Wireless speaker system

[AJBangkok]

I'm not an audiophile so apologies if my question is a little out there.

I would like to set up my tv room with some kind of surround sound or at least better audio that comes from my TV. I don't like bulky speakers so is it possible to have wireless ceiling mounted speakers ( flush ) that could provide decent sound. I know I would still Ned a sub woofer

I have seen a receiver for around 50k that I like and would be looking to spend around 50-60k on the speakers, I'm not looking for anything super special. Just a mid range combination of speakers that can be discreetly positioned and give me a better sound quality than I get from the tv.

I've looked at soundbars and there is one from Yamaha for around 50k but I'm nor sure if that would be better than multiple speakers.

Any advise would be appreciated especially where and what to buy

Thanks

[RichCor]

I think you need to be a bit clearer to what you want. There are all types of sound parameters.

2; 2.1, 5.1; 6.1; 7.1 ... starting with Stereo Speakers and ending with Full Surround Sound Center Front-Left-Right-Back +subs requiring you play the right media and have matching decoding amplifiers.

I would suggest visiting a couple of high-end home theatre stores that have demo rooms to learn and listen. Then make a decision about what you want and can afford.

Speakers come in all shapes and sizes. I personally like box speakers over high-end ribbon or flat panels but to each his own, as long as they move the dust around.

IF you're going to FLUSH MOUNT wireless speakers, you might as well WIRE THEM. They need to be powered somehow.

The 10 Best Wireless Speakers

Sonos

[IMHO]

Some brands make "home theatre in a box" type products with 'wireless' surround speakers (Pioneer and Samsung come to mind) - but the surround speakers I've seen have always been small satellites on floor stands (I've never seen them with ceiling speakers), and the only 'wireless' part is the audio signal itself - each speaker still needs access to a 220V wall socket.

i.e. what they achieve is eliminating speaker wire runs.

There are some decent options for ceiling mounted speakers if you can get speaker wires from your AVR to their locations though (Jamo's ones are well represented in Thailand).

And then to confuse things, there's a new generation of Dolby Atmos speakers right on the horizon, where the front speakers actually have additional upward firing drivers used to expand the surround effect.

Either way, there's no such thing as a truly 'wireless' speaker - so the first step is determining just what wires (mains power and/or speaker wires) you can/can't make available to each speaker location.

If the result of that comes out as "none", a soundbar is going to be your only real option.

If you can supply mains power to rear surround speakers, 'wireless' HTIB systems can go on the shopping list.

If you can run speaker wires from your AV rack to the ceiling space, ceiling speakers then become an option.

Next, 50K Baht for an AVR is well into the upper-end of mid-range models, and if your overall budget is around 100K Baht, I would suggest you're giving the AVR way too much % of it. There are some decent, future-proofed AVR's from good brands in the 20-25K range available - and if you're not going to be running > 7.2 or a big Atmos system with 11+ speakers, going higher on AVR probably isn't going to give you any real-world benefit.

Is there a particular feature or spec that enticed you towards the 50K Baht model?

Edited January 14, 2015 by IMHO

[AJBangkok]

The receiver I'm looking at is the Onkyo tx-nr 838. The reason is that it seems to be the latest spec and has support for 4k upscaling and streaming as well as heavy duty wifi capabilities.

I've just bought an 84 inch LG UHD TV so I want to extract the maximum pleasure out of it. It's the one with the Harmon speakers up either side but they really don't do justice to the huge picture.

I have power to my ceiling but no way to get speaker cabling there unless I carve a channel through the wall behind the TV.

I've been to a few shops in Paragon and Erawan but to be honest after 2 minutes the sales person Is focussed on what he wants to sell me not what I want to buy.

[IMHO]

The receiver I'm looking at is the Onkyo tx-nr 838. The reason is that it seems to be the latest spec and has support for 4k upscaling and streaming as well as heavy duty wifi capabilities.

I've just bought an 84 inch LG UHD TV so I want to extract the maximum pleasure out of it. It's the one with the Harmon speakers up either side but they really don't do justice to the huge picture.

I have power to my ceiling but no way to get speaker cabling there unless I carve a channel through the wall behind the TV.

I've been to a few shops in Paragon and Erawan but to be honest after 2 minutes the sales person Is focussed on what he wants to sell me not what I want to buy.

