In my case it was either crawl under the house, pull cable and drill holes in the floor or find another solution.

US Robotics makes a nifty little 900 MHz wireless audio transmitter and receiver pair that has a range of up to 1000 feet although I have only tested it around 50-60 feet. It is called "Soundlink Wireless Audio". List price is $99 but it is on sale at a local SFO Bay Area computer store called Micro Center for $29.95. They have a website at www.microcenter.com and it is listed on the specials on page 2. Hopefully posting this does not violate any of the forum rules. Just trying to point out a good deal.

I bought one and hooked it up this afternoon and it works great. Now the wife can listen to the music channels on her stereo in the Kitchen Family room. The receiver unit also has a built in FM transmitter that will transmit to an FM receiver tuned to 88.1 or 88.3 selectable. I found some interference using that mode so I am using the wired connection to the stereo. There are 5 selectable 900 MHz channels that can be used and the receiver will scan to find the ones available. Conceivably you could have a couple of the transmitters and then select which one channel you wanted at the receiver. All in all a nice box for $30.

Merry Christmas,

Doyle

[MarkA]

I'm no expert on this stuff, but I will say the only time I've ever worked with this consumer wireless equipment was a 2.4 GHz A/V sender in a theatrical environment. We used it to avoid pulling about 75m of RG-6 cable for a single show. It didn't work too well. Sound and video were poor, and video would break up often (especially when someone would walk past it). I'm convinced these things are a bad idea (of course we had professional sound and lighting equipment, including lotsa wireless mics that can't have helped the situation.

[DoyleS]

If the 2.4GHz unit was the one that the X-10/Smarthome guys were selling, I would completely agree with you. In fact I have one of those and it is pretty much worthless. Lots of breakups and clicking. I actually tried it again before going to get the US Robotics unit. I guess the fact that US Robotics had done it moved me to give it a shot. I think it is closer to cordless phone technology which has improved a lot over the last couple years. I would not advocate that anyone use this on a high end system to pipe CD sound around the house. However, the fidelity is good, I have had no dropouts and for getting the Satellite Audio channels out to another location in the house without having to pull new cabling, it is a nice solution. At $100 I would have passed on the deal but for $30 it sure beat crawling under the house.

..Doyle

[Scott Greczkowski]

I built a FM-25 from Ramsey Electronics. Nice Stereo on any FM radio. And the signal goes for 1/4 of a mile around my house. (And thats running legal power) :)