Wireless Audio Transmitter?

[AZRedhawk44]

Looking for something that can transmit the signal from my TV's RCA (or even the optical output signal or other high quality audio signals) sockets across the room wirelessly to my stereo.

My living room has a built in entertainment center that is a great place for a TV, but a wretched place for a stereo.  Best place for a stereo is against the back wall.  Running cable is not desireable since the ceiling is vaulted, and the wall with the stereo is an exterior wall and full of insulation.

What's available to transmit my audio signal?  Anyone here used anything like this?

[Manedwolf]

Radio Shack has a 2.4gHz one, but network might interfere.

[41magsnub]

I don't have a real answer for you, but what is under the floor?  In my situation for this exact problem I just ran the wire down into the crawl space and then brought it up at the stereo.

[The Annoyed Man]

Easiest way to do this is get something that transmits it as a radio signal in the broadcast band.... and then tune your stereo to the frequency you're using.  You'll have to use a frequency not in use locally (not a problem usually).

Belkin makes a product or two that do this for the Ipod.  You can just get some adapters to go from dual RCA to stereo mini plug (or whatever size the Ipod uses).  That's probably the easiest way.  It might not be the cheapest though.

You can go with a Ramsey kit.  This one should be fine for your use.  http://www.ramseyelectronics.com/cgi-bin/commerce.exe?preadd=action&key=FM10C

I use a larger Ramsey unit for broadcasting holiday music to accompany my light display so that cars driving by to see the lights can tune in to the frequency and listen to accompanying music.

The Ramsey kit is probably cheaper, but is a little bit of work as it's a kit (it would take you probably half a saturday to put it together if you don't know much about electronics - and an hour or two if you know what you're doing).  Not difficult at all though.

[MechAg94]

Best Buy and others sell wireless speaker systems for rear speakers.  I guess that isn't quite the same thing. 

Would the FM transmitters you get for a car stereo be strong enough to go across the room?

[AZRedhawk44]

I don't have a real answer for you, but what is under the floor?  In my situation for this exact problem I just ran the wire down into the crawl space and then brought it up at the stereo.

The floor is concrete tile, the ceiling is high and vaulted with no crawl space to use, and the walls of interest are exterior walls.

Best Buy and others sell wireless speaker systems for rear speakers.  I guess that isn't quite the same thing.

Nah, I saw wireless speaker systems.  They tend to be rechargeable, have poor audio quality, and flimsy looking.  I've got a nice stereo that sounds great, so I need to use it.

Cheese:  That FM10C sounds really cool.  Are those Left/Right RCA inputs on the back of the picture?  Is the power transmission range adjustable so that I don't bombard my neighborhood with DVD-over-FM?

Looking over it more, the FM30B looks to be what I'm looking for.  Quite a bit more expensive, but I don't want to screw with transmit-frequency drift or bad left/right balance.  I just want to sit and watch movies or TV in my living room and get good audio for it out of my stereo.

Thank you, though... I wasn't sure where to get something like that.

Are there any better suggestions?  Perhaps dedicated RCA to RCA wireless transmitters of some sort?

[Manedwolf]

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2367761&cp=&sr=1&origkw=wireless+audio&kw=wireless+audio&parentPage=search

Go through walls.
The RF-Link" 5.8GHz Wireless A/V Sender System consists of one transmitter and one receiver. This wireless device transmits vivid video and hi-fi stereo sound from a VCR, TV, LD, DVD, VCD, satellite receiver or cable set top box to any TV or monitor. It can also be used in conjunction with a camcorder or CCD camera and turns into a wireless security monitoring system.

    * Transmit and receive crisp video and hi-fi stereo even through walls
    * Avoid the interference from crowded 2.4GHz ISM band applications
    * Built-in IR remote extender allows you to remotely control A/V sources in other rooms
    * 5.8GHz wireless transmitter and receiver with 4 selectable channels


What's in the box

    * 5.8GHz transmitter
    * 5.8GHz receiver
    * IR mouse
    * 2 fasten strips
    * 2 power adapters (120V)
    * 2 RCA cables (A/V)

[The Annoyed Man]

I'm not sure 100% if they're RCA or not on the FM10C.  I believe they are though.  I'm fairly confident that they are in fact.

Take a look at some of the Belkin units.  They have them at Target, Apple stores, possibly even Walmart.  They would have less of a range than the Ramsey products, but more than sufficient to go across a room (there is an antenna mod that can be done to extend their range considerably).  I believe they also have an easy to use frequency selector.  I even saw one in an Apple Ipod vending machine for your car that automatically found the best/cleanest frequency available.  They have some for household use too - not just for cars.

[AZRedhawk44]

I ordered one of those RF-Link 5.8Ghz units for my new TV's audio link to my stereo.  We'll see how it works.