On the receiver, right now the market reminds me of the first generation of HDMI receivers - the lower end ones were all pass-through, the higher-end ones actually processed the HDMI signal to extract the audio feed... As the HDMI spec progressed from 1.0 to 1.1, 1.2, 1.3 and 1.4, the pass-through AVR's all continued to work fine, but the one's actually processing HDMI were hit and miss - some manufacturers provided firmware updates so they could remain compat. with the newer HDMI specs, but most didn't - and as a result, many of them became slowly but surely obsolete.

For sure, HDMI2.0 is a much more evolved spec, so it's unlikely we'll see a rush of newer 2.x versions like we did with HDMI 1.0, but it's also impossible to rule out. Will an upscaling HDMI 2.0 receiver be upgradable to support HDMI 2.1 when/if it comes out? That's hard to crystal ball. Will a HDMI 2.0 pass-through AVR still be able to pass-through HDMI 2.1? Based on history alone, that's at least a little more likely than it's not.

On top of this, all 4K TV's already have upscalers of course (just as 1080P TV's did/do), so the other consideration is whether the upscaler you're paying all the money for in the AVR is actually even as good as the one that's already in the TV. If not, it seems like an awful lot of money to waste on a feature you might just permanently disable anyway. For me, personally, I would need to see the AVR's scaler physically outperform the TV's upscaling before I'd spend the extra - while it actually costs extra - again, based on history, soon enough it won't.

I's still very early days, and buying anything in this space comes with a risk factor of course - especially given that the 4K standard still doesn't have proper, concrete, playback media/options - but that's a risk I guess anyone buying 4K now (myself included) has decided is worth taking

If you really want a top-end AVR to go with your top-end TV, that makes complete sense, go for it But if you're not sure that the upscaler is going to perform at least as good as the one already in your TV, you might want to consider spending less on something that still meets all your other requirements though...

Back to the speakers - have you worked out what cabling is possible/practical to run for the surround speakers?

[GinBoy2]

I've used two solutions to what I think you are looking for. I wanted something for my rear surround speakers that didn't involve me having to; go up into the horror that is my roof space, & something that didn't involve yet more tunneling into the wall to run cables.

First time I used a Rocketfish wireless speaker kit. Basically attach the speaker outputs from the AVR to the transmitter and connect the surround speakers to the receiver. Worked Ok for about 6 months then just crapped out. User reviews seem to suggest it's a common complaint, pity since it's quite cheap.

This time I bought a similar JBL product, WEM-1, more expensive but so far works darn good.

Edited January 15, 2015 by GinBoy2

[AJBangkok]

Thanks for the advice everybody. I'm heading out today to check out some speakers and a receiver at fortune town. I do t want to carve a channel down the wall but I looked at some cabling prices and was pretty shocked. If I was reading it cirrectly the cabling can cost more than the speakers. That doesn't sound right but as I said I'm not an expert so it's posdible that people who want perfect sound would pay 100's of thousands to wire 5 or seven speakers.

[KittenKong]

Thanks for the advice everybody. I'm heading out today to check out some speakers and a receiver at fortune town. I do t want to carve a channel down the wall but I looked at some cabling prices and was pretty shocked. If I was reading it cirrectly the cabling can cost more than the speakers. That doesn't sound right but as I said I'm not an expert so it's posdible that people who want perfect sound would pay 100's of thousands to wire 5 or seven speakers.

You certainly can pay thousands (or more) for super-duper-oxygen-free-virgin-copper-rolled-on-the-thighs-of-a-virgin cables, if you have more money than sense.

Sensible people will just go to HomePro and buy good quality stranded copper power cables such as you might use for a TV or other small device, and be done with it.

[IMHO]

Thanks for the advice everybody. I'm heading out today to check out some speakers and a receiver at fortune town. I do t want to carve a channel down the wall but I looked at some cabling prices and was pretty shocked. If I was reading it cirrectly the cabling can cost more than the speakers. That doesn't sound right but as I said I'm not an expert so it's posdible that people who want perfect sound would pay 100's of thousands to wire 5 or seven speakers.

The only considerations when buying speaker cable are:

1. The speaker impedance (i.e. are you buying 4 ohm, 6 ohm, or 8 ohm speakers)

2. The length of the wiring runs

Armed with those two facts, it's then just a matter of buying copper wires of sufficient gauge (size) so as to insure you don't get too much insertion loss (degradation).

