Creative Audio Downsizing

Okay, not the whole system. But I packed up the British-built Rega CD player, stashed the antique Pioneer tape cassette deck, mothballed the Music Hall turntable (that should’ve been mothballed years ago, except that, for a while, I had bought into the “vinyl is purer” thing). The Denon FM radio tuner’s up for sale as well. As for the MiniDisc deck….you want it? And there’s a Sony Digital Audio Tape recorder—remember DAT?–still in the box; I don’t want to talk about that.


Creative Sound Blaster Wireless



What’s left is my Mark Levinson two-channel (as in “stereo”) amplifier, a pair of B&W 800-series loudspeakers (so big that I plan to be buried in one of them), and the $150 Creative Sound Blaster Wireless for iTunes that came in the mail last week.



And, of course, the music source: the computer.



Perhaps a feng shui cloud descended on me. Sound pioneers like Henry Kloss, Ray Dolby and dozens of others would call me crass, but many of them have often proclaimed how less is more in audio, and now…well, at the house in Queens, where space seems to be shrinking, less is more.



Thanks to the Creative, the music streams in the ether from my Apple MacPro to the amp, and then I hear it. Beautifully. Little compression, if any. Perhaps a bit less high fidelity than I used to get from the CD player (using $200-a-pair interconnect cables), but not more than that.



The starter kit, for $150, includes the USB dongle for Mac or PC, and a single receiver with 3.5 millimeter or RCA stereo output jacks. Additional receivers can be purchased for $70 each.



Transmitting music from PC to the speaker den is old tech, and I’ve tried systems that held up (barely), systems that dropped off signals, and systems that seemed too complex right out of the box. Creative’s device employs old tech too—streaming along the ancient 2.4-gigahertz route—but the results, for the most part, are seamless. And despite the “iTunes” in the name, the system will work on Windows Media Player, Napster and other software. It does Internet radio as well.



Using the system over a distance with a laptop—with two flights of stairs, plus walls and ceilings, in between—the music dropped out, more frequently than I would have liked. Moving the computer down a flight resolved that problem. But don’t plan on long-range uninterrupted connectivity. And Creative suggests that in homes with wireless or Bluetooth networks, one may encounter problems with the music streams during “intensive” file transfers, although I didn’t.



So it’s not bulletproof: the system uses the volume output of the computer, although levels can be controlled with the amp or through the powered speakers. Also, it channels all audio from the computer: I jumped the first time I heard “You’ve got mail!” blasted over Coldplay.



Creative sells a bunch of wireless accessories, including headphones and powered speakers, which are compatible with the system I’m using. But I’m grooving on simplicity for a while. Of course, that too will pass.