Recent wireless audio gizmos such as iPods, wireless headphones and cell phones support new wireless protocols. These protocols are supposed to cut the cord and deliver perfect high-fidelity audio. We will examine some of the latest products to discover which applications they work for.

These products fall into 2 categories. The first type of products already has wireless built in. Second-category products, such as a few streaming audio devices, have optional wireless capability. Typically they have a slot to insert a wireless LAN card. Recent touch-screen iPods and iPhones already have WiFi and Bluetooth built in.

The Bluetooth protocol is a fairly low-cost solution. Still, its pitfalls have an influence on high-quality audio applications and are often ignored.

1) Short range

Bluetooth devices usually just have a 30-foot range which restricts Bluetooth to single-room applications.

2) Audio compression resulting from restricted data rate

Bluetooth reliably supports data transmission rates of around 1 Mbps only which is not adequate for uncompressed CD-quality audio. Consequently Bluetooth applies audio compression. Audio compression will deteriorate the audio quality to some degree. High-quality audio transmission usually does not tolerate this kind of distortion. Therefore Bluetooth is normally not used in high-end audio devices.

3) Audio delay

The audio will experience a delay of a minimum of 10 ms for the most part due to the audio compression which is a problem for real-time audio applications but less serious for MP3 players.

4) No support of multiple headphones

Bluetooth can’t stream to multiple headphones at the same time. This may be a dilemma in cases where several people want to listen to the same Bluetooth transmitter.

Uncompressed audio streaming is supported by WiFi. WiFi is a very common protocol. On the other hand, WiFi also has limitations in regard to simultaneous transmission to a number of receivers. It is practical for streaming music from a PC due to the high availability but is in general not used in wireless headphone products due to the fairly high power consumption of WiFi.

Home wireless speaker devices and wireless amplifiers typically utilize proprietary protocols. These protocols are especially engineered for real-time audio applications. Yet, entry-level wireless speakers and headphones still utilize FM transmission. FM transmission suffers from fairly high audio degradation and noise / static.

More recent wireless audio protocols are based on digital transmission. This prevents audio degradation. A few protocols also incorporate error correction to cope with interference from other wireless devices.

Latest-generation wireless amplifiers utilize uncompressed audio transmission. Recent protocols also permit streaming to an infinite number of receivers. This enables whole-house audio distribution.

Some of these protocols support low-latency audio transmission which assures that the audio of all speakers will be in sync in a multi-channel application. These wireless audio transmitters normally work at 2.4 GHz. There are also some devices including Amphony’s line of wireless audio devices which work at 5.8 GHz. Products that operate at 5.8 GHz have less competition from other wireless devices than those using the crowded 2.4 GHz frequency band.

Wireless amplifiers offer different levels of audio quality, output power and standby power. Digital amplifiers usually offer a power efficiency of no less than 80% and standby power consumption of less than 5 Watts which keeps them cool during operation and helps save energy. However, some Class-D amps have fairly high audio distortion. Picking a low-distortion amplifier is important. Good-quality wireless amplifiers have audio distortion of less than 0.05%.

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