As a rough guide:

Use 1.5mm2 for runs up to 6M long at 8 Ohms, 4.5M long at 6 Ohms, or 3M long at 4 Ohms.

Use 2.0mm2 for runs up to 10M long at 8 Ohms, 7.5M long at 6 Ohms, or 5M long at 4 Ohms.

Use 2.5mm2 for runs up to 15M long at 8 Ohms, 11M long at 6 Ohms, or 7.5M long at 4 Ohms.

Use 4.0mm2 for runs longer than these.

When buying cable, all you're really looking for is Oxygen Free Copper (OFC), and something that has a jacket strong enough to not fail when it's pulled around bends in conduit. Silver plated copper can also be beneficial, as it resists corrosion better than raw copper.

There are no other properties that matter for speaker wires - anything else is just hocus-pocus. So long as you use wires at least as big as the ones in the guide above, there will be no audible degradation.

Your best bet for a getting a good deal on speaker wires is to buy them from an electronics store like Amorn, where you're less likely to find cables that have prices reflecting huge marketing expenses (selling hocus pocus), or sales staff working on commission.

Edited January 18, 2015 by IMHO

[GinBoy2]

A lot of speaker cable is a case study in 'Snake Oil Marketing'. My daughter used to work for Monster Cable, well known for selling horribly overpriced cables. She has recounted to me meetings where even the engineering staff were incredulous that anyone would actually pay money for supposed premium frequency response, something that human eyes and ears couldn't possible detect.

[GinBoy2]

I've used two solutions to what I think you are looking for. I wanted something for my rear surround speakers that didn't involve me having to; go up into the horror that is my roof space, & something that didn't involve yet more tunneling into the wall to run cables.

First time I used a Rocketfish wireless speaker kit. Basically attach the speaker outputs from the AVR to the transmitter and connect the surround speakers to the receiver. Worked Ok for about 6 months then just crapped out. User reviews seem to suggest it's a common complaint, pity since it's quite cheap.

This time I bought a similar JBL product, WEM-1, more expensive but so far works darn good.

Since I was just doing a little spring cleaning came across the box from the WEM-1, thought I'd post a coupe of pics. One is the transmitter connected to the AVR then the receiver connected to the rear speakers and finally a pic of the box.

Apologies for the dust! LOL

[AJBangkok]

Thanks for sharing the pics and the advice on wireless. I ended up buying wired ceiling speakers for the TV room as in the end it was far easier to do the cabling than I originally thought. My final setup is 6 KEF 8 inch CR 200 ceiling speakers, KEF Q600 center speaker, KEF Q400 subwoofer and Onkyo tx 1030 reveiver.My htpc is an Intel NUC i5 running windows 8.1 primarily used for XBMC. I plan to get a oppo DVD player and the TV is a 84 inch lg. The biggest problem I had in the setup was getting the XBMC passthrough to work correctly and that was solved by changing the windiws sound driver to an Intel driver. Total cost not including the TV or HTPC was just under 200k.

Edited March 5, 2015 by AJBangkok

[arunah]

I've used two solutions to what I think you are looking for. I wanted something for my rear surround speakers that didn't involve me having to; go up into the horror that is my roof space, & something that didn't involve yet more tunneling into the wall to run cables.

First time I used a Rocketfish wireless speaker kit. Basically attach the speaker outputs from the AVR to the transmitter and connect the surround speakers to the receiver. Worked Ok for about 6 months then just crapped out. User reviews seem to suggest it's a common complaint, pity since it's quite cheap.

This time I bought a similar JBL product, WEM-1, more expensive but so far works darn good.

Where did you buy the WM1? I am in Bangkok.

Cheers

[GinBoy2]

I've used two solutions to what I think you are looking for. I wanted something for my rear surround speakers that didn't involve me having to; go up into the horror that is my roof space, & something that didn't involve yet more tunneling into the wall to run cables.

First time I used a Rocketfish wireless speaker kit. Basically attach the speaker outputs from the AVR to the transmitter and connect the surround speakers to the receiver. Worked Ok for about 6 months then just crapped out. User reviews seem to suggest it's a common complaint, pity since it's quite cheap.

This time I bought a similar JBL product, WEM-1, more expensive but so far works darn good.

Where did you buy the WM1? I am in Bangkok.

Cheers

I couldn't find the JBL system anywhere in Thailand, bought it on Amazon.

This thread is pretty old, but I'm still very happy with how it works