UPDATED: A Great Solution--on second thought, maybe not so great...
Written: May 15 '02 (Updated Jan 06 '06)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: No need to run wire.
Cons: Each speaker must be turned on and tuned individually. Didn't last.
The Bottom Line: Good alternative to in-wall speakers. Sound good but will not blow away the neighbors. You must turn on and adjust with every use.
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| sylvan's Full Review: Advent AW-820 Main / Wireless Stereo Speaker |
I had been visiting a friend that had just moved into a new home when I noticed he had speakers installed in the ceilings. This seemed like a great idea to me. I loved the idea of being able to play sound from one location and hear that sound anywhere in the house. My goal would be to have the computer, the T.V., the cd player, the dvd player, the vcr, the cassette player -all wired into a central receiver and then output audio from any of those to speakers throughout the house.
I started investigating what it would take to wire my home for sound. I looked at various in-wall systems and what it would take to install them. I read about fishing wire through walls and up through the attic. I stuck my head up into the attic for the first time in the eight years I had owned my home. With quite a bit of effort, I figured I could probably wire a couple of rooms upstairs but I was not so sure about the rooms downstairs. It seemed pretty daunting and my lover told me repeatedly that if I climbed into the attic, I was sure to fall through the ceiling. It seemed inevitable that I would have wires running along baseboards in some locations.
It also occurred to me that I would have to make a decision as to where the central receiver would be located since all the speaker wiring would have to emanate from there. Once that decision had been made, it would not be an easy thing to change the central receiver location. I obsessed about this for a few days, wondering where was the optimum place for the central receiver. I wondered if I ever sold the house, would the new owners find my optimum place to be the same as their optimum place? Would all the effort and wiring and cutting into the walls to install the speakers really be worth it? Then I stumbled across the Advent wireless speakers.
I saw the Advent AW 820 speakers first at Best Buy. They were selling a set of two wireless speakers for about $170.00. I wondered how they would sound but they did not have them hooked up. I was hesitant to spend that much money for speakers that I had not heard and technology that I was not sure would work. I looked on Epinions but only found one review of the 820 and one review of the 870. I searched the web and read about the wireless technology but I was still not convinced I wanted to spend as much as Best Buy was asking.
After a period of another month or so, I saw the Advent AW 820 10 watt speakers advertised in a mail order catalogue (Heartland) for right at $100.00 with free shipping (I have since seen them for even less on E-bay). I happened to have a few extra dollars at the time and was eager to see if these speakers were the answer to my goal to wire my house for sound.
When the speakers arrived, I decided to try them first on my computer so I could listen to internet radio in another part of the house from the computer (I had not yet wired all the various outputs into one receiver). Setting up the transmitter on my computer was a breeze. I wanted to use the Advent speakers in addition to, rather than instead of, my regular wired computer speakers so I had already bought a signal splitter at Radio Shack so I could plug my computer speakers in and still have a mini-plug for the Advent transmitter (if you use the headphone jack on my computer, it turns off the computer speakers- better to split the speaker signal).
Once the little red light was flashing intermittently as described in the easy-to-read instructions for the transmitter, I went downstairs and plugged in each speaker. Each had a tuner knob to find the signal. You dial this until a little red light turns green. I set one speaker to receive the right channel and the other to receive the left. I was really excited to hear how well they held the signal. I was also very impressed with the sound. Seriously, I was ready to order a set for every room in the house! I had found my answer for wiring the house for sound without having to cut into the walls and without having to climb into the attic.
My infatuation faded a little by the end of the day and my initial excitement has abated a little. Do not misunderstand, I am still very happy with the sound but I have found a slight problem I had not anticipated. I had envisioned being able to turn on the sound from the central receiver and be able to adjust the sound level there like you would normally with a stereo system. Initially, I had planned to have each speaker out of the way and out of site, simulating one of the advantages of the in-wall speakers that I had seen at my friend?s house. This turned out to be impractical since you need to have easy access to the speakers for tuning and volume control. One of the negatives I have discovered is that you may not just leave these speakers on all the time. Every time you want to hear an audio signal through these speakers, you must turn each on individually and adjust the volume on each individually. If you leave them on when not playing music through them, you might sometimes hear static or other obnoxious noises. I have figured out a solution to this by putting both speakers on a switched extension cord. I found the optimum placement, tuning and volume levels and now I just turn the speakers on and off with the extension cord and avoid having to adjust everything everytime. This works great for me.
I am still thinking about adding additional Advent speakers in the house. My set-up so far is that I have my computer hardwired into another room into a receiver. So I have hard wired sound in the room with the computer using the computer speakers and hard wired sound in the receiver room next door. The Advent transmitter is hooked up to the receiver out and that sends the sound downstairs to the living room Advent speakers. I have also since bought a Jensen Matrix set-up. I discarded the Jensen transmitter since the Advent will transmit to the Jensen receiver too. The Jensen Matrix receiver is hooked into a boombox in the kitchen. To summarize, My stereo now plays in four rooms of the house- two rooms next to each other are hard wired and two downstairs are wireless.
Overall, I think the Advent AW 820 wireless speakers are a great alternative to running wires through the walls. They are really a good solution for my needs. I think the sound is probably comparable to most of the in-wall speaker systems I have seen. They are obviously more vulnerable to static and may need intermittent adjustments but I have not had to make any adjustments for over a week now. Once everything is set-up well, it works great. They are not loud, booming speakers but that was not my need anyway.
I am sold on the wireless 900 mhz technology- both the Advent wireless speakers which this review covers and also the Jensen wireless receiver- I won't review the Jensen separately since I only use the receiver part of their product.
UPDATE: I really liked these speakers when I first got them but I am sorry to say that they just didn't hold up very well. After a very brief time, the speakers seemed to be blown and sounded terrible if they were turned up at all. I don't think they are really as good as I had originally thought.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 100.00
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Epinions.com ID:
sylvan
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Member: Sylvan Rogers
Reviews written: 8
Trusted by: 1 member
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