Rockford Fosgate Omnifi DMS1 Digital Media Streamer

by Rockford Fosgate

Product Details

• Product Dimensions: 11 x 7 x 2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B000931GOC
• Item model number: DMS1 KIT
• Batteries: 2 AA batteries required. (included)
• Average Customer Review: 2.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #97,087 in Electronics (See Top 100 in Electronics)

Product Description

Amazon.com Product Description

Are you faced with the dilemma of having tons of tunes stored on your computer that you're tired of listening to with your wimpy PC speakers or headphones? Consider your problem solved with the Rockford Fosgate Omnifi DMS1 Digital Media Streamer. This system uses Wi-Fi technology to stream crystal clear, digital audio from your PC to you bigger, badder home audio system. The Omnifi DMS1 home digital media streamer comes equipped with everything you need -- digital audio receiver, remote control, and SimpleCenter software.

This system is incredibly easy to use. Simply hook the Omnifi to your computer via your Ethernet network or connect wirelessly to an 802.11b Wi-Fi access point (Wi-Fi receiver required), and you'll be ready to tap into your PC music library. With the Omnifi streaming the audio contents of your PC to your home audio system, you can stop listening to inferior sound and up the ante with superb, high-fidelity sound quality.

What's in the Box
DMS1 media streamer, remote control, Ethernet adapter, audio cable, and software.

Product Description

The Home Digital Media Streamer works with your existing home stereo system and plays CD-quality MP3/WMA files, internet radio and other digital content. Or, stream audio wirelessly from your PC to your home audio system with the included Wi-Fi adapter and have access to it whenever you want via your existing 802.11b network. Home stereo requires AUX inputs. System requirements: Windows 98SE and up.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

21 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Works great - including with Rhapsody!, June 6, 2005

By 

G. A Wheeler "gramix" (Seattle, WA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rockford Fosgate Omnifi DMS1 Digital Media Streamer (Electronics)

First off, the other reviewer is wrong - I have Rhapsody service and the Omnifi works just fine. Why someone posts a 1 star review based on speculative (and wrong) information I don't understand.

I've owned a Linksys WML11, two Netgear MP101's, and an Omnifi. I sold both MP101's - they would be great if they worked but the firmware is buggy (even by Netgear's admission if you read their release notes) and the wireless reception is poor. If they can't keep up with the audio stream (which happens plenty due to poor reception) they reboot themselves and - so you have to go find the music you were playing and restart it again. Very annoying.

The Linksys is more reliable and gets better reception, but forces you to use playlists if you want to play more than one track. I find this very annoying too. You can't just browse to a folder and play all the tracks; after playing the first track the music stops and you have to manually select the next track; etc. Also, scrolling through long lists is pretty slow. But its very solid firware, and the speakers are a nice feature. One good feature of the Linksys that no others have is a built in Internet radio set so you can stream Internet radio without having to run a UPnP media server on a PC on the network.

The Omnifi winds hands down though. It has almost all the stability of the Linksys, and none of the annoyances. It has great front panel controls as well as remote; is very solid, and just works great. I've seen some complaints about the external wifi adapter but on the plus side that gives some freedom for antenna positioning. I'm very happy with this device and think it deserves four stars. I probably have to power cycle it about once every two weeks after it gets into a "searching for media" state and can't find the music server, which is why I give it four stars instead of five.

Possibly the only other caveat is that I don't understand the PlaysForSure certification. The device supposedly supports PlaysForSure, but I couldn't get it to work with the new Yahoo music service. Maybe that's a Yahoo problems though; I'm not sure. But it works just fine with Rhapsody.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars There are much better products than this one, August 20, 2005

By 

M. FACHMAN (Hooper, NE United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rockford Fosgate Omnifi DMS1 Digital Media Streamer (Electronics)

The SimpleCenter software is horrible to use and the on screen interface is clunky. There are much better products than this one. I sent it back almost imediately. Also there is a limit of 10,000 songs with this product and I have around 15,000. Why? Isn't the point of this device to help you access and manage your music collection? Save your money.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Da bomb, December 16, 2006

By 

Lawrence Brown "Larry Brown" (HOUSTON, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Rockford Fosgate Omnifi DMS1 Digital Media Streamer (Electronics)

Da Bomb!

Nutshell:

This technology is da bomb if you want to enjoy your CD collection at home on your stereo system. It's the next step in the evoloution of enjoying music. We had the phonograph, then the CD, and now this.

The only caveat: It's da bomb as long as it's working well. If you have trouble, then it's useless. I am currently living with the DMS1 for a short time. So far it works OK, but if I have trouble in the future I may have to report back.

Detailed review:

This is a fabulous system that will allow you to keep your entire CD collection online in your home entertainment system. It's easy enough for grandma to use, and that's important because other systems are so complicated that only a techno-geek will be able to work them.

