I’ve got a great audio system in my living room, but I’d like to listen to it in other areas of the house. There’s no way I am going to run wires all over the place or cut up the walls to install speakers. What are my wireless options?
There are plenty of wireless systems that can solve your problem. And unlike wireless products of the past, these actually sound surprisingly good.
Take the Marantz M-CR603 AM/FM/CD/Internet Radio Receiver ($699.00), for instance. The receiver is IP-based and IP addressable, so it can act as the hub for a whole-home Wi-Fi-based entertainment system. That means it can be used as a zone player for users who already have, say, a receiver-based home theater system in their family room, and it can control and distribute audio to other IP-addressable products throughout the home. Plus, its universal remote control lets you control the entire system from any room in the house.
Sonos also makes some great Wi-Fi networking products, such as the ZONEPLAYER 90 and 120. ZONEPLAYER is the heart of the Sonos system. You place it anywhere in your house where you want to hear music. You can play music in all the zones of your house — either the same music everywhere or different tracks in different rooms. The various pieces of Sonos hardware communicate among themselves through a wireless mesh network that the devices automatically set up at the push of a button. A basic two-zone system costs $999.
Additionally, upscale networking products from Savant — which start at $15,000 — let you transform your iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch and even your high-definition TV into a personalized control portal.