Customer Reviews

Audioengine W1 Wireless Audio Adapter

5 star:		(30)
4 star:		(15)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

I bought these with some trepidation, both because of some reviewers' notes about interference with existing wireless traffic in their home and because of the number of wireless applications I already have set up (and problems I've already had with other things interacting poorly with one another). But as a solution it would be too good to be true if it worked, so I gambled.
Happily, I found only minor interference with my existing setup -- which includes three independant cordless phone lines, wireless LAN/internet, a wireless house alarm system, and a remote control extender (via radio rather than IR). The only impact I've been able to produce is to the wireless LAN. Here are my findings, using what I'd presume is a pretty standard setup: wireless netgear router, hp laptop with builtin wifi card.
First of all, I cannot affect the sound transmission at all. I can't get any noise/hum/pops into the speakers, via any of the wireless applications mentioned above.
But I do lose internet speed rapidly if my laptop is too close to either the transmitter or receiver. I can only reproduce this within about 5 feet of either, so this won't be much of an issue for me, but it can be quite an extreme impact dropping my download speeds from the 8-10 Mbps I'm used to all the way down to 300k or lower when my computer is within 6 inches or so. This is only evident when both transmitter and receiver are active/sync'ed. Strangely it doesn't seem to affect my upload speeds.
NOTE HOWEVER that this easily means using my laptop to stream an internet radio to remote speakers is only possible for lower bitrate stations.
I don't know if others will have the same experience, given the narrow range of impact I see (it could just as easily cause no interference at all for someone, I suspect). But I wanted to share my experience.
For me, nothing about this affects my plans detrimentally. The wireless solution for me is near-perfect.

I've been looking for a product like this for 2 years now. Every since I put all my music on a computer. If you want to send music anywhere in your house or within 100 feet of the sending unit, this is it. Nothing fancy, it just works. As far as interference with a home network. I haven't noticed anything. I have a wireless network at 2.4 GHZ and no problems. The tech support guy said these things auto detect and switch to a different channel. Just get them close to the wireless router long enough to adjust and you're set. 3 year warranty, what else do you need.

Before I share my thoughts, I want to emphasize that I'm not only commenting on the product itself, but also on the Amazon partner that sold it and the manufacturer of the product as well.

I placed the order with Amazon. OneCall was the Amazon partner to actually fill the order. The product arrived well in advance of the advertised date. Due to other conflicts in my schedule, it sat on my desk for about 2 weeks before I had a chance to even look at it. Regretfully, when I initially set it up, it did NOT work....I am relatively saavy with respect to computer trouble-shooting and was able to conclusively determine that the sending and receiving units were NOT able to see one another. All of the other aspects of set-up were fine...computer saw the USB sender device, patch cords allowed me to connect the USB receiver device to my 20-year old Sony stereo receiver (red/white RCA inputs).

I initially attempted to contact the manufacturer, AudioEngine, over the July 4th weekend. Duh.....stupid move, of course, on my part. Never-the-less, I also contacted OneCall after the July 4th weekend to explore their return options. For the record, they were more than eager and ready to accommodate my return for credit or a replacement unit. That being the case, I indicated I wanted to give AudioEngine a chance to reply to my contacts to them. The next day, I received an e-mail from AudioEngine support verifying my situation and affirming that I probably did have a defective sender or receiver in the package I received from OnceCall. (Oh well, as the expression goes, S%$# HAPPENS.) AudioEngine, ON THE SPOT, IN THE FIRST E-MAIL to me, indicated that they would be sending a replacement unit.....no questions asked. The replacement unit arrived via FedEx two days later....along with instructions and an RMA# for returning the defective unit directly to AudioEngine.

FOR ALL WHO READ THIS, PLEASE HEAR ME LOUD AND CLEAR, ONECALL AND AUDIO-ENGINE WERE POSITIVELY AWESOME IN THEIR RESPONSE (Just read some other product reviews here on Amazon to realize that this isn't always the case.)

I AM VERY PLEASED TO WRAP UP MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS PRODUCT BY STATING THAT THEAUDIOENGINE W1 PREMIUM WIRELESS AUDIO ADAPTER WORKS LIKE A CHARM.....EXACTLY AS ADVERTISED BY AMAZON, ONECALL, AND AUDIOENGINE. I might add that I live in a home that is about 80 years old and, that being the case, the walls and ceilings are all plaster and steel mesh (not chicken wire or wood) lathe.....all that steel lathe holding the plaster to my walls has given some wireless routers I've tried a run for their money. Not sure why....but absolutely NO ISSUES here with that this time.

Anyway, I must concur with and support the highest praise of the 9 other reviewers of this product. I know individual experiences and situations will always exist, but this unit worked "plug & play" and exceeded what I would have expected based upon my experiences with other "wireless audio" products.

A+++ to Amazon.....OneCall....and AudioEngine for service, support and product! Praise earned....Praise due.....Praise given!

(By the way, I am a professional musician, performer and educator....music is my life and listening to it almost 24/7 is a part of that life.)

I'm using this as a very long patch cord alternative to connect a powered subwoofer to my AV receiver. I plugged in both units, powered up the AVR, the blue lights stopped blinking, and it worked. The subwoofer correctly turns itself on when a low-frequency effects signal is present across the wireless connection, then turns itself off again when the signal goes idle, exactly as it would with a real physical cable connection. Yes, it's seemingly expensive, but it works precisely as you want it to, is nicely engineered, and doesn't cause any problems. It reminds me of an Apple product.

