New wireless home MP3 receiver

Motorola is selling the Simplefi Wireless Digial Audio Receiver. It is available for purchase, but there are nearly no detailed specs. It says it's wireless, then it talks about hooking it up to a USB port. Then it says it will stream from up to 150 feet away, but the term "WiFi" or "802.11" are never spoken. WTF?

This looks like something I would be interested in. If only they would give me the specs...

That company has a whole range of devices that supposedly all work together wirelessly (including a car player http://www.simpledevices.com/simpleauto.shtml). The auto player will download your songs wirelessly from your pc. It is probably 802.11 but I think that they have a customized base station because it requires your PC to have a free USB port.

Interesting...

-Mark

Sweet unit...

However with a simple wireless transmitter and receiver package like the US Robotics soundlink , you can accomplish the same thing at 1/3 the price...just not as fancy tho...I have been using these for some months now and they deliver a strong signal without interference. The tunes sound great!

With the USR, how the heck do you control which MP3 is playing .... apart from run upstairs to the computer ?

You can use the US Robotics Soundlink if you don't care about sound quality. The SimpleFi device uses HomeRF to digitally transmit your files resulting in considerably better sound quality than a simple FM transmitter could ever hope to deliver. You'll get a better S/N ratio, lower distortion. better dynmamic range, stereo separation, etc.

It's not 802.11, it's HomeRF; claimed 1.5mbit, but everyone I talk to says it only sustains about 50% of that.

v2 of homeRF is 10mbit, but again I hear it'll only sustain half that.

Not seen the car player, but the home one has cute plastics and the same CPU as the rio receiver. Not linux though, I don't think, and no amp onboard. No idea if it sounds as good as the rio, as I didn't get a good chance to listen.

I'm sure the display can't be worse than the rio receiver though, in terms of brightness or size...

Hugo

Hugo, I own a Rio Receiver and I would rather use it. However, I havn't gotten around to installing RJ-45 jacks all over my appartment and there is no phone line near my stereo. So, the solution is a wireless Rio Receiver-like product. If there was a detailed How-to on adding 802.11 to the Rio Receiver, I would do it in a second. Unfortunately, I have nearly no experience with 802.11 and I hear getting two access points to communicate is a pain.

Well I DO care about sound quality, and I have a high-end home sound surround system. As my MP3s are encoded @ 100 VBR, they are good quality too. The receiver has a direct connection to my amp (I don't use the FM tuning option) and as the unit transmits in the 900 MHz spectrum, the signal is distortion free. I cannot distinguish the broadcast music from my CD player output...and that's all that matters to me. As for controlling the tunes, it's a non-issue, I put my collection on random play and let the software decide what I am going to hear, it's all good to me because I picked the playlist to begin with...

John

Damn, I'm going to have to update my matrix to include this thing... Hmmmm... Now how to fit another column without scrolling the page. Argh.

Reminds me of a much-polished Neo.

Bruno

So do you ever have interference problems when you use this US Robotics thing or reduced high
frequency? After all, that US Robotics device still uses an analog FM transmitter even if it is at the
900 MHz band. I too have a high end, but stereo-only system. I had a similar device that operated
on 2.4 GHz. When it worked, it truncated some of the highs and was afflicted with sporadic
interference problems.

Your 100 VBR MP3s are of good quality? I assume the 100 refers to the bit rate? Wow, I find such
low bit rates unlistenable, even with VBR. I use 192 CBR and can still tell the difference between the
MP3 and the original.

I like the idea behind the SimpleFi device because the digital transmission alleviates much of the
shortcomings of radio transmission of audio. I hope it has a buffer though or there will probably be
dropouts in the sound. I was actually looking into developing a similar, but superior device a while
ago, but could not come up with the funds.

Stu

The 100 means he's using MusicMatch or some other Fraunhofer-enabled software. It's a percentage setting for VBR quality. I have no idea what average bitrates that translates to.

Bruno

Hello

My bad, I forgot to put the percentage sign in there. At 100% VBR, my files average anywhere from 192-256 Kbps and from 5-8 MB in size. I did alot of expermentation with encoding when I first started using MP3 to assertain what music quality I would be happy with. I was replacing an in-dash CD player and with the audio equipment I already had in the car to support the CD player, I wanted to make sure that the sound would be comparable. And yes Bruno, you're right on the money, I have been using Music Match jukebox since the beginning.....

It's not the cheapest option, but a Linksys WAP11 and a crossover cable will work just fine with the receiver. If you have no 802.11 yet, buy 2 wap11's and configure them as bridges.

Hugo

Or even cheaper get two NetGear ME102, which are the same hardware as the Linksys WAP11 devices and re-flash them with the Linksys firmware.

In the UK the ME102 is 25% cheaper than the WAP11 (ME102 is 104 quid + VAT at action, cheapest I can find WAP11 for is 140). The ME102 does not have an external antenna socket however.

I use Rio Receivers and Empeg with Orinoco( Lucent ) Ethernet Converters, plug a patch cable between the Empeg/Receiver and the small box, and insert an 802.11b PCMCIA card in the box. Works just fine and no messing around, giving a very neat solution. Downside is the Ethernet Converter is £250.

Thanks for the info. I bought a WAP11 on a whim before Hugo suggested it. I'm glad to know it will work.