Home > Consumer Reviews > Acoustic Research AW-871 Wireless Stereo Speakers

Even though my experience with wireless headphones were universally poor -- I once overheard my neighbor's cell phone conversation while listening on wireless headphones -- I was very impressed by the plentiful good reviews for this product and decided to give it a try at Amazon's wonderful low price. Amazon sells this product for up to $75 below the price stores ask.

However, once I got it home, hooked it up and turned on my stereo, my experiences with this set of wireless speakers was an exact replay of my expereince with wireless headphones. I set these up as the rear surround speakers in my living room as part of on my 5.1 system, fixing the speakers only about 25 feet from the transmitter. Even in that brief distance with almost no physical block between them, the left speaker consistently spit out static. The rightt speaker played fine all the time but had an annoying tendency to click while the music was turned off.

This is not what I had in mind for my home stereo! I moved the speakers around (as far as the power cords would go, anyway) and re-situated them, trying to gain greater proximity to the transmitter. This did nothing to improve matters. The transmitter indicated the signal was strong, yet that left speaker continued it staticky way throughout my experiment.

These speakers are easy to set up and easy to get working. You really don't need the instructions if you've had any experience with anything wireless. Still, I consulted the booklet to see if there was anything I was doing wrong. At one point I had the setting on both speakers at "right", so I changed that. No change in the outcome. I also re-set the transmitter from "1" to "2" and even to "3". No change. I moved the speakers again. No change. I consulted the booklet and listened again. Same thing.

Perhaps my experience has something to do with my neighborhood, my home or my neighbors, but my experience was not nearly as good as those reported elsewhere on this page. On the plus side, these speakers sound pretty good for something that barely costs $100 and they are easy to use.

They are portable and can be set up anywhere a power source is near or set up anywhere using battery power. The transmitter is supposed to be good up to 300 feet and I know the speakers in my house received the signal. I simply was not going to pay for a product that resulted in my SACD signal being converted to static.

While the sound the speakers produced was pretty good for something so inexpensive, I was not impressed with them as surround sound speakers. With independent volume controls, they seem like just another set of speakers to me. Compared to the sound I get from my wired surround speakers in another room from my front three speakers, these did not sound much like surround speakers regardless of the amnount of fiddling I did with the volumer controls and transmitter.

Even though this experiment was a failure at my house, I am grateful Amazon accepted my return; not every company on the Web will take back electronics. I wish you better luck with this product than I had.

The speaker system as mentioned in a prior review did not work immediately upon unpacking. Indeed, it took 30 minutes to derive sound from the speakers which I may attribute to having a rather complicated receiver that required a fair number of settings changes to make the speakers work. Probably because I know the quality of AR speakers from years ago(I used to own both AR-4s and AR-2as many many years go), I kept at it because I believed I was doing something wrong. After getting the speakers to work and they do emit a distintive AR sound, I moved them to my proposed location and plugged them in again. And lo and behold, no sound from one of the speakers. I returned the speaker to its original location and plugged it again and no sound. It seems that there is an on-off switch on the front of the speaker(read the brochure!!) that I had depressed. Also it is not a simple press and release but you are instructed to hold the button for 5 seconds and release. Once done, everything worked fine and is still working fine. I have moved the speakers several times with no deterioration in quality although I am sure the editors of The Absolute Sound would turn up their noses at my arrangement. I also subscribe to XM radio using one of their Delphi units which has a headphone jack. No trouble at all unplugging from the receiver and plugging the jack into the headphone outlet-immediate sound. I also have a wireless network and a wireless TV unit and I have not noticed any conflicts between any of the units. I will order another set so that I can have speakers in other locations throughout the house. I believe I will be able to connect the next set to the same transmitter. I see there is a single speaker being offered by Advent(Recoton) which does not appeal to me(white does not cut it) but it is cheaper if that is all you need. Since I have a stereo system that I would like to hear all over the house as well as XM, I will probably visit Radio Shack for a switch box that will allow me to plug in the stereo and the XM and control the output via the transmitter. I suspect I will lose some sound quality but as long as Stereophile magazine does not come knocking I will be happy.

Here's what I've learned about the AR 900mhz wireless speaker system.

1) After setup, they work better than I had expected. It appears the system has internal frequency monitoring that allows them to self-adjust, and they do a good job of it. I've gotten very little static even in a high-density neighborhood, and with a houseful of other wireless devices. When static or fuzziness does occur, it seems to be effectively and automatically "dealt with" in a few moments.

2) There are a few clever but non-intuitive features that mean you actually need to read the operator's manual on setup, rather than intuit your way through. I thought it was so simple I could just guess, which had me scratching my head for a few minutes wondering why things weren't working. But the answers were all in the manual, such as the need to pre-tune the transmitter appropriately (a blue flashing light on the transmitter will tell you when your tuning is correct), to turn on the speakers with a brief push-and-hold of the volume control, and to turn off the speakers with an extended push-and-hold. Many of the negative comments from other users posted below, such as "When I tried to recharge nonrechargeable alkaline batteries in them, they leaked" (no kidding!) and "I wish there were an on-off button on the speakers" (there is!) and "The speakers would not work until I turned them on" (no kidding!) seem to come from people who blithely ignored the manual.

