Comments on: i2i Stream http://blog.testfreaks.com/review/i2i-stream/ Fri, 10 Feb 2012 05:54:00 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 By: Paul Hurt http://blog.testfreaks.com/review/i2i-stream/comment-page-1/#comment-32659 Paul Hurt Sat, 20 Jun 2009 17:16:55 +0000 http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/review/i2i-stream/#comment-32659 Hmm. So, I bought a few of these hoping to use them in a professional situation, to free musicians from headphone cables. For casual listening they're fine. But for any kind of critical listening they're not really up to the job. Why? Because there's clearly some kind of limiter/AGC circuit in the transmitter that hammers all the dynamics of your music. It basically attempts to level out the input signal, so that whatever level you send to the transmitter, it boosts it if it's too low, or reduces it if it's too high. This introduces pumping - kick drums lose their impact and cause the rest of the track to dip in volume on each beat. You can't really get around the problem by reducing the output of the device that's feeding the transmitter unfortunately - the AGC simply cranks the volume up and cancels out your efforts to reduce the level (although a low-level input produces better results that overdriving the transmitter). It would have been great if there was the option to disable the AGC. Just provide a simple LED to indicate when the input level is too high (hey, I don't know, maybe flash the transmit LED? No redesign required). You could then optimise the sound quality by adjusting the output of the transmitting device until the LED didn't quite flash. If Arielle gave us that feature I suspect the sound quality of the i2i would be dramatically better. Pro audio people would take up this device in droves... because apart from the AGC problems, it works really well. 16-bit 48kHz uncompressed is perfectly capable of results that sound almost indistinguishable from a wired connection. That's not the case right now. The "limiting factor", if you like, is the limiter! Shame. Hmm. So, I bought a few of these hoping to use them in a professional situation, to free musicians from headphone cables. For casual listening they’re fine. But for any kind of critical listening they’re not really up to the job. Why? Because there’s clearly some kind of limiter/AGC circuit in the transmitter that hammers all the dynamics of your music. It basically attempts to level out the input signal, so that whatever level you send to the transmitter, it boosts it if it’s too low, or reduces it if it’s too high. This introduces pumping – kick drums lose their impact and cause the rest of the track to dip in volume on each beat.

You can’t really get around the problem by reducing the output of the device that’s feeding the transmitter unfortunately – the AGC simply cranks the volume up and cancels out your efforts to reduce the level (although a low-level input produces better results that overdriving the transmitter).

It would have been great if there was the option to disable the AGC. Just provide a simple LED to indicate when the input level is too high (hey, I don’t know, maybe flash the transmit LED? No redesign required). You could then optimise the sound quality by adjusting the output of the transmitting device until the LED didn’t quite flash. If Arielle gave us that feature I suspect the sound quality of the i2i would be dramatically better. Pro audio people would take up this device in droves… because apart from the AGC problems, it works really well. 16-bit 48kHz uncompressed is perfectly capable of results that sound almost indistinguishable from a wired connection. That’s not the case right now. The “limiting factor”, if you like, is the limiter! Shame.

]]> By: i2i shares music wirelessly - in theory ends back seat music player squabbles | Gear Diary http://blog.testfreaks.com/review/i2i-stream/comment-page-1/#comment-28440 i2i shares music wirelessly - in theory ends back seat music player squabbles | Gear Diary Sat, 20 Dec 2008 18:56:12 +0000 http://www.testfreaks.com/blog/review/i2i-stream/#comment-28440 [...] i2i Stream reviewed [...] [...] i2i Stream reviewed [...]

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