Features and Build Quality

Pre-wiring a complex multi-speaker home theater system in an existing single-family home, condo or townhouse can be a daunting task even for the highly trained professional A/V installer. Obstacles such as tile floors, no attic or cellar access, two story homes, and location of windows and doors in your future home theater room can compromise locations of speakers. The last thing that many new homeowners want to do is demolish wall plaster or ceiling sheetrock in their new home to install wire for speaker and subwoofer locations. Many simply give up and what they end up with is wire running on top of the floor, across doorways, or worse a two-speaker home theater system. Another possible installation consideration would be if your amplifier is permanently installed in your media room but you wanted to distribute audio from a source such as a CD player or other analog device located in another part of your house.

There have been many attempts to find a solution to these very common problems. Wireless technology has been touted as the perfect fix for applications like this. Unfortunately there have been no cost effective products suitable for high-end home theaters or whole house audio distribution. Many manufacturers claim reliable operation, but every wireless transmitter and receiver we have tested and evaluated to date has been plagued with intermittent operation, signal interference, and limited bandwidth problems.

Sonic Immersion Technologies, located in the beautiful state of Kentucky is yet another manufacturer claiming a solution to this long, hard, fought problem. We must admit that after several failed wireless product evaluations, we started this review with a high degree of skepticism. Read on to find out if this manufacturer has found the magic combination to unlock this complex problem.

The Digital Audio Link is a wire-free 5.8GHz class "B" receiver and transmitter system. The system consists of a transmitter, receiver, and two nine-volt AC adapter transformers the transmitter and receiver feature changeable transmitting and receiving channels and encryption codes. This is accomplished with eight encryption dipswitches and three channel dipswitches. This feature is very handy to have and should prevent interference from devices such as cordless phones.

The transmitter has a red LED power indicator and gold plated right and left line level channel inputs. The receiver features a red LED power indicator and a green LED signal receive indicator. The receiver also has right and left line-level channel outputs. The transmitter and receiver is very small, compact, and elegantly designed. As Shown below both the transmitter and receiver are smaller than a DVD case. We ordered the short distance version of the kit; this would most likely be the correct version to order for most single room home theater systems. The Digital Audio Link short distance kit has an effective range of about 150ft. The kit is also available in a medium range for longer distances up to a claimed 300ft.

We wanted to test the system's ability to transmit and receive a two-channel analog signal in the same room without signal interference and signal degradation. Setting up our first evaluation system, we used the Yamaha RX-V2600 and CD player placed at one end of our 30ft room, and an amplifier and a pair of Axiom M3Ti at the other end of the room. We connected the Digital Audio Link transmitter to the Yamaha RX-V2600's main front left and right analog pre-outs using Impact Acoustics Sonic Wave Interconnects and selected pure direct bypassing all bass management and sending a full range signal to the transmitter. This evaluation is to simulate the need for wireless rear surround speakers in your home theater system. The installer would be able to place the main part of the equipment in the A/V rack and then provide amplification at the rear of the room for the surrounds, thus eliminating the need for long wire runs. Another possible solution would be to use self-amplified speakers as the rear surrounds.