Audioengine W3 Premium Wireless Adapter-Audio Advisor

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Audioengine W3 Premium Wireless Adapter
Item # AUAW3

Our Price: $149.00

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Description
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"Recommended Component" 2013 - Stereophile

Effortless Wireless Audio from Digital or Analog Sources

Play all your music wirelessly from your computer or any audio device to your powered speakers, stereo receiver, or powered subwoofer. The Audioengine AW3 provides CD-quality stereo sound with the ability to broadcast to multiple AW3 Receivers with no reduction in audio quality. The AW3 sets a new level of quality and ease-of-use for wireless audio. Even if you're not an audio enthusiast, you will still hear a difference!

Stereophile magazine honored the AW3 by including it in its "Recommended Components" list for 2013. "The modules reliably linked up with each other and were free from signal interruptions, audible network problems, and extraneous noise," said the magazine.

The Audioengine AW3 is designed to connect your digital and analog audio components wirelessly. It handles USB audio up to 16 bits/48KHz with no compression, as well as analog audio via a 3.5mm mini-jack. Think of the AW3 as a wireless 16-bit USB DAC as well as a wireless audio link.

The AW3 consists of two parts: the Sender and the Receiver. The Sender transmits audio from your computer through USB audio or from any product with 3.5mm mini-jack or RCA audio outputs. The separate AW3 Receiver delivers audio to any product with mini-jack or RCA audio connectors.

Three-way Power

Power for the Sender and Receiver is provided from either a USB computer port, from the included power adapter, or from any other USB charger (such as an iPod charger, for example). Another power source is the Audioengine 5+ powered speakers, which are equipped with a USB power port on the rear panel.

Unwire your Music

Hear all your music with no dropouts, static, or noise. Some pretty clever engineering means your music remains free from interference from wireless routers, cordless and mobile phones, microwave ovens, Bluetooth, and WiFi devices. It's wireless that works.

Easy Setup and Simple Operation

Bypass your computer's sound card or headphone jack and send wireless audio to any music system. The AW3 transmits all music file formats from any computer media player and can simultaneously transmit audio to up to 3 wireless receivers. The 100ft (30m) typical range, low latency, built-in DAC, and resistance to interference and dropouts make the AW3 a superb sounding 16-bit wireless system.

Differences Between AW3 and W1

If you're an Audioengine W1 owner, you might wonder how the AW3 is different from the W1. The main difference between AW3 and the now-retired W1 is that while the W1 can only hop between multiple receivers, the AW3 can transmit to up to 3 receivers simultaneously. In addition, the AW3 provides greater resistance to interference from other Wi-Fi devices.

Superior Wireless Technology

The AW3 transmits uncompressed PCM audio in the very-crowded 2.4GHz range, but it uses a closed protocol specifically designed for audio. The key features that make AW3 better than most wireless systems currently on the market are the ease of setup, fixed low latency, audio quality, lack of dropouts, and high interference tolerance.

The system used in the AW3 was designed and tested to ensure that interference-free audio quality is preserved while sharing the RF spectrum with other common wireless transmission technologies such as WLAN, Bluetooth, microwave ovens, cordless telephones, and others. The system was tested end-to-end system performance using PEAQ, the latest perceptual quality measurement standard, to ensure the best resulting overall design.

Wireless Streaming Designed Specially for Music

The AW3 incorporates a real-time streaming transmission technology designed specifically for music. It includes 6 quality protection innovations to achieve the most robust audio link in its category.

Error-tolerant coding that incorporates forward error correction (FEC) coding. FEC ensures that lost bits can be completely reconstructed for common interferers and sources of bit errors. The coding is optimized for lossless performance against common and known interferers. FEC also enables error detection so the system knows when and where data is corrupted. It is analogous to techniques employed on Redbook CDs where the laser head incurs bit-errors as a result of imperfections in the pickup of data from the optical media.

For larger interferers, AW3 employs sample interleaving and sample error concealment (SEC). This allows AW3 to compensate gradually during periods of increasing signal degradation, thus minimizing audible discontinuities. When encountering interference bursts up to 6ms in duration, SEC can recover every alternate sample, after which the hardware DSP performs linear interpolation to recover lost samples.

Packet error concealment (PEC) ensures there are no jump discontinuities in the audio stream during periods of severe interference, giving the system time to find a clean channel.

AW3 employs intelligent, Dynamic Frequency Selection. The system avoids interference by constantly monitoring the entire 2.4 GHz spectrum, choosing the channel that can achieve the cleanest transmission. As conditions on a currently occupied channel deteriorate, the system detects this, and switches channels (in under 20 ms) without any interruption in the audio stream.

AW3 employs dynamic transmit power control. This means that AW3 is transmitting with only as much power as required to successfully maintain a clear audio connection. This makes AW3 coexist better with other 2.4 GHz devices, including WLAN, BT, and other Audioengine wireless devices.

AW3 combats RF fading, or multi-path-induced signal-strength fluctuations, by natively supporting antenna diversity. Support for dual antennas allows the system to "navigate" around zones of decreased signal strength by creating four possible antenna-to-antenna paths for the system to choose from on a continual basis. The end-result is an overall improvement in audio signal robustness due to an improved link margin.

Overview