Lowest Latency wireless option for 2nd set of speakers
Discussion
Howdi, looking for some guidance on low latency wireless connections for a 2nd concurrent set of speakers.
I have a conventional cabled separates HiFi with cabled speakers in our main living area and toying with the idea of adding a 2nd pair of speakers to place outside on the terrace for summer sun. I want to be able to run both speakers at the same time from the same amp/source i.e. just to add additional sound outside.
The 2nd set of speakers would usually live in the bedroom connected to the TV as a soundbar replacement, and thus need to support basic levels of bluetooth to connect to the Samsung TV, but they also should be light enough to move and outside on a sunny day and back in again when it rains 5mins later!
Thinking along the lines of KEF LS50 mk2 wireless.
My pre-amp is a Cyrus DAC-XP Signature, so has a spare optical digital out, two spare sets of RCA pre outputs and a spare RCA fixed level DAC output.
So given the sound zones will overlap to a large degree latency needs to be close to inperceptable, yet I don't want to compromise on quality within the capability of what the speakers could perform to either. The LS50 mk2 however dont support BT 5.0 nor the AptX codecs natively, which appear to me to be the best options for BT, but they do support BT 4.2 with SBC and AAC, and also Airplay2 and chromecast natively.
Whilst there is power already on the terrace, there is no scope for running any sort of cable whatsoever from the pre-amp to the 2nd speakers.
So my question is what is the best wireless tech & codec to look for, and which kit to buy to connect to the back of the pre-amp to transmit that to the 2nd set of speakers, ideally with a built in tech that the KEF could receive, and if not what additional bit of tech is needed at the speaker end too, or which other set of speakers would be worth considering with suitable tech already built in.
Hope that makes sense.
I have a conventional cabled separates HiFi with cabled speakers in our main living area and toying with the idea of adding a 2nd pair of speakers to place outside on the terrace for summer sun. I want to be able to run both speakers at the same time from the same amp/source i.e. just to add additional sound outside.
The 2nd set of speakers would usually live in the bedroom connected to the TV as a soundbar replacement, and thus need to support basic levels of bluetooth to connect to the Samsung TV, but they also should be light enough to move and outside on a sunny day and back in again when it rains 5mins later!
Thinking along the lines of KEF LS50 mk2 wireless.My pre-amp is a Cyrus DAC-XP Signature, so has a spare optical digital out, two spare sets of RCA pre outputs and a spare RCA fixed level DAC output.
So given the sound zones will overlap to a large degree latency needs to be close to inperceptable, yet I don't want to compromise on quality within the capability of what the speakers could perform to either. The LS50 mk2 however dont support BT 5.0 nor the AptX codecs natively, which appear to me to be the best options for BT, but they do support BT 4.2 with SBC and AAC, and also Airplay2 and chromecast natively.
Whilst there is power already on the terrace, there is no scope for running any sort of cable whatsoever from the pre-amp to the 2nd speakers.
So my question is what is the best wireless tech & codec to look for, and which kit to buy to connect to the back of the pre-amp to transmit that to the 2nd set of speakers, ideally with a built in tech that the KEF could receive, and if not what additional bit of tech is needed at the speaker end too, or which other set of speakers would be worth considering with suitable tech already built in.
Hope that makes sense.
Edited by AdamV12V on Friday 24th March 11:39
OutInTheShed said:
One answer is to delay both equally, by using wifi to stream to both amps?
No, not really - not in my situation anyway, but maybe it might be ok for you. All depends on the nature of your setup and focus of quality vs flexibility I guess. I have direct wired cable access for the max quality possible interconnections between sources and pre-amp so I really would not want to drop the quality for the main HiFi components. I do realise I didn't list all my components so that wasn't clear in my post. The terrace outdoor speakers however - well I am prepared to drop a tiny bit of quality here for the convenience of wireless transmission as being outdoors the quality is inherently compromised anyway.Surprised I haven't had a few suggestions already though. I was expecting this section to be quite active looking at the post history. Not somewhere I had ventured much over my years of PH membership, having largely kept myself to the relevant auto marque section until now.
I rather doubt there is going to be digital wireless solution for this, hence why you're not getting suggestions. Digital data tends to get transmitted in chunks that can't be processed until the entire chunk had been received and with protocols that allow chunks to be resent and don't make any guarantees about when a chunk is going to be transmitted. They are therefore gloriously unsuitable for continuous transmission of sound, hence why digital media receivers buffer a load of data locally so that they have a reasonable change of smoothing out the lumpy, intermittent way that data is actually being sent.
If replay is it of sync by even a few tens of milliseconds it'll sound odd, and I'd expect buffering time to be an order of magnitude longer than that.
