All the big brands have multiroom music solutions. You know: a bunch of speakers scattered around your home are connected via WiFi and you can send music to some or all of them using an app on your smart phone or tablet. We love them all. But too many lock you in to their product lineup.
Rather than boxing you into a proprietary system, Sydney-based electronics company Laser Corporation has gone with the Qualcomm AllPlay system for its multiroom speakers. That means in addition to Laser products, you can include offerings from Panasonic, Lenco, Hitachi, Monster, Medion, Musaic and Gramofon. All will work together because all use the same underlying engine.
Or you can use the Laser Wi-Fi Adaptor (SPK-WFADAPTOR) to revitalise an existing sound system, tying it into your multiroom system. This is like the network receiver part of one of the speakers. You plug its audio output into your stereo, or powered speaker, and it is transformed into part of your wireless, multiroom system.
You can use the AllPlay Jukebox app (Android or iOS) to send music from your portable device, or from other network sources such as shared folders on your computer, to the Wi-Fi Adaptor, and stream Internet music services such as Spotify, Rhapsody and thousands of radio stations via tunein. The app can send one song to one or several speakers, or send different songs to different collections of speakers, and control their volume independently of the others. High resolution audio is supported.
The Laser WiF-Fi Adaptor works with both wired and wireless networks. With wireless it operates on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz bands. Easy WPS WiFi setup is provided, as is a built-in configuration web page for those without WPS routers. The sound can be delivered to a stereo by a 3.5mm stereo analogue output, and by an optical digital audio output for those with a digital sound system.
It is available from retailers for the recommended retail price of $99.95, but for a limited time can be purchased direct from Laser (www.laserco.com.au) for half price.
Also available is a range of three compatible speakers, with prices ranging from $179.95 for the 20 watt SPK-WFQ10 compact speaker, available in black or white (a discount applies for web sales at the moment), to the $399.95 for the SPK-WFQ50. This two way system has 125mm woofers, 25mm tweeters and 50 watts of power. A middle model – the SPK-WFQ30 – is also a two way system with 75mm woofers and 30 watts available.
