I am going to offer some guidance to help you choose a pair of wireless speakers from the large number of available models.
Wireless speakers are a great choice for adding speakers in additional rooms of your house without adding wiring. In addition, these speakers are ideal for adding surround sound to your TV without running lots of speaker cable around the room.
Wireless speakers are more difficult to pick than regular speakers since they incorporate an amplifier and a wireless receiver. Different models differ in quality of each of these components.
Speaker wattage is one of the first parameters. The larger the speaker wattage typically the higher the speaker sound pressure level can be. The maximum speaker wattage depends on both how much power the speaker elements can handle as well as the power rating of the built-in amplifier. Don't be fooled by maximum wattage ratings which are often exaggerated by manufacturers and rather take a look at the RMS wattage rating.
However, keep in mind that music signals have large spikes in output power so be sure there is enough headroom in the speaker power rating to eliminate audio compression at short audio bursts.
The frequency response of the speaker shows the frequency range the speaker can reproduce. However, different manufacturers use different conventions when specifying the frequency response. Ideally, you should get a copy of the speaker frequency response curve of each model for comparison.
Audio amplifiers will have audio distortion which varies depending on the output power at which the speaker is driven. The distortion is often called "THD" or "total harmonic distortion". Make sure you compare the output power at which the harmonic distortion is specified. Ideally you will find harmonic distortion figures for different power figures Once the audio amplifier is driven to its maximum power, audio distortion will increase dramatically due to clipping of the audio signal. Speaker audio distortion will also depend on the quality of the transducers
Speakers with larger power rating usually have digital amplifiers which offer larger power efficiency than traditional power amplifiers. Picking a model with a higher-efficiency amp is usually lighter since it does not require heavy cooling fans and saves you money on electricity. However, some digital amp models have fairly high audio distortion due to nonlinearities of the internal switching stage. Thus, pay close attention to the harmonic distortion figure.
Wireless speakers with multiple transducers will need some sort of crossover. This crossover can be implemented with passive elements. Alternatively, some models will have separate amplifiers for each transducer. In this case the gain of each amplifier can usually be adjusted separately.
The receiver which picks up the wireless audio either from a transmitter or from a wireless network or Bluetooth signal also has a major influence on sound quality. For best sound quality, you may want to avoid 900 MHz analog wireless transmission which inherently has a low signal-to-noise ratio and instead pick a receiver which uses a digital audio signal.
Digital wireless speakers will use uncompressed audio for best quality or compressed audio such as Bluetooth speakers. Bluetooth wireless speakers do not require a dedicated transmitter but usually only one speaker can pick up the audio from one transmitter. Other types of wireless speaker transmitters can send the audio wireless to several speakers throughout the home.
Get additional information about wireless surround sound systems and wireless speakers from Amphony's website.