If they exist, analogue radio wireless speakers wouldn't suffer this problem. The alternative, I expect, is to use a complete digital solution which actively synchronises each devices' playback from its locally buffered data, which must be what system like Sonos are doing.
If replay is it of sync by even a few tens of milliseconds it'll sound odd, and I'd expect buffering time to be an order of magnitude longer than that.
If they exist, analogue radio wireless speakers wouldn't suffer this problem. The alternative, I expect, is to use a complete digital solution which actively synchronises each devices' playback from its locally buffered data, which must be what system like Sonos are doing.
ATG said:
I rather doubt there is going to be digital wireless solution for this, hence why you're not getting suggestions. Digital data tends to get transmitted in chunks that can't be processed until the entire chunk had been received and with protocols that allow chunks to be resent and don't make any guarantees about when a chunk is going to be transmitted. They are therefore gloriously unsuitable for continuous transmission of sound, hence why digital media receivers buffer a load of data locally so that they have a reasonable change of smoothing out the lumpy, intermittent way that data is actually being sent.
If replay is it of sync by even a few tens of milliseconds it'll sound odd, and I'd expect buffering time to be an order of magnitude longer than that.
If they exist, analogue radio wireless speakers wouldn't suffer this problem. The alternative, I expect, is to use a complete digital solution which actively synchronises each devices' playback from its locally buffered data, which must be what system like Sonos are doing.
Indeed you maybe right. I had a good google before posting but couldn't immediately jump on a solution to the problem, hence the post. If replay is it of sync by even a few tens of milliseconds it'll sound odd, and I'd expect buffering time to be an order of magnitude longer than that.
If they exist, analogue radio wireless speakers wouldn't suffer this problem. The alternative, I expect, is to use a complete digital solution which actively synchronises each devices' playback from its locally buffered data, which must be what system like Sonos are doing.
Bluetooth aptx Low Latency seemed to have some of the low latency rates, but I wasn't sure of how the quality would bear up. aptx HD doesn't seem to have the same low latency though. Adaptive aptx however may be the best of both, but I couldn't find a practical tech solution for this.
Chromecast seemed to have more potential, as from what I had read it has inherently low latency?
But as you have indicated, I suspect its down to real life perception and even tens of milliseconds may be enough to ruin everything. With only 1 set of speakers it wouldn't matter if there was a tiny lag, but with two sets, one wired and one wireless then the lag has to be imperceptible otherwise it's going to be a sonic jumble car crash...
Hmmm - A pair of these (each one is mono) looks to have potential... 5ms latency upto 90feet range, for £350 ish...
https://xvive.com/audio/product/u3d/
Would need to convert the XLR back to RCA of course as few home audio active speakers have XLR on them, but RCA/XLR cables or adapters are inexpensive.
https://xvive.com/audio/product/u3d/
Would need to convert the XLR back to RCA of course as few home audio active speakers have XLR on them, but RCA/XLR cables or adapters are inexpensive.
AdamV12V said:
No, not really - not in my situation anyway, but maybe it might be ok for you. All depends on the nature of your setup and focus of quality vs flexibility I guess. I have direct wired cable access for the max quality possible interconnections between sources and pre-amp so I really would not want to drop the quality for the main HiFi components. I do realise I didn't list all my components so that wasn't clear in my post. The terrace outdoor speakers however - well I am prepared to drop a tiny bit of quality here for the convenience of wireless transmission as being outdoors the quality is inherently compromised anyway.
Surprised I haven't had a few suggestions already though. I was expecting this section to be quite active looking at the post history. Not somewhere I had ventured much over my years of PH membership, having largely kept myself to the relevant auto marque section until now.
If the music is digital at any point, you should be able to put it across wifi bit perfect.Surprised I haven't had a few suggestions already though. I was expecting this section to be quite active looking at the post history. Not somewhere I had ventured much over my years of PH membership, having largely kept myself to the relevant auto marque section until now.
You are going to be sacrificing some 'quality' because you'll inevitably be hearing a little of the far pair of speakers.
You could get a very low latency digital radio link, but that would have no error correction, so any instantaneous interruption/interference in the signal would cause gross errors. Error correction pretty much involves using more than one instant in time to transmit a data bit, so latency must be inevitable.
You're limited to the licence-free bands which are pretty crowded, so relying on naturally error free transmission is unlikely to work out well.
An analogue FM link might be an option.
Speed of sound is about 1ft per millisecond, so if the main speakers are louder and the other speakers are a good distance away it might be tolerable.
Our brains are used to processing echoes and multipath.
Gassing Station | Home Cinema & Hi-Fi | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff