I have a pair of very old but great speakers (Marantz 6G), and a relatively recent receiver (Sherwood RD-7103). Is there a way I can connect these speakers to this receiver wirelessly?
I tried looking on the net but I have not found anything that will just connect to my old speakers and to my receiver and let them communicate. I understand I will need power for the speakers, I was hoping there was some kind of adapter that would take care of that.
Does such a thing exist?
In short, probably no. Your old speakers require power to operate. Your receiver has that power. There’s no way (that I know of) to transmit the powered audio signal straight from the receiver to the speakers without wires.
If you can explain why you can’t, or don’t want to, run ordinary speaker cables, we can suggest alternatives. For instance, there is flat speaker cablethat can be made virtually invisible.
If it it a matter of distance, there are systems that transmit audio via telephone cable, network cable, or wirelessly, but with any of those systems you’ll need an amplifier of some kind at the other end.
Or we may be able to help you run cables through your walls, under your floors, etc. But we need a little more info.
This is probably not what you are looking for, but it might be made to suit your needs: you can send audio signals through a WiFi network. See the Squeezebox set of tools at slimdevices.com.
I use a Rocketfish wireless speaker adapter to get signal to a pair of speakers in the living room, a good distance from the a/v receiver in my office. The transmitter connects to the a/v receiver via speaker wire, and sends the signal to the remote receiver, which is plugged in and connects to a pair of speakers via speaker wire. It’s basically a wireless bridge for a pair of speakers.
Well, there you go, ratatoskK. I didn’t know about that product, but it seems to do what you want, for only about $110.
However, it’s a “Wireless **Rear **Speaker kit” and is intended for use in a home theater system where it may be hard to get wires to the rear speakers. It may work for your purposes, but it’s not really intended for main speakers.
For one thing, the power output is only 25 watts to 4-ohm speakers, which is pretty low. And the harmonic distortion is “no more than 10%,” which is horrible. The other big problem I see is that the volume control at the receiving end is not really user-adjustable. It’s on the back panel, and is intended to be set once and left alone. The output is actually controlled by the sending audio source.
I would guess that if all you want is background music at the remote location, it might work well. But if you expect to crank it up, I doubt you’d be happy with that solution. Maybe caveman can tell us more about how he uses it, and the volume levels and sound quality he gets.
There are similar systems (much less expensive than the nice system Tim R. Mortiss linked to) that transmit a line level signal which you would then put through a receiver or amp of some kind at the remote location.
For instance, the Terk LeapFrog wirelessly transmits audio, video, and IR remote signals. It looks funny, and I have never owned one, so I can’t recommend it from my personal experience. (I have the predecessor unit that uses telephone wires, and it’s performed perfectly for more than a decade.) But it’s also relatively cheap, so it won’t cost much to try it out.
With the LeapFrog, or something like it, and a relatively inexpensive receiver (e.g $100-200), you could get much better nominal performance than with the Rocketfish, and have additional features, like volume and tone controls, the ability to select other sources, like a CD player or FM tuner (probably built-in), and so on.
Or if you have an independent source at the sending end, like a TV or something, you could use your Sherwood at the receiving end.
Again, we need more information on your situation, existing hardware, and goals in order to advise you more intelligently.
Thanks for all the responses. Basically, I have a cabinet on one side of the room containing the TV, receiver, DVD player, etc. Then I have two giant speakers. One will go beside the cabinet and the other I want in a different part of the room where people would be walking across cables.
I’m happy with my current equipment and don’t want to spend much, I just want to put the speaker across the room without wires.
Some of the suggestions above sounds great except that by the time I purchase extra equipment I will have spent more than the speakers are worth. Maybe I should just look for wireless speakers?? I searched on the net and they all seem small.
Are all speakers that small these days? Back when I bought my Marantz speakers, the word was that you had to have a large woofer to push through enough air, etc. So I imaging that new small wireless speakers would not sound as good as the speakers I have. (?)
My receiver supports background speakers so in theory I could put a couple of extra speakers in other parts of the room. But for now my only goal is to place the one large one across the room without wires.
So what are the obstacles to running a wire to the location in question? Why couldn’t you:
run it under the carpet,
tack it to baseboards between the receiver and the speaker,
use the flat cable I linked to above,
drill small holes in the floor and run the cable through the basement ceiling. (If you’re in an apartment or the room’s not on the ground floor, the answer is obvious.)
or use some other technique that someone else will recommend in a second?
Alternatively, why do you prefer this difficult location? Why not put it on the other side of the stereo cabinet, or in some other location to which it is not difficult/impossible to run a wire? Could a different location work almost as well?
Or could the cabinet be moved?
Oh, I meant to add, in response to your questions about wireless speakers, there have been a number of threads about this, the upshot of which was well summarized by gotpasswords in this thread:
And yes, although speaker tech has improved, most small speakers (wireless or not) will not sound as good as bigger speakers.
You just have to believe me (!), the cabinet has to be where it is with one speaker beside it. Between that and the second speaker is the front door to the condo and main walking space between entry and living area, some hardwood flooring and some area rug. I could put both speakers beside the cabinet but that would be weird placement.
Okay, good luck. Let us know how you manage.
I decided I’m going to buy some white flat speaker wire and just run it around the doorframe and along the baseboard. It’s the easiest solution and although the wire is overpriced I won’t need that much of it. Thanks for all the help!! 