FM transmitter for MP3 players

By Darcey McConnell

MP3 players continue to improve and advance as technology changes and improve. MP3 companies continue to add FM radios to their products as a way to give their consumers more ways to enjoy their favorite music. As time goes on, a greater share of the MP3 market includes FM radio. It can be difficult to sift through all of these MP3 with FM radio players to find the perfect MP3 player for you. If you are trying to find one to purchase, use these four separate search methods. If you use each method, you will be able to easily identify the right MP3 player for you.

These car transmitters can play both the mp3 and the wma files apart from direct transmission to radio. These car mp3 radio transmitters also have USB ports hence one can load any USB or other I/O device attached to the car mp3 radio transmitter.


The car mp3 transmitter comes with an innovative and a very fashionable design and the case to fit it inside the car is also elegant making it look as just a part of the car but not protruding or an extra device hanging in the car. These are light weight and easily attachable devices. These devices also have a phase locked loop technology along with sound coding. The car mp3 transmitter comes with a remote controller. The users of these systems are pretty happy with it is as the memory is high, it is slim. It also saves them the pain of changing CDs and USBs again and again.

The Digital Wireless Radio Transmitter wirelessly transmits music from youplayer to your car stereo. The digital tuner locks digitally into the clearest available radio station. Wide choice of channels allows you to tune your car stereo to the clearest FM frequency, and enjoy your music with full stereo sound and convenience. Receive calls while listening to music, just press "ANSWER" and music will pause to start your conversation through your car speaker. Supports called ID display and phone number report Built-in remote control with IRS function. This unit can support bluetooth function for iPhone 3G, iPhone and any other Bluetooth compatible device.

With bluetooth enabled, you can receive calls and hear the conversation through your car stereo! The cradle adjusts to almost any position. Keeps your iPhone or MP3 player or PDA just where you need it to select the next play list and keep your tunes coming.

About the Author:

Learn more about mp3 radio #1. Stop by Darcey McConnell's site where you can find out all about mp3 radio #2 and what it can do for you.

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Some Crucial Things You Should Know Regarding Wireless Loudspeakers

By Gunter Fellbaum

Looking at some of the technical specs of today's wireless speakers, one cannot help but be at a loss in trying to compare different models. I am going to explain the term "speaker wattage" a bit more in this article. "Wattage" is one of the most fundamental terms describing speaker performance. However, it is often misunderstood. Some manufacturers also in the past have used this term in a confusing manner to hide the real performance.

Speaker specifications are sometimes hard to interpret since they are not fully standardized. As such it may be difficult to figure out the true performance of the speaker simply by looking at the specs. One good method though is to do a listening test before purchasing your speaker. During this test you ideally want to set up the speakers in a similar environment as your application. Let me now go ahead and explain the wattage rating of loudspeakers.

"Wattage" shows how loud your speaker can sound. Depending on your application, you can go with a small speaker tolerating only a few watts or a larger one tolerating several hundred watts. Many smaller home speakers only can be driven with a few watts power which usually is enough for a small room. If you plan to shake your walls then you obviously want to opt for a speaker that has up to several hundred watts. Please note that many speakers will start distorting the audio once the audio reaches higher wattage. If you want to enjoy low-distortion audio then you may want to pick a speaker which will give you more wattage than you will actually need.

There are two common ways to display speaker wattage. These are "peak power" and "rms power". "Peak power" describes how much power the speaker can tolerate for a short burst. On the other hand, "rms power" describes how much power the speaker can tolerate for a prolonged amount of time without being damaged. In the past, vendors have usually preferred listing the "peak power". This number is higher than the average or "rms" power. However, "peak power" can often be misleading since there is no standard showing the amount of time that the speaker has to be able to tolerate this amount of power.

Nonetheless, while the rms rating will tell you more about the speaker's actual performance, be sure though that the speaker has a peak power rating which is substantially higher than the rms rating. This is because most likely you will be using the speaker to reproduce music or voice. Music and voice signals by nature always fluctuate in terms of their power, i.e. the power envelope of the signal will vary over time. The main reason is that music signals will have short bursts of high power which the speaker has to handle. Rms power is measured with a constant sine signal which hardly compares with a music signal in terms of the power envelope.