[AZRedhawk44]

For those interested, I installed my new RF-Link 5.8Ghz wireless audio transmitter/receiver system in my living room.

I plugged the L/R RCA cables into the audio output of my TV and into the receiving sockets of the transmitter unit.  I located the receiving unit across the room about 15 feet, on top of my component stereo (Yamaha RX-V661).  I plugged the L/R RCA outputs from the receiving unit into the DVR input for my stereo, inverting the L/R signal by swapping white-to-red and red-to-white to account for the fact that my stereo's left channel is opposite the left channel of my TV, and vice versa, since it's across the room facing it.

The audio signal coming across the system is extremely weak.  At first I thought nothing was coming out at all, and I cranked up the volume on the receiver to a flat 0db.  I could finally hear the "rear" speakers over the sound of the front speakers coming from the TV.  Hmmm... not good.  Either the TV is not giving a good strong L/R RCA signal, or the wireless system is not passing a strong signal to the receiver... because back in ex-GF's house this stereo was rigged to a TV via RCA and sounded great.

So, I pulled out the grand-daddy of the RX-V661, a Yamaha RX-730 that I've had for about 10 years (and my dad had for 10 years before that) and I had replaced with the 661 since the LED display was starting to fade and the internal power amp picked up some distortion.  I figured I could use it as a signal pre-amp, then run RCA outputs from it into the newer 661.

That works better and will do okay until I am situated in a more permanent home, but still ain't great.  Signal to noise ratio is noticeably bad... I can hear hum in the signal and I'm FAR from an audiophile.  Not bad enough to deter me from using the setup, but I'm far from picky with this.  Volume on the "preamp" is almost maxed, and volume on the main amp hovers around -20 to -10 db, whereas for music listening through my CD player or the radio it typically is set to about -30db for comfortable listening.

Definitely not worth the $130 total cost of the wireless setup.

Anyone know of a cheap and simple solution to amplify a L/R RCA audio signal that doesn't involve the use of a second component receiver like I used?  Maybe one I can use to boost the signal on both ends of the wireless transmitter?

[Manedwolf]

Sorry it didn't work out...Can't any companies make under-$500 electronics that are not CRAP anymore?

[robear]

Have you tried changing the volume on the TV to see if that has any affect on the level of the RCA outputs?    Some TVs have a setting for "FIXED" or "VARIABLE" audio on their RCA outputs.   

[AZRedhawk44]

The TV volume has no bearing on RCA output volume.

There is also no menu option to disable the internal TV speakers and control volume via the RCA outs.  I can turn the TV volume completely off and have sound come out the RCA outputs.  Haven't tried to see what mute does to RCA output yet.

The audio features in the TV's menu are rather dismal, but I bought it as a "right now" TV, not necessarily a keep-it-forever-in-the-living-room TV.  As long as it lasts a couple years without losing pixels or anything, I'm happy.

[AJ Dual]

I wonder if there's a wi-fi product that can transmit audio, and do the various dolby surround encodings too? There's tons of Wi-Fi media servers that'll bring MP3's and videos from the home LAN to the entertain

The main thrust of the problem you're having seems to be on the actual analog output and your amplification, but a pure digital stream with actual error correction in it's protocol would at least eliminate any errors in the wireless part of the equation.

802.11g or n can certainly stream 44khz 16bit CD-quality audio and keep on trucking with plenty of bandwidth to spare, and with a broadcaster and reciever on different network if you even use WiFi in your house it wouldn't even suck off that network...

I think this would work... http://cnet.nytimes.com/networking-and-wi-fi/infocus-liteshow-ii-wireless/4507-3243_7-32517943.html?tag=specs

The main problem is you're paying for VGA video transfer too, and the audio out is just a measly headphone jack designed around what most computer equipment uses. But it at least proves the product exists, and there must be more of them out there. And the specs make no mention of handling multi-channel surround encoding.

I'm sure you'd have to hook them up to a PC via USB or RJ-45 Ethernet to get them programmed and set up the networking, but once it was done, you could just leave one on the TV and the other on the stereo, and would only need to program them if they lost their settings for some reason.

[AZRedhawk44]

I think I'm done throwing money at a problem that really isn't that big of a deal.  I prefer bigger, cinematic sound when watching movies and such, but the audio from the TV internal speakers is surprisingly one of the better points of this inexpensive TV.  I still get lousy bass, but dialogue is at least clear.  The little bit of signal I get across the room with this current setup will "tide me over" for watching big epic booming movies until I get my new house.

Once I buy a house later this fall/winter, I'll hook up digital-optical cable from the TV into the stereo when it's on the right side of the room in the new environment, go 5.1 with the setup, and hide away in my newly established man-cave.

[Tallpine]

Wireless Audio Transmitter

WAT