This is a review and detailed measurements of the REL Acoustics Wireless Subwoofer and Transmitter. I purchased it from Amazon and it costs US $98 including Prime shipping.
As the name indicates, this is a transmitter and associated receiver to allow you to locate the subwoofer for your home theater anywhere you wish. The pair of boxes are rather high quality:
The external power supplies are small and provide 5 volt at 500 milliamps. As such, it could have used a USB charger as some of its competitors use (e.g. SVS). That way, you could power the transmitted by the USB port in your AVR.
There are a ton of these products in the market but from what I can tell, many are using Bluetooth. The REL does not and hence advertises low latency. This is good as while you can delay your main channels to match any delay, you may lose lip sync.
The two units paired automatically on power up although there is also a manual process for pairing which I believe could be used if you have more than one pair.
Audio Measurements
As usual, let's look at our dashboard but with the lower frequency tone of 30 Hz :
There is some gain which was surprising to me.
SINAD is computed using the full audio bandwidth which doesn't apply here as your sub won't go that high. So in reality, performance is even better than 74 dB. This should be more than transparent for a sub as it is likely to have much worse distortions.
Frequency response shows that there is a built-in filter:
This helps the response of the system as it is the higher frequencies which get noisier. The available bandwidth is plenty for any type of subwoofer you may use with it.
Let's see if the distortion varies during the typical subwoofer spectrum (and then some):
Not an issue. Yes, there is some rise in distortion but that is well above 100 Hz where the sub is likely rolling off anyway. And even there, we are talking -60 dB.
Testing level versus distortion we get:
Other than clipping near 2 volts, the rest is pretty good actually given the fact that this is a wireless transmission.
I then ran a sweep of phase shift relative to frequency:
Don't mind the sudden drops. The graph basically says the phase shift keeps increasing with frequency linearly which means it has a constant, frequency independent delay which is good.
So far so good.
RF Interference
I ran a real-time capture of THD+N:
At around 42 seconds, my son turned on Wifi on his phone and ran a speedtest. As you see, that caused fairly high levels of THD+N, caused by sudden shifts in noise level and glitches. This was with him being 6 feet away from the transmitter. I then had him move 12 or so feet away and do the same thing. Strangely, the interference was worse there. RF works in magical ways! What the eye sees, is not in sync with how RF energy couples into something.
It is clear then that Wifi interference can cause serious issues with this device. I will be testing this in a scenario similar to this as my AVR is just a few feet away from my Wifi Access Point. Will report back on what the audible considerations might be later.
Conclusions
It took us three years to remodel our current home. I ran miles and miles of cables "just in case." And conduits. Alas, didn't think one day we may want to have more than 2 channels in our living room (thought we would use our dedicated theater a lot more than we are). So now I need a way to connect a subwoofer which would be sitting under a table in the middle of our living room. Hence the REL wireless subwoofer transmitter.
I am relieved to see the transparency that the REL achieves for this intended application. Interference with Wifi though is a concern. With just one spectrum (2.4 Gigahertz) available to every device known to man, this is kind of unavoidable. A more sophisticated spread spectrum system could have dealt with this better but likely not cheap to build. Bluetooth may do better given its error correction but without testing, it is hard to know.
Anyway, if you can keep this device away from Wifi, the REL will likely do the job. Recommendation pending actual listening tests.
EDIT: Actual use in our large living room even at a distance of som 20 feet showed rock solid reliability. So definitely recommended now
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Caught a couple of panthers teasing the decapitated one that he "has lost his head." Was funny to them but not to the poor panther without said head. He is so traumatized that I have to get him some counseling. Please donate some money for his therapy using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
As the name indicates, this is a transmitter and associated receiver to allow you to locate the subwoofer for your home theater anywhere you wish. The pair of boxes are rather high quality:
The external power supplies are small and provide 5 volt at 500 milliamps. As such, it could have used a USB charger as some of its competitors use (e.g. SVS). That way, you could power the transmitted by the USB port in your AVR.
There are a ton of these products in the market but from what I can tell, many are using Bluetooth. The REL does not and hence advertises low latency. This is good as while you can delay your main channels to match any delay, you may lose lip sync.
The two units paired automatically on power up although there is also a manual process for pairing which I believe could be used if you have more than one pair.
Audio Measurements
As usual, let's look at our dashboard but with the lower frequency tone of 30 Hz :
There is some gain which was surprising to me.
SINAD is computed using the full audio bandwidth which doesn't apply here as your sub won't go that high. So in reality, performance is even better than 74 dB. This should be more than transparent for a sub as it is likely to have much worse distortions.
Frequency response shows that there is a built-in filter:
This helps the response of the system as it is the higher frequencies which get noisier. The available bandwidth is plenty for any type of subwoofer you may use with it.
Let's see if the distortion varies during the typical subwoofer spectrum (and then some):
Not an issue. Yes, there is some rise in distortion but that is well above 100 Hz where the sub is likely rolling off anyway. And even there, we are talking -60 dB.
Testing level versus distortion we get:
Other than clipping near 2 volts, the rest is pretty good actually given the fact that this is a wireless transmission.
I then ran a sweep of phase shift relative to frequency:
Don't mind the sudden drops. The graph basically says the phase shift keeps increasing with frequency linearly which means it has a constant, frequency independent delay which is good.
So far so good.
RF Interference
I ran a real-time capture of THD+N:
At around 42 seconds, my son turned on Wifi on his phone and ran a speedtest. As you see, that caused fairly high levels of THD+N, caused by sudden shifts in noise level and glitches. This was with him being 6 feet away from the transmitter. I then had him move 12 or so feet away and do the same thing. Strangely, the interference was worse there. RF works in magical ways! What the eye sees, is not in sync with how RF energy couples into something.
It is clear then that Wifi interference can cause serious issues with this device. I will be testing this in a scenario similar to this as my AVR is just a few feet away from my Wifi Access Point. Will report back on what the audible considerations might be later.
Conclusions
It took us three years to remodel our current home. I ran miles and miles of cables "just in case." And conduits. Alas, didn't think one day we may want to have more than 2 channels in our living room (thought we would use our dedicated theater a lot more than we are). So now I need a way to connect a subwoofer which would be sitting under a table in the middle of our living room. Hence the REL wireless subwoofer transmitter.
I am relieved to see the transparency that the REL achieves for this intended application. Interference with Wifi though is a concern. With just one spectrum (2.4 Gigahertz) available to every device known to man, this is kind of unavoidable. A more sophisticated spread spectrum system could have dealt with this better but likely not cheap to build. Bluetooth may do better given its error correction but without testing, it is hard to know.
Anyway, if you can keep this device away from Wifi, the REL will likely do the job. Recommendation pending actual listening tests.
EDIT: Actual use in our large living room even at a distance of som 20 feet showed rock solid reliability. So definitely recommended now
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Caught a couple of panthers teasing the decapitated one that he "has lost his head." Was funny to them but not to the poor panther without said head. He is so traumatized that I have to get him some counseling. Please donate some money for his therapy using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
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