A new wireless source: Linksys WMB54G

[lan]

This product was just announced in CES in early January and I'm trying the unit out now. This is a wireless audio streaming device. It has a wired, wireless data connections, analog, coax and optical digital outputs. It's based off C-Media Wi-Sonic.

Copy and paste from a press release:
"C-Media Wi-Sonic™ is the most flexible and robust real-time wireless audio streaming technology available. C-Media Wi-Sonic™ allows ALL PC audio to be streamed to locations anywhere in the home including all DRM formats from any content vendor. C-Media Wi-Sonic™ also supports Dolby Digital Live™ for flawless digital 5.1 channel streaming over wireless networks for the first time."

I like the fact it has digital outputs and it's cheap. I got mine for $80. It's PC only so sorry Mac users. It installs a virtual soundcard in your computer and any program that can play sound goes through this thing. I just tried it with movies, games, and music through windows media player, foobar2000, and zoomplayer and it works. There are 3 buffer settings. Music, movies, and games. Music has the most delay since you dont' want that to skip where as the other two don't seem to have any delay.

I got this for two reasons. I have a multitude of DACs and the wiring for headphones, stereo, and watching movies is now insane. I was hoping this would let me move my systems futher apart instead of having a centralized computer system. I have an extremely revealing computer setup and it's simply hard for me to get any more performance since the computer is just a sea of electrical noise. Adding in more items is hard to do.

First impressions, I like the digital output. I'm going to let this thing burnin and try watching a bunch of movies and games. My concerns are skipping and compatibility. It was skipping in the game setting but not in the music and movies one. I'll need to investigate that. My wireless router is enhanced for signal reception with better anntenae and more power output. Something I don't like is the RCA jacks are recessed. You can't put thick cables in there. I'll need to take pics of this.

I will be comparing this with airport expresss/airtunes.

Of course since this unit has ac/dc adaptor and is larger, the modding potential exists where as the airport unit doesn't.

I'm itching to open this already.

 

[Revliskciuq]

This is cool lan, I have a few questions:

Does it allow LAN streaming, or just WLAN? If so, are the delays improved over LAN?

Does it support any kind of bit-perfect output, like ASIO, have you been able to get kernel streaming working?

 

[lan]

I havn't tried LAN streaming yet. I'm actually trying to get away from a wired connection but i can attempt that in a later review. As for being bit perfect, it's supposed to be able to send dd/dts streams so I will try that later also.

 

[blessingx]

Not being Mac compatible ruins it for me, but please keep us informed lan as it seems quite interesting.

C-Media Wi-Sonic™ Audio Receiver Hardware
l Compact, low-cost hardware platform with embedded RISC CPU
l High quality analog stereo outputs
l 24-bit Digital Audio S/PDIF optical output (TOSLINK or COAX) (Package WS-021)
l LED status indicators
l Wireless Network IEEE 802.11b/g for maximum convenience
l Wired Ethernet 10/100Mbit port for higher sampling rates and interference avoidance
l Embedded network security engine supporting WEP (64/128 bits), WPA and WPA2 standards
l Built-in 802.11b/g Access Point and Router function
l Browser-based configuration available (as an alternative to C-Media¡¦s Wi-Sonic Wizard application)


C-Media Wi-Sonic™ Audio Center Features
l Auto-Discovery of Wi-Sonic™ audio devices
l One-click Easy-Connect GUI to help the user select the Wi-Sonic™ wireless audio receiver as their output device
l Dynamic Sync and adjustable transmission FlexBuffering technology allows the user to tune their audio system for optimal performance with different applications (50ms~3000ms buffer size)
l C-Media proprietary real-time Wi-Sonic™ Streaming protocol
l 2CH analog output (multi-channel analog output planned for future upgrade)
l Optional Dolby® Digital Live 5.1 (AC-3) real-time encoder converting all PC digital audio sources (game audio, MP3, VCD, WMA, Internet Radio ¡K) into 5.1 channel Dolby® Digital stream through S/PDIF output to external decoder (Package WS-021)
l C-Media Xear 3D™ Virtual Speaker SHIFTER technology
l HRTF 3D positional sound engine enhancement
l Supports the industry standards of 3D Audio for for PC Games, including DirectSound™ 3D, EAX™ 1.0&2.0, and A3D™ 1.0
l 10-band Equalizer with 12 preset modes
l 27 global environment effects
l Friendly Graphical User Interface
l 3D Audio demonstration programs
l Auto Setup CD package
l Currently Supports Windows XP and Windows 2000
l Products supporting Dolby technologies need to be licensed by Dolby Laboratories. Contact C-Media for more info on royalties and options.
l Products supporting DTS technologies need to be licensed by Digital Theater Systems, Inc. Contact C-Media for more info on royalties and options

 

[heymaceo]

Any update on this? Sounds really interesting.

 

[lan]

It's not bit perfect. Seems to resample to 48khz. So that would make it not interesting for some. I do really like the quality still though analog and digital outs. It's a dynamic sounding and sounds spacious.

The limitation here could be Linksys not providing all features in their drivers and firmware. The "reference" product / implementation my Cmedia looks to have a bunch more stuff. I would wait and see how drivers progress from either linksys or cmedia. There's nothing new on either of their sites right now. This product is very new. But I'm happy it just functions without much interruption and is nice quality.

 

[Gabe Logan]

I bet if the modding community got behind better firmare upgrades for it as they have for the routers we could possibly get bit perfect.Since this aint on their high list of modded hardware i fear it might never come.