I’ve written about my desire to untether my music in the past.  I have Rhapsody and love it and listen to it often but I find it leaves me feeling stuck.  I have to be right in front of my computer to enjoy it.  Instead I want to be able to have music available to me throughout my house.   Queue up songs in my bedroom and then be able to hear the music as I unload the dishwasher or sit up in my loft.   I keep searching around trying to find the perfect solution.  Here are my latest discoveries.  Unfortunately none of them yet strike me as perfect.

Sonos and Linksys by Cisco Wireless Home Audio They seem to be pretty much the same concept.  Hook a “director” or a “zone player” to your stereo and now your music transmits from your computer to your stereo.  Then you need to get a remote control that allows you to change Internet radio stations or skip tracks, etc.  The price for this is around ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS!  And the reason why I keep shying away from it is I only have 1 stereo and it’s old.  So not only would I have to pay ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS!  I would also have to go out and buy another stereo or at the very least speakers.

Today I discovered a different solution called Audioengine W1.  This solution contains two little plugs, a sender and a recieiver.  You plug the sender into your computer and the receiver into your stereo and suddenly the music from the laptop is traveling wirelessly to your stereo.  Voila!  And it’s only 149.00.  Which is quite a huge savings from ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS but it still seems rather unwieldy considering you’re just getting two litle nubs.  I quite like the idea of using my laptop as the controller (one less piece to buy) BUT the sender can only transmit to one receiver at a time.  This means I can’t have music all over.  I would have to determine what room I want it in.  This might not be a horrible thing.  How often do I walk around the house?

I also discovered an Apple product called the Airport Express.  This seems an awful lot like the Audioengine W1 except it can simultaneously transmit to multiple receivers.  The unfortunate part of this is it seems like you need a lot of different cables and parts to make it happen AND it’s Apple which makes me think it’s iTunes or nothing at all.  And would it even work on an evil PC?  I doubt it.

I love the idea of having a Sonos/LinksysbyCisco remote control gadget.  It reminds me of Nick Knight in Forever Knight, using his universal remote to lower and raise his window blinds and turn off lights, and light his gas fireplace.  But I also can’t help but think I probably wouldn’t use it much.  It can’t be easy to type on and so I wouldn’t be sitting there using it to queue up songs as much as choosing a playlist and maybe skipping tracks.  I could easily do that with my laptop.   Why oh why doesn’t the AudioEngine W1 transmit to multiple receivers!?!?