Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Using wireless speakers to upgrade to 7.1

New to the forum so excuse me if this topic has already been discussed. My home theater is a few years old, during installation, I prepped the area for 6.1 with a rear center speaker. I'm very happy with the performance although I wish I could replace my older SONY 60" WEGA (optic block )

I've read that 7.1 gives very little over a well designed 5.1 set up but would love to test it for myself. It's out of the question to run a pair of wired speakers due to the layout of the room and my wife. I wondering if I could use a pair of Axiom wireless speakers for this application. If I'm way off base here, feel free to say, Hey Joe, you're way off base here.

thanks in advance.

Joe

Welcome to the forum.

Hate to say it, but you're way off base. Axiom doesn't make wireless speakers. They only speakers they make which have their own amps are the subs. Even their computer speakers need an amp added.

Additionally all the wireless speaker systems I've seen are really poorly designed. Not something you'd want to pair with any high-end speaker.

Personally going from 5.1 to 7.1 and expanding all 5.1 mixes to 7 with Dolby ProLogic IIx, I believe was a big improvement in my room.

I think an easier way to test would be to run some wire across the floor rather than invest in a wireless speaker system anyway. With Axiom's 30-day, no questions asked, full refund, in-home trial, that may be the easiest way to go.

Axiom was developing wireless Algonquin's when they first started talking about the outdoor M3's...unfortunately haven't heard a peep about it since.

Anyone at Axiom want to give an update? Here's the words from the Man himself in the links below... also notice the M3's below are taller than normal, if I'm not mistaken for the amps.

http://www.axiomaudio.com/boards/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=11770&Number=159991#Post159991

http://www.axiomaudio.com/boards/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=11770&Number=160031#Post160031

http://www.axiomaudio.com/boards/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=11770&Number=160048#Post160048

Hey Chris,

Thanks for the welcome and your thoughts. So from your post, your expansion to 7.1 has been well worth the investment. I like your idea of running temp wires although I will have to experiment with ceiling or wall placement.

ould have sworn i was led to this site during a search for wireless options.

Thanks again.

You can use little wireless boxes with Axiom speakers, of course. I had looked at that option awhile back, but I decided I didn't need speakers in the kitchen. Something along these lines. I think I had found a different model, though, that ran at 5.8GHz.

Hay,

We never brought the wireless product to market because we could not get it to be stable in all the environments we tested it in. Sometimes it would loose its lock to the transmitter and we were concerned that would just be irritating. The larger cabinet was to house the battery. The battery would run the speakers for about 24 hours of straight reasonably loud playing. This would allow you to take high quality music anywhere around the yard or down to the dock if you were at the cottage. They had a charger unit that plugged into the wall and supplied 12 volts to the speaker. If you were using them in a permanent location you would just leave them plugged in all the time.

The attempt at providing wireless speakers, especially in a surround sound application, is nothing new. For at least twenty years if not more, companies that have come and gone have tried it with little success. It follows a similar pattern to companies that attempted to market "powered" speakers. As Ian pointed out they(wireless) weren't particularly stable plus they always tended to be relatively small which wouldn't be particularly useful when looking at the demands of today's wide ranging sound in digital music and movie applications.

Thanks for the update Ian.

I work in the wireless industry. There's MANY ways to create wireless speakers. Sadly, there's still no way to do it and have it sound great. The RF interference and latency issues wreak havoc on the sound quality and timing, so up to now there's never been any successful products.

Companies have tried Wifi and Bluetooth but those are plagued by interference from normal network equipment. Other frequencies are crowded with other consumer products.

Apple has potential solution using Airtunes and Airport Expresses, I've found the latencies to be almost nil if you can reach all Expresses w/ one access point. But those require powered speakers and there's no multichannel implementation.

Honestly, the best wireless speaker I've heard isn't even stereo. A friend has a 900 MHz Brookstone speaker that actually sounded REALLY good, kind of like how a Tivoli sounds great with one speaker. Must be doing well, they've been selling it for years.

http://www.brookstone.com/indoor-outdoor...ist1FDT|7141633

Thanks for the update Ian, I guess we will just wait around for the M100's then