I was looking for a way to literally stream whatever's playing on my pc to my digital radio or speakers. There are a lot of complicated and expensive SoundBridge things, and also so called wireless radios will use their own clunky software to access one's pc, not what I wanted. So I was extremely pleased when I found these clever little smart, shiny black gizmos and ever more so when I simply plugged them in and they did just what I wanted.

Some things to note - one is for transmitting sound from the source - can be any source - and the other is for the receiver - if they don't work straight off try swapping them round. Also they need power either from a USB socket or else via a plug with a USB socket (supplied).

They don't only work with pc's, they will transmit from any source to any other! Amazing!

I haven't noticed problems with my wireless LAN.

Added to which the user support is absolutely *fantastic* as others have noted.

This product is great. It is easy to install taking only a few minutes and the sound was perfect. After positioning the recevier away from wires, I got perfect reception with no dropouts at all. And this is over a distance of 80 feet from the corner of my office where my laptop is all the way to the living room corner on the opposite side of the house. The sound is excellent with no hint of digitization. Would highly recommend this and also the Roku box for streaming Netflix and Pandora to your TV/sound system.

I had been trying to find an easy way to wirelessly move audio signals from my laptop to my stereo for quite awhile now (at least the last 10 years). I started out with the Apple Airport Express. I had (and still have) a Verizon router, and it had (and still is) quite tricky to get the Airport Express to show up on my wireless network. Even after I had it set up, the signal would always drop out unexpectedly, causing gaps in playback.

I was looking at the Bose wireless system, that looks like it includes a USB transmitter, whose signal is picked up by a receiver built into a set of Bose portable speakers. The price was quite high, and made me think twice about the purchase.

I was a bit skeptical when I came across the Audioengine AW1, given my previous experience with the Airport Express; but after reading the reviews here, I decided the worst I could do is send it back if it didn't work (someone else in reviews of this product praised the seller of this item, OneCall, so much, that I thought if I had problems that they would be able to help). When the box arrived, I opened it, and first plugged in the transmitter to my USB multi-port. I then plugged the receiver into the included AC adapter (has a female USB in the adapter), which plugged into the back of my stereo receiver, plugged a stereo miniplug into the receiver, and then plugged the two rca plugs that ran from the receiver into the CD input on the back of my receiver. I went to my Mac (OSX Leopard), opened the System Preferences, and chose the Audioengine AW1 as the audio output, and began playing itunes over my stereo without any degradation in signal at all. No interference of any kind. The sound is extremely clear. This is how wireless audio should work. I know it is hard to contact people who review, so if you like, you can e-mail me with any questions about my review at: [...]

I used the Audio Engine for sending web radio on my laptop to my stereo receiver. It was fairly easy to set up once I got yellow-red wire harness to plug to my receiver. And it worked! Sound was great! But my wireless laptop lost internet connection. I called Audio Engine and they got back to me within a few hours and suggested I use a USB extention to plug in the sender from my laptop thereby avoiding the conflicts with receiving my network. This worked....kinda....ok. I decided it was too much hassle. I would use this product if my desk top computer was in a more convienent location to enjoy internet radio content or music downloaded to my hard drive.
It really does work well and I would recommend it. It just didn't serve me well at this time.

This is an excellent product. Installation was simple and straight forward. The transmitter and receiver synchronized automatically without any action on my part. Frequency hopping technology is what insures a clean interference free signal with these types of devices. I've looked at quite a few audio transceivers and the frequency hopping capability is actually somewhat difficult to find. I've only tested it's range out to about 30 feet, but I have yet to hear any noise in the signal or interference from other wireless devices. I did notice a high pitched hum which for the most part could only be heard at higher levels when no music was playing, but I discovered that this was being caused by powering the transmitter from the USB port. When I powered the transmitter using an AC adapter, this problem went away.

I have two minor complaints. First, the package includes only one USB AC power adapter. I understand that the transmitter is meant to be powered via USB port in general, but the unit does allow for the possibility of powering it using an adapter and feeding it the audio signal through the built-in 1/8 input jack. In my particular case, this configuration was more desirable since I wanted to transmit the master output from my DJ software and for technical reasons using it directly as an audio device was not as convenient. I purchased another one which worked just fine,
http://www.amazon.com/Cables-Go-22328-Power-Adapter/dp/B0002J1ZD0/ref=sr_1_13?s=electronics&ie=UTF8&qid=1296955056&sr=1-13
but in my opinion considering the price of the AW1 and the fact that this type of setup is possible, I think they should have included a second power adapter.
Second, the USB connecter on the transmitter and receiver is attached to the body by a flexible slender half inch cable. This makes the units feel somewhat flimsy and I have concerns about leaving them dangling from a USB port for an extended period of time. My solution for this was to purchase two 3 foot USB extender cables.
http://www.amazon.com/type-female-extension-cable-version/dp/b000i9b2aa/ref=sr_1_31?ie=utf8&qid=1298743848&sr=8-31
This allowed me to place them more conveniently and reduce the strain of letting them simply hang off the USB port with the additional drag of an attached audio cable. A more sturdy design would have been appreciated. However, I am only taking off 1 star for these two minor issues since the audio quality is spectacular.

Opened the box. Inserted the sender into one of my macbook's usb slots. Selected the correct sound source from system preferences. Inserted the receiver into the other gizmo, which got plugged into the wall. Connected that to my Cambridge radio, which is wired to my Polk powered speakers. Great music from Pandora in about 2 minutes, maybe 3 minutes. The sender and receiver were only 20 feet apart and there was only one wall between the two, but I expect that this product will come through as I extend the distance. Will amend my comment if I detect a problem doing this. Paid $99, which is considerably cheaper than Bose's solution, although they do provide the speaker. Definitely recommend this product.