Hi,
My niece is looking for some type of device to transmit her rear channels across her room. She lives in a place in florida that's built on a concrete slab. She doesn't want to run wiring under the ceramic floor tiles on the slab, of course. The room also has a cathedral ceiling, and doesn't want to tear into it. Basically what she would like is for some kind of "radio" transmitter and receiver pair that can transmit the signals to the other side of the room, be picked up, and she can set up an amp, if need be to control the volume; although I'd suspect that the "amp" would need to be at least IR operable as well. Another option, if possible, would be transmission of the signals thru her electrical wiring. I know some devices, i.e., fans and lights can be controlled this way, but don't know if stereo sound signals can. Can somebody here make a suggestion and maybe point me in the right direction.
Oh yeah, we're talking about 12-15 feet for transmission. She has speakers she wants to use already. I know they have AV senders, but those generally work thru a vcr or tv, and mono sound instead of stereo. Full, clean audio would be a primary requirement too.
TIA,
Jim

This message was edited by jamesgammel on 09/03/02 19:43.52.

Well, you can buy wireless speakers, but they generally don't sound very good. Another solution would require you to have the amplifier for the rear speakers by the rear speakers using something like a WAVEComm system that is wireless audio....but again, they don't sound very good etc.

The best way is wired, hands down.

Jim, I agree with Matt, but understand your neice might have reasons to not hardwire.

You might want to look at:

[Link: x10.com]

I believe Advent makes some wireless speakers that sound pretty good. If they're going to be used as rears, they should work well. But it's still going to be very annoying with static bursts and pops coming from the rears if there's any interference. How about some flat speaker wire along the bottom of the wall, painted to match it?

here's the answer that the hobbyist would go for: modify a set of IR or RF headphones.

The Good guys or someone of such ilk has usually got a few models of headphones to choose from. The actual fidelity of the phones should not matter, as you will not be using the phones themselves. Hmm, most of these use rechargeable batteries....

Here's what I would do: forget about the headphones and run speaker wires to the outside of the building, along under the eaves (if there are any), then back in at the rear, and take it from there, mounting real speakers. But if that is not possible, here's what to do with the headphones:

Buy a pair, try them out in the room, take them apart and connect the wires going to their internal speakers to the amp that you will be using for the rears. And work out a way to keep the batteries charged.

(I have sent more detail to James, but thought it would be boring if you are not going to want to do it yourself -- who wants to read instructions on a whole project? Send me an email if you want more details.)

Try Loewe, they make the best wireless system.

Hard wire, run the wirers !!! Don't be Chicken

Ernie came up with a very novel but should be workable solution---Bravo!!!. Now she can still use her planars and spare Pioneer elite amp. My brother (My niece=His daughter) is down visiting her now. I forwarded him ernie's email and he can set it up and try it out. I see no reason why his idea wouldn't work admirably. If he gets it up and running, I'll post a report. Thanks ernie!!!!!!

I have done this before several times,although the cordless head-phone idea is brilliant your rear channels will be very limited, depends what you will settle for.

Guess I thought this was already thought of. Hardwire before any other choice!!

Matt's right; any airborne signal will be mutated and most likely nearly "bassless". Even if the rear speakers aren't big enough to produce bass you will be much happier with the sound if you hardwire. Hide flat wire behind the baseboards or what about applying crown moulding and putting the wire behind it?

Even with cathedral ceilings the trusses should have some space between the drywall and the roof. If you get up in the attic I'll bet you can see your way through the trusses and just use a few lengths of PVC sprinkler pipe to pull wires. At $1.19 per 10' piece you just glue the couplings while you're up in the attic and then leave it up there for posterity. Get up there and have someone feed it up to you - it will flex enough to snake it towards the direction you want to use it.

Sheik, not all cathedral ceilings use trusses. "Scissor" trusses have the outside slope set at twice the inside slope, and a fishtape or other pushable material can be pushed over the peak.

Standard stick-built cathedrals have a solid ridge board, and the space on one side of the slope is separated from the space on the other side.

I'd recommend looking below, if there is no living space beneath this room, and even if there is, it could be easier to feed from one wall to the other between the floor and the downstairs ceiling with minimal patching.

