Product Review: SPI wireless speakers

Wirehead is a bit of an audiophile, but he is also hard of hearing. He wanted some rear speakers that were wireless. He tried some pre-owned products from Ebay, but had no luck. He found some SPI Wi-SPI speakers at Tuesday Morning that worked fine after he made some adjustments.

These speakers are sold for MP3 players such as the IPod. JC Penney also sells these speakers. Wirehead has one transmitter connected to an Sharp LCD TV and another to a headphone jack on an audio receiver. These speakers are very inexpensive and cost less than $20 dollars per unit that includes one transmitter and one speaker. The transmitters are point-to-point and operate at 49 MHZ so the speakers will pick up whatever transmitter is turned on.

The item in the foreground is an MP3 player and is not included in the wireless set. The beauty of the product besides the cost is that you can carry the speakers anywhere in the house to listen to the TV or music. The transmitter uses AAA batteries and is supposed to last 10 hours while the speaker takes four C-cells and is supposed to last about four. Wirehead has run the transmitter for many hours beyond that. The manufacturer claims the transmitter has a range of 50 feet. The transmitter  is powered when the antenna is raised.

The set comes with a one foot male 3.5cm tip and ring cable to connect to an audio jack. Wirehead noticed a pronounced 60 hertz hum. He replaced the cable with a 6 foot cable that isolated the SPI antenna from the audio equipment and the hum disappeared. He also bought a six foot Y adapter cable from Radio Shack that had both RCA connectors and a tip and ring so he could connect one of the speakers to the audio out of a new LCD TV. These little speakers provide spot sound and should be placed close to the listener.

3.5cm Y-cable with tip and ring connectors

The two connectors on the left are for mono sound, the connector on the right is for stereo

standard audio RCA cable

The transmitter also has an interface for 4.5 DC power. When Wirehead tried to power the transmitter with DC power to avoid the batteries, he noticed the hum again. He even tried different power supplies, but that did not eliminate the problem.

Wirehead recommends using longer cables if you pick up a hum from the electronic equipment. So stick with batteries for power. Use longer audio cables if you pick up a hum from your audio equipment and relocate the transmitter away from the audio gear. The price of these speakers is hard to beat.

Disclaimer: This review was provided gratis. There was no exchange of products, services or fees for this review. 

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