3) Check your output device (whether TV/amplifier/stereo/computer/ipod or other) to see if it has a nonvariable (fixed) line out. That's what these speakers want and need. You can fry the transmitter with a variable line out that's turned up, so be careful if you don't have a fixed line out. My output device, a TV, offered either variable or fixed line out (a menu option) so I had to figure out how to change the TV output to fixed. Setup would have been faster if I'd known about this beforehand.

I'm looking forward to adding rechargeable (preferably NiMH) batteries to the speakers and taking advantage of the auto-recharge option afforded by the speaker power supplies. I'd love to move these speakers around the house, completely independent of all wires, including power supply wires.

I'm giving these speakers 5 stars because I can't think of any obvious oversights or deficiencies in their design, and because they exceed my expectations in several ways. I used to have to blast our livingroom TV to hear it from the kitchen, and now I can keep the volume at a moderate level right in the kitchen, where I need it. A quick changeover from the TV to the computer allows me to podcast to anywhere within the house. Nice.

Pros: competitive price for quality (provided you buy online). Removes need to run cable. Can easily be relocated
Cons: none really provided you have defined requirements. Possible / probable interference depending on your geographical location

Connections
The transmitter comes with a 'Y' 3.5 mm female headphone plug to 2 RCA (phone) plugs, and a 3.5mm to 1/4 " headphone adapter plug. Your first option is to plug the transmitter cable into the headphone adapter and plug it into headphone socket of your stereo receiver. This is how I tested the system. You can certainly set up the system to be used this way all the time but there is a down side. The headphone output is what is termed (in the manual) as a variable output source. This means that as you change the volume on your stereo so will the broadcast signal change to the speakers. i.e. changing the volume on the stereo changes the volume on the wireless speakers. This can quickly lead to distortion unless you correspondingly vary the setting on transmitter broadcast level. This would quickly become tiresome. Plus, on most receivers, plugging the headphones typically cuts out your 'wired' speakers. Bit self defeating I would have thought if your goal was to have music inside as well as outside.
So the better way is to plug the 3.5mm transmitter cable in to the 'Y' cable and plug the RCA plugs in to the output channels of one the devices supported by your receiver. As I said above, with the demise of tape the TAPE output will normally be your option. This a fixed output source. So no matter how you adjust the volume on your receiver for your wired speakers it has no effect on the signal to the transmitter. This leaves you to set the broadcast signal on the transmitter to the optimal level to achieve reception but avoid distortion. If, like me, you intend to only use the speakers in one place then you probably will never need to adjust the setting ever again. If you move the speakers to the extreme end of their range (reportedly 300ft but I've no intention of verifying) you'll probably need to boost the broadcast signal strength.

Volume control.
I've read complaints in some reviews that the speaker volume can't be adjusted from the receiver. Well, obviously if you use the headphone option described above, you can; but at the price of probable distortion. But why would you want to? I wanted this solution specifically so I can set the volume outside at a completely different level from that inside. The independent volume control on each speaker is fine for me. One con: being all black it is difficult to see where you've set the volume for each speaker. If you move them around no doubt the knob will be accidentally moved. Some suggested making marks to spot the settings. Seems like a good idea to me.

Volume.
More than adequate. Unless you really want the neighbours to move!

Outside use.
Not designed to left outside. Definitely not directly exposed to the elements. I intend to use under a covered porch and bring inside. Damage caused by short term exposure to humidity, extreme heat / cold? I'd think probably not recommended but electronics are amazingly resilient these days. If you want permanent outside speakers there are solutions, but more expensive. And the AR871's LOOK like speakers (hey, it's my era)

Indicator Lights.
Several reviews commented on the bright blue lights that serve the purpose of indicating signal transmission / reception. On the transmitter, since you'll probably hide the whole thing, this seems a none issue. On the speakers, if this really annoys you, like others have suggested put some tape over them.

Power.
The transmitter requires power and is permanently on. Since it usually is located at the receiver (or a computer) no doubt power near at hand. Each speaker has it own power adapter. Not small. Each speaker can take 8 'C' type batteries. You can use rechargeable but as one reviewer pointed out 16 rechargeable 'C' type batteries is likely to cost you 3/4 the price of the speakers. Of course the batteries will last some time.

Source devices other than stereo receivers.
Since the transmitter cable is 3.5mm 'Y' you can use it with just about any device like maybe a MP3 player. A cheap 2.5 / 3.5 mm adapter plug will help for the truly mobile devices my PDA which doubles a MP3 for example. Or plug in to you computer. The manual has suggestions for use including VCR, TV's. Of course the need for the transmitter to have power adds limits.

Interference.
The system works in 900Mhz range along with a multitude of devices such as cordless phones. The transmitter has 3 different settings to use to try and get around conflicts. I used the first setting as supplied and I have no interference. Now this must be qualified by pointing that I live a fairly rural area so with housing well apart, and having no computer network, my exposure to cross interference is slight. People living in cities or tight suburban sub divisions might have more issues. Some people have noted the 'popping' that occurs due to interference; as noted by others this does occasionally happen but as also noted by others, only when no signal is being broadcast.

Bottom line: I'm impressed and will recommend. For now. We'll see how they stand up over time!

I bought these from amazon, worked right of the box for about a week. Then the left speaker went out on me. When they were on, there was a distinctive hum that was quite annoying. I called their tech support and they sent me a new set after I sent me my old ones. Well, I have had them for about three days and the new left speaker crackled like it was busted. No matter what I tried, it still hae the crackle. I changed it to all three channels, nothing helped. Now that speaker won't turn on.

Rated one star because a 0 is not an option.