Audioengine AW1

If you are looking to setup a wireless solution for streaming your music, it is very easy to get overwhelmed – there’s the Slingbox, the Apple AirPort Express, and numerous other offerings from companies like Linksys, Creative and Logitech. Not sure which product to use for wireless music streaming? The folks at Audioengine aim to simplify things with the Audioengine AW1 Wireless Audio Adapter. It’s a plug-and-play device that can be used with any number of audio sources and speakers, and is designed to be easy to setup and to use. With the claim of CD-quality sound and no interference with other Bluetooth and WiFi wireless devices, the AW1 promises a lot. We take a look today at the wireless music solution from Audioengine to see if it lives up to the marketing claims.

Design

The Audioengine AW1 is a pretty simple looking set of audio adapters – a solid, polished black casing for both the sender and receiver units. Each unit has a USB male connector on one end, and a mini-jack (3.5mm) audio input. Each unit is quite petite - measuring only 3.9” L x 1.2” W x .4” H (100 x 30 x 10mm) and weighing only a couple of ounces.

Power for each unit is provided through the USB connection, which can be plugged into a laptop or any other device with a USB port. Additionally, power can be supplied using the included USB AC power adapter, or from any other USB AC charger (such as an iPod charger, for example).

The AW1 uses the 802.11 wireless protocol to transmit the audio signal, which is the same standard protocol used by nearly all wireless routers and laptops. It features some automatic-switching The maximum rate of data transmission is 340Mbps, which is more than enough bandwidth to cover all the popular playback formats such as MP3, WMA, FLAC, etc. The unit supports all playback formats from any media player, so there is no need to worry about compatibility of the AW1 with your favorite music source.

Features

• Send wireless audio to any room in your house
• Easy setup, connects in seconds
• Works with Mac or PC (or without a computer)
• Plug-n-play, no software to download or install
• Super-compact size, no batteries required
• 100 ft (30 m) range with no dropouts or interference
• CD-quality HD stereo sound with no reduction in audio quality
• Plays all music formats from any media player
• Replaces any RCA or mini-jack (3.5mm) cable

In the Box

• Wireless Audio Sender
• Wireless Audio Receiver
• USB AC power adapter
• RCA adapter "Y" cable
• Mini-jack (3.5mm) audio cables (20")
• Setup Guide

Out of the Box Setup

I was very pleasantly surprised to find that the setup of the AW1 was incredibly simple. Usually setup of wireless devices involves some trial and error, and some amount of configuration of the devices to get them to talk to each other. With the AW1, it was truly a plug-and-play setup. After unpacking everything from the box, I connected the Sender unit to my Sansa Fuze MP3 player, along with plugging the Sender unit into the USB AC power adapter, and then connecting the receiver unit to my Audioengine A5 speakers. After powering on the MP3 player and the A5 speakers, the units immediately “paired” to each other and the total time for setup was literally done in less than 30 seconds. That’s all that was needed for connections, and then I was off and running. That’s what I call easy to use!

I did not need to use any of the included cables with my initial setup, since I already had a mini-jack cable attached to the A5 speakers, but it’s nice to know that they were there when I needed them. Later on in the evaluation process I did set up the AW1 with my home theater system using the RCA “Y” adapter cable.