Please note that often the peak power that your amp can deliver to your speakers depends on the impedance of your speakers which is typically between 4 and 8 Ohms. An audio amplifier which has a fixed internal supply voltage will have a maximum output signal swing that is limited by that supply voltage. If you are driving an 8-Ohm speaker then your amplifier must deliver twice the output voltage than when driving a 4-Ohm speaker in order to deliver the same amount of power to your speaker. Usually maximum power is specified for a 4-Ohm speaker impedance. However, ideally the manufacturer of your amplifier will tell which speaker impedance the amplifier can drive. Please note that some amplifiers cannot drive speakers with very low speaker impedance.

About the Author:

You can find further details about cordless speakers from Amphony's web page.

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Buying Tips For Wireless Surround Sound Kits

By Gunter Fellbaum

A large number of wireless audio transmitter products have emerged over the years. They promise to cut the cord to your audio equipment. We will examine the impact of new technologies on the performance of these products. Also, we'll examine if they keep their promise of eliminating the cable clutter.

The first form of wireless audio transmission was in the form of AM and FM radio stations. FM radio is still popular today. However, newer technologies have started to replace it. These include DAB broadcasts, satellite and HD radio. Today's wireless consumer devices such as wireless surround sound kits, baby monitors, Bluetooth audio transmitters and wireless microphones eliminate the cord.

Setting up speakers in another room and distributing music throughout the house are some of the applications of wireless audio. Many homes are not wired for audio. The technologies used today all have pros and cons as we will examine.

FM transmitters are using the most traditional technology in which audio is sent by changing the frequency of a radio-frequency carrier. This technology is called frequency modulation or FM. It is fairly simple to implement. Thus FM transmitters are very cost-effective. Also, FM transmission offers high range. As a result, most of today's 900 MHz wireless headphones use FM transmission. However, FM has some major drawbacks.

The first is the fact that the transmission will pick up noise and thus there will be some hiss or static. The amount of noise will actually vary depending on the location of the radio or receiver. This is due to the fact that the radio signal is bouncing off walls and will cancel itself out at different locations. This phenomenon is called multi-path fading. Using two antennae is one method some devices cope with this problem (diversity receivers). Another problem is that FM radios easily pick up interference from competing wireless transmitters.

Bluetooth has gained popularity recently for wireless audio transmission even though this protocol was primarily designed to connect computer peripherals. Bluetooth audio transmitters will convert the audio signal to digital information and then transmit via the Bluetooth protocol. Bluetooth is fairly robust in terms of interference in is well standardized. Bluetooth, however, has some problems in regard to wireless audio since it was not designed for wireless audio originally. The range of the transmission is only 30 ft or less. Also, Bluetooth does not have enough space to send an uncompressed CD-quality audio signal. Therefore the audio is compressed prior to the transmission. As a result of the audio compression, the audio quality will decrease. The final problem is the fact that Bluetooth will introduce a delay in the signal (also called latency) which is a problem when used together with video since the audio will be out of sync or if used in a surround sound setup where some of the speakers would be out of sync with the hard-wired speakers.

The technologies used for satellite radio and terrestrial digital radio offer high range. However, they also use extensive audio compression. Further, a delay of up to several seconds is introduced.

Another technology transmits the audio signal without compression digitally. This technology is used in wireless audio transmitters from Amphony. The audio signal will retain CD quality because no audio compression is used. The audio latency of this technology is less than 1 ms. Therefore it can be used for real-time applications such as wireless speaker kits in home theater setups.

By using error correction, this technology can cope with interference from competing wireless devices which is key in today's noisy environment. The Amphony transmitters operate at 5.8 GHz. This frequency space is less crowded than the 900 MHz or 2.4 GHz bands thus leading to a further improvement of reliability. In contrast to Bluetooth, any number of wireless receivers can operate from a single wireless audio transmitter which is a concern when distributing audio to several rooms within a home.

About the Author:

Gunter Fellbaum has been developing audio and electronic products for over a decade. You can find further information regarding wireless surround sound transmitters as well as other wireless audio products from Amphony's website.

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