On Thursday, Walter Mossberg of The Wall Street Journal took a look at the Sound Blaster Wireless Music System from Creative Technology. He liked it because its large remote-control unit provides a display and a full set of controls. This means that Sound Blaster does not need to be connected to a television in order to work properly.
As a result, this wireless music system can be moved from room to room, wherever set of speakers can be repurosed. About all that is needed when you relocate this device is power, wireless connectivity, and some sort of audio patch cable to plug the wireless music system into the device that “owns” the speakers.
Mossberg points out that a piece of Creative Labs digital audio library software must be loaded on the PC where you keep your MP3 collection. Obviously, that PC must be running at all times when you are using the Sound Blaster Wireless Music System. I wonder why systems like this cannot be made smart enough to browse a shared file systems itself, looking for music, instead of depending upon a Windows application to retrieve and queue files that are being played.
The Sound Blaster Wireless Music System is a little cursed from a naming perspective– its name is too close to a line of aftermarket audio systems for PCs that is made by the same manufacturer. If you start talking about this system and call it a “Sound Blaster”, people who have a lot of PC experience will be confused.