Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Wireless Subwoofer

Has anyone had any experience with the wireless subwoofers. Since I stay in an apartment, i'm particularly concerned with the interference it might pick up from other wireless signals in the building.
Whats the take on HSU's ULS-15?

Sarang,

Sorry nobody has responded to your post. I am guessing this is due to the fact that it is an Axiom forum and Axiom to my knowledge does not offer a wireless sub. You might want to try the HSU or AVR forums for more advice. best of luck

I know there was some interest in it in the past, but I don't know that anyone around here got one of them.

I was interested, but then the EP800 announcement happened, and I spent a ton of money with Axiom. Ha ha. It would still be cool to know what the ULS-15 can do, and testing the wireless aspect would be nice.

You could always make whatever subwoofer that you get wireless with the Aperion Home Audio Link™ System. It's a little spendier than I'd like, so here's hoping some competing products come out.

Aperion seems to be taking hold to wireless technology. They recently announced they will be bringing to market a wireless two-way powered speaker as well.

Hi Sarang,

Axiom has not experimented with wireless subwoofer technology, nor have I, however we did experiment with wireless speakers for outdoor use.

In a general way, as soon as you get into wireless technology, there are several major problems--noise and interference being well up at the top of the list. There are so many competing devices for wireless bandwidth that it's almost impossible to totally eliminate the problem. If you've played around with various wireless headphones, which I've done, you'll get some idea of the intrinsic problems.

I've never played with a wireless subwoofer connection to see what the current state is. Of course, you still have to connect the subwoofer to AC power, because you can't transmit amplifier power wirelessly.

Regards,
Alan

I will say that the folks who own the HSU 15's give very favorable reviews on other forums. Some runing upto 4 of them wirelessly with no crosstalk from other devices. In this day and age this should be very doable in my opinion, especially just for a sub. I know people that wirelessly send HD video/audio in their home with no issues, breakup, or lag time.

I think this would be a huge seller for Axiom if they have the time to research. In past customer council calls I did mention it to Ian and the gang, hope it is on the plate for future discussions. It sure would make placing multiple subs in a room much easier, and you know we talk about that all the time..

Randy do you know how they send the signals. I would think that using wireless networking might be a viable way of connecting all your speakers. IMO for the masses wireless is the way of the future and Axiom would be shooting itself in the foot not to look more into pursuing it.

To be honest I don't know how all of it is configured. Although they are my friends, at work, I have yet to stop by their pad.

Going by a few comments on AVS the wireless is a bit of a hit and miss, some love it and some have issues
From wingnut4772:
"I have the ULS-15 Quad Drive and I like my subs. The wireless is a mixed bag. At first I liked the versatility of it but I was getting too much interference with my Bluetooth PS3, my wireless network, Squeezebox etc. I decided just to hook them up the old fashioned way and they sound great. If I were to put them in a custom room I would not use wireless but would run cables to their positions."


Austinjerry:
"While wireless works fine for many people, others (myself included) have had issues with wireless interference from other devices, including cordless telephones"

I have a friend who researched the Aperion Audio Link but decided against it. The reviews he read were so diverse it ended the wireless consideration. Personally, Alan's take on the technology is right on. The amount of interference varies so much it's quite a risk. You can't beat the dependability of the wire connection.

That's disappointing, especially considering how universally positive the reviews were on Aperion's site.

Yeah, that's too bad. I always go with wired over wireless whenever I can, but wireless certainly would make subwoofer placement cleaner and easier. Even if I could run the signal over my home network, at least then it would simply be run from wherever the closest ethernet jack is. And since I'll have jacks on every wall in the basement, that would be easy.

You could have sub out jacks on every wall just as easy, pull some coax through at the same time as the cat5

Well, I'd be going with balanced XLRs. How easy is that? I haven't looked too far into it. Having JUST the ethernet jack would still be simpler, and less weird for anyone else who ends up living here, but you're right, it shouldn't be that much harder to run these subwoofer connections at the same time.

XlR's are a little tougher(bigger end) but not by that much. Maybe run a double set up with XLR and coax/RCA for those that follow you without the capacity for XLR

Running both would probably be a good idea even just for me. I might want RCAs for something at some point.

I thought that this was interesting.

http://www.audioholics.com/education/surround-sound/summit-wireless

Interesting yes, interference free? For now till more products make use of the same frequency. It sounds like you need 120V outlets where ever you are setting the speakers.

"The Summit Wireless team informed me that they could integrate this solution into virtually any loudspeaker design and eliminate the need of a passive crossover, thus creating a truly active bi-amplified speaker solution with perfect driver phase and time alignment. Very cool!"

The writer tries to make this sound so easy yet to run this system you need amps for each speaker, not a bad thing but there is still the extra 120v outlets required at each speaker position to have it run the way it is desribed. I think it is still much easier to pull low voltage speaker wire and have all the amps in one location. I get the feeling it could still be set up this way though.

It looks like Aperion has implemented this wireless technology into their 5.1/7.1 home theatre setups.

http://www.audioholics.com/reviews/speakers/lifestyle-desktop-and-portable/aperion-intimus-4t

In my opinion this technology is really cool even with potential kinks and all. Love it or hate it, wireless technology is going to have a place in the home audiophile market in the future. I like seeing manufacturers getting in on this. It can only help spark innovation. Lots of money to be made in this sector too.

Although not wireless, the idea of self-powered speakers with the appropriate internal crossovers directing power to each individual driver is not a new one since Paradigm,among others, attempted this several years ago with their reference line. It was quite expensive and attempted application in a sophisticated A/V system, it was a dismal failure. The problem was you still had to run RCA cables from your AVR/Pre-Pro to each speaker and have an outlet close by for the speaker to be plugged into. In this case, even if it is wireless and you have to start running extension cords to reach the closest AC outlet, I think it is kind of defeating the purpose of the whole thing.

In the article in Audioholics, I am still not clear how the central unit works in conjunction with all the source devices one might have to use in the system. As we all know AVR/Pre-Pros are pretty sophisticated and require fairly time-consuming set-up to get everything working the way they should.

In a relatively simple set-up, maybe. Replace an AVR/Pre-Pro? I dunno.