What you do with this system is copy all of your CDs to the hard drive on your computer. Then you replace the CD player in your home entertainment center with this little Omnifi device. Then you turn the Omnifi on, and you instantly enjoy any CD in your collection. That's just getting started, but already that is worth the price of admission because you have access to all of your CDs. You don't need to search for your CDs anymore, and you don't need to find handy space to store them. You can file them away for safe keeping in your mini-storage warehouse. You just need a large hard drive and a computer that is turned on. Using this system gives you the many advantages of having your music off of the CDs and on the harddrive, yet your music is still available on an easy to use device in your home entertainment center without having to have a computer there, which is largely unworkable.

And then we go on from there to many more fab activities.

I am a musician and music lover that, as odd as it may seem to you, is just now in 2006 starting to explore the mp3 revolution. If you are like me and don't yet understand what mp3 can mean to you, I'll explain it. I never explored mp3 because I equated it with piracy, but mp3 can be used legally as well.

You use a program called a "ripper" to "rip" your CDs into files on your harddrive. The music on CD is just computer files anyway, so all "ripping" really is is "copying" the computer files from the CD to the harddrive. In the past this was for unfathomable reasons difficult for a program to do, but now we can get it done. The Simplecenter software that comes with the Omnifi can do it, as can iTunes and a host of other programs. There is a freeware program called "Exact Audio Copy" that reads the CD and gives you a 100% accurate file, and it gives you a report of any problems that it had so you can be sure, without having to listen to the file, that it made it to your harddrive without error.

At the same time you copy the CD, you encode the files to mp3. This shrinks the file by a large factor without sacrificing any meaningful sound quality and makes the files easier to manage. That way you can fit much more music onto your hard drive or your portable mp3 player, or even copy the files back to CD and get more than 74 minutes of music on a CD! Simplecenter, iTunes, and most other programs do this for you automatically.

When ripping CDs, mp3 is the way to go, you want to avoid any other format if possible. Simplecenter gives you a choice to rip to mp3 or to windows media format. iTunes and other programs give you a similar choice. Ripping to mp3 allows you to avoid having to deal with digital rights management (DRM) and allows your music to be played anywhere. iPod doesn't support Windows media, and generic mp3 players may not support Apple's AAC format, but everyone will play mp3. Ripping to any other format is helping Microsoft or whoever lock you in to their solutions, don't tolerate that! DRM gives you onerous restrictions like having to jump through hoops to transfer a license when you transfer your music from one computer to another or only allowing you to burn your music to CD a limited number of times, and other evil restrictions. mp3 avoids all of this and it's the way to go.

If you're worried about any legal restrictions on this type of activity, just think of all the mp3 players available for sale here on Amazon and that should tell you something. If you're still concerned, just punch up a few web searchs on the subject and I think you'll relax.

Don't worry about sound quality. Sound quality has never been an issue. Sound quality is an issue to people that want to sell you expensive equipment or magazine subscriptions. Your enjoyment of any music, classical or otherwise, will be the same as long as the sound quality is acceptable. That last 10% of full fidelity really doesn't matter. Do you have a $5,000 entertainment system or $3,000 speakers? If not, then it really doesn't matter. That said, this Omnifi and mp3 technology will deliver sound that is essentially equal to the CD, but it really doesn't matter. What matters is that you have your music available in ways that make it convenient to listen so that you will play your music more often. Don't listen to anyone that tells you that some proprietary format gives better fidelity than mp3. #1, it doesn't matter. #2: They are assuming the same bit rate, so if you really want to stick on this issue, just rip at a higher mp3 bit rate. The standard is to rip at 128 bits, so just rip at 160 and you're there. You can easily afford the extra space with today's prices.

This Omnifi is an alternative to a 400 disc CD changer jukebox. Those jukeboxes are not a great solution for various reasons: 1: They are huge, 2: They have a finite capacity, you may outgrow 400 slots, 3: They can damage your CDs, 4: They require hours of typing in order to set up the artist, album, and song names, 5: They can glitch and erase all those hours of typing, 6: They have limited functionality for skpping songs you don't like and random playing, 7: they are prone to mechanical failure, #8: they are slow, etc.

Using Omnifi and mp3 gives you these advantages:

+ You have your entire CD collection available in a small device

+ You can copy your music to a portable hard drive so you can take your entire collection to the office or elsewhere

+ You can easily copy your music to an mp3 player for enjoyment. iTunes is compatible with mp3, so Omnifi can even work with an iPod.

+ You can backup your music for safekeeping to DVD

+ You can use more than one Omnifi in the home so that you can enjoy your entire collection from various rooms.

+ You can delete songs you don't like so that you don't ever hear them. That's a big advantage because I usually only like a few songs, or just one, from any given CD.

+ You can shuffle play through artist or genre, which is also a big advantage. Otherwise you would have to create a custom mix CD, and that's a lot of trouble and it gets old after a few listens. This way it's always new.

+ You can buy songs from web sites like Amazon. That's a great way to pick up old favorite songs without having to buy the whole CD or music that's hard to find. Once you download them Omnifi can play them. However songs downloaded like this will often suffer from DRM.