Creative Sound Blaster Wireless Music

A computer may be the best device for storing thousands of MP3 music files but it's not always the most suitable for playing them. So how do you get your entire digital audio collection to other rooms of the house without carting your PC around with you? The 21st century answer: use a wireless streaming device.

Creative's Sound Blaster Wireless Music is the first device of its kind to feature a screen on the remote control, which means you don't have to use the streaming device to navigate your tracks.

To get it working, you'll need an existing wireless network, or a wireless USB adapter, which can be picked up for around £30. It comes with it's own 'MediaServer' software, which supports MP3, WMA and WAV files.

Unfortunately, it's not compatible with AAC or secure WMA music files, so anything you download from iTunes or Napster won't be recognised. Also, any music file you want to stream has to be added to the MediaServer and organised in Creative's own software which, in fairness, isn't much different from most music-management libraries.

The device itself is extremely easy to set up. Just connect it to your stereo by either phono or digital, switch it on and the in-built Wi-Fi antenna, which supports both b and g wireless network standards, should pick up the MediaServer running on your computer.

As mentioned, everything is operated by the huge remote control. Providing your files are properly organised, with all ID3 tags correctly filled out, you can browse by playlist, genre, artist or album and apply the usual playback features such as shuffle and repeat.

Like the remote, though, we found the navigation system a little bit cumbersome. But once we'd figured out what buttons did what, we realised that it's the best device of this category we've used. Furthermore, four devices in separate rooms can be used with one computer.

Sound quality is only as good as the digital audio file you are playing and the stream was lost a few times at first in our test, but the system sorted itself out after a couple of minutes. In the company's favour, the device is small, discreet and works tremendously well with the remote control, a huge advantage over its competitors.

Contact: Creative (no UK number)
uk.europe.creative.com

Also consider: Apple AirPort Express