The emergence of MP3 portable players has helped to drive the once obscure compression format onto city streets and into the mainstream music radar. Now, a bevy of products are in development to get MP3s into other off-line devices, such as cars, boom-boxes, and home stereos.
A new system developed by X10.com has taken a wireless route for broadcasting MP3s from a PC to home stereo. The Seattle-based company's MP3 Anywhere system plugs into the headphone jack of a PC and uses a wireless transmitter and receiver to send digital sound to a stereo, up to 100 feet away.
I thought this would be a major geek undertaking, as I unwrapped cord after cord from the box and laid out all the pieces: a patch cord here, a power cable there, and a pair of wireless doo-dads that looked like spaceships. But after a few quick connections -- plugging patch cords into the PC and receiver -- I was up and running. It took only minutes, and I didn't need to look at the instructions or install any software. No fuss, no muss.
Still, who in the heck would pay US$88 for such a seemingly silly gizmo? After all, MP3s don't sound all that great to begin with. Why would you want to pump them through a hi-fi system, amplifying their inadequacy?
Well, for one thing, if you've got a bunch of MP3s downloaded from the Internet, it's not very convenient to hook up a PC into a home stereo just for the sake of playing them. In fact, this was the first time I ever tried playing an MP3 on my home stereo.
Another thing that could be kinda neat would be streaming Net radio stations through a stereo, given that most of the playlists on traditional FM stations come straight from a jar of Cheez Whiz.
Alex Peder, CEO of X10.com, explained, "It allows you to use the PC beyond the room that it's in, thereby making the PC the home entertainment engine that it can be, whether it's DVD, MP3, what have you. Nobody wants to listen to MP3 streams huddled around their tiny computer speakers."
While writing my notes for this story I was occasionally tabbing over to my Winamp player to load up another MP3, which would immediately boom out of my stereo. Bitchin. (Good thing my girlfriend wasn't around to watch this shameless display of geekdom.)
The performance of the system was flawless the whole time I played with it. I tried pointing the wireless transmitter this way and that. I walked around the loft to test the strength of the signal, and the connection never dropped.
Peder said there is virtually no sound loss because the system uses the 2.4 GHz range, which he characterizes as "a big fat virtual pipe that is running through all the walls of the home." The FCC made the frequency range available about three years ago, and Peder said they can program four different frequencies within it. So X10 also has an application to transmit DVDs from a PC to a TV, and they have set up their products to use separate frequencies for the audio, voice, data, and video.
The sound quality of the MP3s I tested confirmed some of my suspicions about the format in general. While it sounds pretty good over headphones, some sounds aren't true over a stereo system's speakers. Hip hop sounds fine, while rock, jazz and pop are sub-par, especially when the cymbals get washed together and sound like a theremin skidding across the pavement.
One part of the system which I didn't get a chance to test was the wireless mouse remote control which can act as a universal controller for TV, VCR, lights, and an audio player on your PC. Using plug-in software downloaded from X10's site, you can use the mouse remote to switch tracks or adjust volume from a variety of MP3 software, such as Musicman, RioPort Audio Manager, Liquid Audio, MusicMatch, WinAmp, and RealJukebox.
However, combo MP3/CD player alternatives on the horizon could make the PC-to-stereo less attractive. The Mambo-X portable MP3-CD player, announced this week from California-based Tagram System, can handle MP3s burned in the CD rewritable format. And then there's HanGo Electronics's Personal Jukebox, a portable MP3 player with a 4.86 GB hard drive.
As the Christmas season approaches, get ready for a rush of even more hybrid players that can send your tracks nearly anywhere you want to listen.
