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Advent AW870 Wireless Powered Speakers

Advent AW870 Wireless Powered Speakers

List Price: $199.99
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Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Quite Disappointed
Review: After searching this section and reading the reviews of this product, I finally thought I had a 900 mhz speaker set that would work. So I ordered it. Big disappointment. It seems to work fine within about a 10 foot radius of the small signal station, but beyond that reception is sketchy at best--not even as good as my 900 mhz phone, oddly. In particular, the system seems to have problems when the speakers are not in line-of-sight contact. So while this may be an okay system to create "surround sound" near your TV, it's really not powerful enough to use as a way to carry signals from your stereo into other rooms.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Terrible Reception
Review: Attempted to use them with an all-in-one Sony Stereo unit thru the headphone output. The reception was terrible with static even in the same room unobstructed from the transmitter. I sent them back.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Expensive, does not deliver...
Review: I am not too happy with it. As one other reviewer said the quality of the sound is not good, and it is hard to get any sound at all (really hard sometimes! ) ... a bummer for such an expensive product. You can't even hook up the speakers directly to the speaker jack (? ) you have to hook up the speakers to headphone jacks.. Anyways if you are going to use it for a stereo system (according for the instructions) the quality should be better... But for a Computer to hear MP3's in your room or real audio , the product is not up to par. Plus for the price they should throw in the compatible Headphones. For a 900mhz product my 900mhz phone has better reception and somewhat equal sound... I wonder if this product is not analog.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Advent wireless speakers was a major "ADVENT" for us
Review: I am now listening to my wireless speakers and when I go up to my den, I can take Mozart, Beethoven, or Beach Boys along with me!

I have a 60+1 CD player and this is heaven for me.

The sound is excellent(Beethoven is a good test for the bass and treble!) plus the oldies sound good too.

I have been surprised by the great sound they have and they are easy/light to carry.

My only regret is that I DIDN'T BUY THEM SOONER.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: good points, bad points
Review: I bought these in the hopes of using them both in my home office and for picnics--just bring along a walkman, plug it in, instant outdoor concert.

Well, not quite. Although the speakers can be battery-powered (requiring 8 C-cells each), the transmitter cannot be, unless you are adventurous enough to splice a power jack into the power cord and build a suitable battery pack on your own time.

I found the sound from the speakers to be OK but nothing special. I often thought there was some barely perceptible fuzz. Tuning has not been a set-and-forget affair: people moving nearby can knock the signal out. And 900 MHz cordless phones produce really bad interference.

The industrial design on these is pretty stupid, with the battery hatches actually screwed in place--making them very inconvenient if you plan on running them on battery power with any regularity. They would also benefit from more smarts, so that you only needed to set one volume knob (instead of three) and with automatic frequency hunting (my phone can do it, why not the speakers?). This would all drive up the cost, but it would be worth it.

I'd recommend these for people who want a set of speakers they can haul out on the deck once in a while for barbecues and as a remote set of speakers for the bedroom or office, or for situations where it would be really inconvenient to run a speaker wire (but you'll still need a power outlet nearby, really).

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Great Solution to an Annoying Problem
Review: I bought these with some trepidation due to the wide variation in ratings found here. They worked great in my house. The tuner is in my basement and now I can listen to music in my living room which is one floor up and about 25-30 diagonal feet from the tuner. I tried them in my back porch which is another 20 feet away and they worked fine there too. Tuning for me took less than 3 minutes. The only negative is I had to use my headphone jack which worked out fine but when using this jack you have to carefully turn the tuner's volume dial until the wireless transmitter's light starts blinking intermittently (for best signal to speakers). On my tuner the dial works best a fairly low volume on the tuner volume knob so if I want to keep the main wired speakers on it has to stay at that volume. You CAN turn the wireless's volume up as loud as you want.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Convenience is relative to price and performance
Review: I have just installed a pair of these speakers. Setup is relatively simple, although I had to use my headphone jack to create the connection. As one would imagine, the high end is better than the bass reproduction. All in all, I am pleased. The position of the speakers is about 50 feet from the source. Monster cable alone would be over half the price, as I would have had to drill through the floor, crawl under 2 sets of icky tight spaces to pull the cable, etc., etc. My time and money would have broke even with the cost of the units BEFORE even tackling the question of which bookshelf speakers to buy. If sound is a priority and you can live with a compromise with high fidelity, these are for you.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: concept is good, execution is poor
Review: I just purchased a set of the Advent 870's with the hope that this will allow me to have speakers in another room of the house without the hassle of wiring. Well . . . when I tried to place them in another room, the sound quality was terrible. The hiss from the speakers was louder than my old cordless phone and the music signal often broke up. This despite attempts to adjust the frequency and placement. All this occured when they were only 40 feet from the transmitter (albeit through two rooms), they only worked reasonably well within 20 feet of the transmitter. The claim of a 300 foot range is clearly ridiculous in the real world. Less than a day after receiving them my wife and I agreed that they weren't worth it. I would only recommend them to someone who plans to use them in the same room as the transmitter (or really close to it), otherwise the poor sound quality far outweighs the convenience that wireless theroretically offers.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Excellent with Apple PowerBook G4
Review: I plugged my pair of AW870's into my PowerBook G4 and have had outstanding results. The sound breaks up near 150-175', more so if there are a lot of walls & obstructions. Apple's iTunes v 2.n contains its own graphics equalizer which is much more resolved than any hardware alternatives, and the sound is extremely lively. The speakers are heavy but small enough to be unobtrusive once placed.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Excellent with Apple PowerBook G4
Review: I plugged my pair of AW870's into my PowerBook G4 and have had outstanding results. The sound breaks up near 150-175', more so if there are a lot of walls & obstructions. Apple's iTunes v 2.n contains its own graphics equalizer which is much more resolved than any hardware alternatives, and the sound is extremely lively. The speakers are heavy but small enough to be unobtrusive once placed.


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