Larry
www.fineelectricco.com

You're right Larry; I've seen houses where the drywall is nailed up to the rafters and there's no space for anything but (we hope) insulation. In my area most if not all of those examples have been older construction. When I was buying my home I must have looked at developments from 10 different builders and they were all using "butterfly trusses", a term borrowed from bridge building. That is most likely because we have seasonal temperature extremes here. I think in areas that are warmer year 'round the method you cite is still used because they don't have condensation problems. My trusses go from about a foot and a half at the ridge to nothing just at the top plate. You can sneak cabling through with ease, even further down the roofline.

In any case it was just a suggestion for James to look at alternatives before settling for an almost certainly inferior wireless solution.

While I personally would never consider running a wireless solution, especially with the noted equipment already in place. Why have a wireless link be the weakest(cheapest) link? But I will have to beg to differ on the quality of a wireless link. Shure and Sennheiser both make some of the best wireless headphone systems I've ever heard. Our on-air talent uses a shure UHF wireless IFB system designed for singers on stage. More range than you'll ever need and CD quality hi-fi sound. Although the price may be prohibitive at about $1,000 for a system, that, or the $900 sennheiser counterpart will definitely provide you with a hi-fi wireless link that will work absolutely flawlessly.

Sheikie sez: 'Matt's right; any airborne signal will be mutated and most likely nearly "bassless."'

I don't get why you would say that. The RF units are FM, and it is easier to RF modulate low frequencies than high; if it is IR, which I think also uses FM modulation, I can't see that the frequency would make any difference at all.

Did you hear something (or not hear something :) somewhere that makes you say that?

Sheikie addends: "Even if the rear speakers aren't big enough to produce bass...."

Isn't that a characteristic of most surround speakers? Isn't that why we have bass management? The simplest surround setups allow you to choose "small" for surrounds, which sends the bass to the subwoofer instead of to the surround speakers. I don't get what your issue is. Even the Lexicon preamps (whoops: controllers), that are not intended for use with, say, Optimus speakers, have bass management that keeps the bass out of the surrounds and sends it to the subwoofer.

Ernie

Ernie, to my thinking when one misspeaks, she/he is wrong. I may have misspoken twice (or more) in my post, and although you caught it, you're not a charter member of that club; and I'll be wrong again. I'll admit to being a hack wading among the gurus, the experts, and whatever ranks fall below those. I was not able to recall exactly why I was allergic to wireless speakers. In my haste to find a reason why wireless was not optimum, I clutched at straws and blathered. <-- (Another admission.)

I went to a couple of review sites and couldn't find anything about loss of low frequency in wireless speakers - all I found were general complaints about sound quality from user reviews, and one real reviewer gave some Sony wireless setup a 3 out of 5 possible in sound quality.

In fairness I found reviews from some people who loved their wireless setups. (But they were deaf.)

All I know is that a friend of mine who sells a lot of speakers out the door and in installs has tried wireless several times. Whenever a Mfr's Rep tells him "These are far improved over the last ones", he tries them. They've never made it out of his shop unless he's selling a demo pair that was GIVEN to him by the Rep. Despite mildly frequent customer requests, and prodding from Rep's, he doesn't stock them. He'd probably special order them for someone, with a disclaimer.

Most opinions in this thread seem to hold that wireless should only be considered when other reasonable options have been explored and eliminated. The wireless cause seems to have found a champion in Ernie Bornn-Gilman, and it would be enlightening to know the number of times you've advocated OR installed wireless speakers in a customer's system to save a little work. Would that be ever, never, regularly, or sometimes?


It appears you truncated my sentence; I could be way off base, but isn't it more attackable the way you wrote it? The gist of that sentence was: (IMHO) James' niece would be happier in the end with hardwiring over wireless, even if she cannot at this time picture a way to have it done without demolition. This job CAN be done with hardwires, and I think it would be worth the trouble for James to do an exploratory in the attic to see how feasible it is. If passage is near impossible then by all means, go wireless.

RE: "Bassless", Yes Ernie, I know that a surround speaker is not a Sub, and I understand being able to select speaker size, hopefully from an OSD. I also "meddle" with crossover points when I'm feeling "uppity". This is where you have caught me misspeaking again: I should have blathered something in the area of midbass. Some of the blade noise from passing helicopters, debris flying, and other effects often go to surround channels. Even if it is only a psychoacoustic "slight of hand" being augmented by the Sub, it would not occur at all without some mid to lower (almost low?) frequencies being generated from the surrounds. Some of the cannon and musket fire in 'The Patriot' also wraps to the surrounds.


BTW: Unless you've just published, there is no plural form of the word "addend".

"Sheikie"