Creative Labs' Sound Blaster Wireless Music - Music at Home Minus the Cables

Final Words

Creative has an interesting system on their hands, which is, in our opinion, best suited for those with a large MP3 collection. Everything that we have read so far is that an audio collection in the thousands would be the norm. The receiver is well designed with a small footprint that fits well into a home theater/entertainment center or in your bedroom. The biggest problem that we see with the Sound Blaster Wireless Music is that the remote is uncannily large. While the size of the LCD suits the remote just fine, the thickness and the length seem unnecessary. Personally, we would be willing to trade a smaller remote that uses AAA batteries having a shorter lifespan instead of AA batteries.

We tested the Sound Blaster Wireless Music in short range and long range distances from our D-Link 802.11g/b DI-624 Router. At short range (10 feet from the router), the response time from selecting music to play/pause and actually hearing it was about the same as a typical DVD/CD/MP3 player, roughly instantaneous. At long range (a setup distance of 3 floors), we got a 2- to 4-second delay depending on the orientation of the receiver, which we would attribute to the internal antenna. This is when you are managing music directly from the host computer via the Wireless Music Console.

When you manage from the remote (buttons are responsive like a MP3 player with maybe a 0.5-second delay), there is about a 6- to 9-second delay (will vary with location) from hitting play for a track to actually hearing it from the SBWM. The pause or stop command from the remote is basically instantaneous (maybe a quarter of a second), since it is manipulating the audio within the SBWM, not the host computer. The delay is actually due to the use of a buffer, but we noticed no skippage in our use in any of our setup scenarios. Even with the use of the buffer, we noticed no audio quality degradation over longer distances, and in all, the quality was about the same as if you were listening straight from the computer. And when you shut down the server software, the audio can still be heard from the SWBM for about a little under 10 seconds.

Controlling the music can be also done via the host computer, but the cardinal rule is that the computer hosting the MP3 files needs to be on anytime the receiver wants to be connected or play audio tracks. While the Sound Blaster Wireless Music is taking things in the right direction, there needs to be several improvements made: an expansion port for an external antenna in conjunction with the internal antenna, more user controllable settings for the remote (i.e. brightness of backlight) to extend battery life, and a slimmer remote.

Priced at $199.99, it isn't a cheap purchase, and we likely would only recommend this to those who need absolutely to have their MP3/music library transverse long distances without cables. At that price, we are more inclined to purchase an MP3 player and hook it up to our home stereos instead.