How I am doing surround wirelessly

[mattopia]

Hi all,

I've been using my Serra-1's for L/C/R for several months now. When I placed the order, I also picked up some CBM-170 SE's for use as rear channels. Unfortunately, in my living room, there is NO good clean way to route the wires. Walls are plaster, basement ceiling is finished, there's a fireplace in the way of where I'd run the cables, etc, etc.

Since I couldn't use the 170's as surrounds, I've just been using them for occasional music in the bedroom until I found a good way. Well, ladies and gentleman, I finally found a way to do it without running wires to the rear of the room.

First, I needed some way to transmit the audio to the rear of the room. I had seen a few reviews of the new Audio Engine AW1 wireless audio distribution adapters. Basically, two simple black boxes that transmit and receive line level audio.

http://audioengineusa.com/store/prod...products_id=82

EngadgetHD had a review a week or so ago that finally pushed me to pull the trigger on them:

http://www.engadgethd.com/2008/03/17...adapter-revie/

Picked a sender/receiver pair up for $149 direct from Audio Engine.

Now that I had a way to get the audio to the back of the room, I needed a decent amplifier, preferably with auto-on capabilities. I had previously tried the Sonic Impact T-Amp, but I wasn't terribly impressed out of the box and didn't have the time and resources to do any of the many mods out there. Also, I wanted something that would automatically power on/off based on if there was a source present.

After some searching, I discovered that Parts Express sells a handy 2 channel zone amplifier with auto on capabilities:

http://www.partsexpress.com/pe/showd...number=302-601

Currently priced at $99.

I simply connected the wireless sender to the surround line-level outputs on my receiver (Denon AVR-787), completed the dirt simple pairing process, connected the wireless receiver unit to the input of the zone amplifier, wired he speakers to the amplifier, hid the amp under the couch, and done!

Everything is working flawlessly so far. I'm experimenting with the delay settings a bit on my receiver as a final tweak. The auto setup routine of my receiver detected the rears as being further away than they are, likely due to a small delay present with the wireless transmission. Audio Engine claims there is practically no delay, so I need to determine if I should leave the delay in there or manually set the distances.

Hopefully this helps some of the Ascend fans out there!

[DaveHo]

Hey, that's awesome! My BIL had the same issue at an apartment he used to rent. At the time, I did some research for him & we ended up going with the Kenwood RFU-6100. It got the job done, but the built in amp was not the highest quality. The Audio Engine gizmo is a much better solution.

-Dave