Wireless Speakers?

You should play up your role and arrange to have Charlotte Green or Corrie Corfield over on Christmas Day.

I would also be glad to hear about this. I spent several hours trying to research this last spring and basically found three sorts of solutions: there are really expensive home theater systems that can be set up wirelessly across multiple rooms; there are some more affordably wireless speakers that seem like they might be decent, but seem intended for use by the pool, where good sound quality isn’t essential; and there’s the Apple Airport Express, which can plug in to any speakers wirelessly, but then only does the sound from iTunes. Perhaps there was something I was missing then, or perhaps there is something better now?

(The advantage of the latter solution, a bluetooth-receiver that plugs into the ipod-dock, is just that it is simpler; since it draws power from the ipod 30-pin connector, it doesn’t need a separate power source, nor does it need a wire to plug into the line-in jack. The disadvantage is that it takes up the dock, though you can always just pull it out when you want to charge your phone. I currently use it–well, this, technically, but it’s the same idea–with the Klipsch ipod-dock, and I’m pretty happy with it.)

Worth looking into, maybe: Jambox.

I happened to like Tivoli’s Audio Ipal when I had one. Its portable but not wireless. It has a battery that can last a day but you need to connect you ipod to its speaker with a cable. The whole unit fits in the palm of your hand. But I think the Yamaha looks like it might be the best option for your darling wife.

For small and portable the Yamaha NX-B02 is pretty good, though the sound will not measure up to a high quality system. If she wants a high-quality, but bulkier, system get an Amphony wireless amplifier and some good speakers. These are very simple–no software configuration at all. Just plug them in. If sound quality is important to your wife, spend on speakers–with modern amplifiers, one gets the most bang for the buck by buying good speakers.

Why not see what advice and support you can get from a specialist retail outlet that doesn’t grovel shamelessly to Senator Lieberman?

I use the Creative Labs X-Fi system, and I would recommend it. There is a base that holds the iPod and one or more remote receivers can be positioned anywhere in the house. The receiver has to be connected to an amplifier and speakers, but even a clock radio will do so long as it has an input jack. One nice feature is that the iPod can be paused or restarted from any remote by hitting a button.

same experience as Kenny – when I looked last year, there was nothing between the cheap and cheap-sounding low end, and high end stuff that costs more than my car (<a href="http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/11/10.html"Sonos might be a decent solution if you can afford it). I have the Rocketfish speakers and transmitter for about $100. They work OK in a party situation with lots of audio distractions, but the sound quality is flat and tinny so they are rather horrible to actually listen to.

I’ve read good reviews of the Audioengine speakers and other devices, but that looks like $200 for the speakers, $120 for the ipod wireless accessory, so not exactly cheap.

and there’s the Apple Airport Express, which can plug in to any speakers wirelessly, but then only does the sound from iTunes.

You need Airfoil – it enables you to stream audio from any program that plays audio through your Airport Express. (Except it currently doesn’t work properly with certain browsers like Firefox and Chrome.) It costs about £20 and comes in Mac and Windows versions.

I’ll meander my way into seconding recommendation for the Yamaha. This is a hard question to answer, because good-but-not-expensive speaker systems are usually specifically tailored to some particular kind of use.

For example, I like walking around my apartment doing chores while listening to music, which means I want to be able to carry a very portable system with me — and I need the system to play the music somewhat omni-directionally, and I need to be able to control bass output easily and quickly, as sometimes it’s late evening and I want to respect neighbors’ quietude. Alternatively, one of my coworkers plays music at his place through nice speakers that he can broadcast to, via bluetooth, from a variety of devices: his Mac or his iGadgets. My need for wireless is portability; his is the convenience of it (his speakers don’t move). No affordable product that I know of meets both needs well.

But I asked around! I figure there’s some use to engineer friends :)

Affordable wireless speaker technology kind of sucks right now, if by “wireless” you mean “broadcast” — i.e. if your wife wants to have the device in one place, the speakers a fair distance away (not directly connected to the iPod). For that, you can get Bluetooth or you can get RF (900MHz, 2.7GHz, etc). Those aren’t good options and I don’t know of any alternatives. Bluetooth is short-range, energy-intensive, and not “Sanyo Internet Radio easy” unless you’re already comfortable setting up Bluetooth devices (I’d say really not too tricky at all, but I’m a bad judge of ease of setup.) The various RF devices share their frequencies with, for example, your (or your neighbor’s) cordless phone… so the quality is inevitably poor due to interference, unless you happen to not have any interfering devices around. (If you do get an RF device, get one operating on the 2.7GHz band and be sure to check the return policy.) My coworker has a bluetooth system he likes; he didn’t know the brand name/model offhand but I can follow up on that if that’s what your wife is interested in.

I’m surprised to see people recommending Jambox (sneaky spam ads perhaps?); maybe Aliph makes multiple models, but the one I saw was all bells and whistles and some kind of downloadable app/content update (?!) Not what you want, I suspect.

On the other hand, for wireless speakers = “please turn my iPod into a boombox type device,” i.e. for portability, whoever recommended the Yamaha PDX-60 has exactly the right idea. (You know it’s not going to be too trying to set up when literally the only buttons are volume up and volume down.) I’d also recommend comparing that Yamaha with the Kanto SYD 4* which is another, similar version of the same boomboxish thing; Kanto also makes a handful of similar such products which I don’t have any familiarity with. …and if this were say 2018 A.D., I’d probably be recommending the currently nonexistent Polk Audio I-Sonic 7, because sooner or later Polk is going to resolve their miscellaneous firmware issues and make some really great products. (For now, though, I gather one should avoid ’em. I have no firsthand experience.)

The person who recommended Sonos made me twitch a little — one of my employers at U.W. had a Sonos system, and mind you, it was incredible. But not easy to get set up, super expensive, and probably somewhat a “bringing a tactical nuke to a balloon fight” overkill.

*I gather one should not buy Kanto products via Amazon, due to warranty issue technicalities I didn’t understand. Anyhow, they have a website.