Rating: 
Summary: This Box Rocks
Review: I felt a responsibility to share my experience with this unit since it differs considerably from other reviews. Many have complained of lag when calling up long play lists or when dealing with a large number of MP3 files. Apparently Creative Labs has been listening.I got one today, and I couldn't be happier. No doubt this is due to the new firmware I downloaded from the product site. I have over 6000 MP3s, and I can browse and call them up without a hitch. There is a 2-3 second gap of silence after pressing play while the first file buffers, but it's no big deal. I am a computer geek, and some network savvy is required to configure the unit if you're using WEP encryption. If your network is not encrypted, it's fairly plug-and-play, save for the firmware download which is straight forward. Regarding the range of the unit, my 802.11b router is 3 floors above the Wireless Music receiver and I haven't heard a single dropped bit all night. I am also controlling the unit 1 floor above the receiver, so the RF remote is pulling its weight. If you've been on the fence about this due to the lag issues, fear not. Download the firmware, and you'll be in heaven. This is truly great technology, and the sound quality is superb. For me, it was a crucial link in my home audio chain that I didn't even know was missing.
Rating: 
Summary: Early product but ready for prime time
Review: I had a few hiccups trying to get the Creative Wireless Music to operate consistently with my wireless network. In the end, I adjusted my network to accomodate the Sound Blaster. My network was WEP encrypted and configuring the SB to fit in, it would often not communicate with the wireless router, a D-link DI-624 502.11g router. My laptop connection which was previously stable now started to flake out. I am not sure what the interactions were but after playing with a lot of settings, the whole network just worked a lot better without the WEP encryption. To protect my home network somewhat, I disabled SSID broadcast and also enabled MAC address filtering to allow only my wireless devices access to the network and no other. The SB Wireless Music receiver remote has the MAC address in the "info" section. All seems to work flawlessly. I should add though that I don't live in an urban setting where my wireless network needs pretty stiff protection. My large MP3 collection doesn't have the best ID3 tags. This is really a big problem as it's hard to navigate without proper tags. I'm currently in the process of using Ultra Tag Editor to get my collection in order. I think the navigation on the SB Wireless Music is pretty great with a lot of different options to find just what you want. Firmware 5/04, works great. The remote is a lot more responsive. What I don't like is that sometimes the remote freezes or doesn't do anything and their is no error message. In some cases, the location of my Mp3's changed or file names changed but it would be nice to know why the device is freezing up. Sound is excellent. I use the optical SPDIF output to my digital decoder preamp. I have been waiting for a product like this for quite some time. The SB has some quirks but is nonetheless more or less what the doctor ordered. Best of all, I got it for $160 at a major online retailer.
Rating: 
Summary: What a DISAPPOINTMENT!!
Review: I had very high hopes for this unit. Unfortunately, it has a MAJOR technical problem right now that technical support has submitted to their testing center. Note: I HAVE applied all *three* of the latest firmware/software updates. Basically, after choosing to listen to a specific Genre on the remote, the unit plays ALL songs from your music library, regardless of Genre. If you can live with that, for $250 big ones, it's a nice product. For me, it's worthless.
Rating:
Summary: Exactly What I Was Looking For
Review: I have a 6000+ song MP3 collection that is pretty well organized (I ripped 95% of it myself). I researched several MP3 wireless players and this one made the cut. Here were my criteria:
- No TV or computer screen required to menu through the selections.
- Fairly portable. I want to move this from the bedroom to poolside easily. Should be no harder than moving a boombox.
- I have no need for doing movies, nor pictures. I only wanted music (MP3's specifically) I had not bought a device yet because all that I had found that fit the criteria required using a limited display while standing at the stereo. This one uses the remote as the interface which is brilliant. Wake up in the morning, grab the remote, select the music you want and woo hoo. The complaints of slow response when browsing large collections of MP3's seems to have been fixed by the latest software and firmware combination. Even browsing "all music" responds relatively well. It seems to load somewhere between 10-30 titles at a time. If you scroll past that point, it takes about ~1 sec to load the next batch of titles. Noticeable pause, but not frustrating at all. Music start time after making a selection is 2-4 seconds on my wireless 801B network (which doesn't do much else except occassional wireless web browsing from my laptop) using a 500Mhz Windows XP server and a 120gbyte USB 1.0 external drive. So not the fastest server environment, but performance is great. Subsequent songs in a playlist or album start up immediately after the finish of the previous song. The setup was a little unpleasent in a couple areas. 1) It didn't seem to recognize my network as easily as it should have. But plug-in the USB connection, run the network config software and boom, done. 2) The import of all of my tracks took much longer than it should have. I'm not sure why or what it was doing (if it did mess up my MP3 tags, I'll be upset - but it doesn't seem to have done that for the spot checks I made). In other software jukeboxes it takes about 2-4 minutes to index all the songs. It took well over 15 minutes for this application and I had to answer a couple questions in the middle of it (I wish it had asked me up front so I could just push "import" and come back later when it's done). At $250 It's pricey given that you can buy a DVD player with wireless network MP3 playing, JPG slide shows and DiVx movies for about the same money. But then you also need a TV (and space for the TV) everywhere you want to use that type of player. Now if they'd only make a plug in for J River's Media Center (my prefered MP3 software management and jukebox). Highly recommended!
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing. Great remote, unbelievably slow interface.
Review: I have a Turtle Beach AudioTron, but wanted a device where I had more flexibility with the remote and the display. In that regard, the Wireless Music delivers; the remote is far easier to read than the AudioTron's display, and it's nice to be able to use the Wireless Music's RF remote places that are outside of line-of-sight but still within listening distance. Problem is, the unit is unusably slow with a large MP3 collection. I'm not talking laggy, or a few-second wait for certain actions -- loading a large playlist (1000+ MP3s) or selecting a genre with a large number of MP3s to play randomly can easily take *5 minutes* to queue up. While the device would seem to work fine for people who only have a collection of a few hundred MP3s or only use small playlists, it's maddening with a large one. I spoke to Creative technical support, and they indicated that my experience was due to limitations of the device. Close, but no cigar. Hopefully, the next generation will be more capable; I like the interface a lot.
Rating:
Summary: Works just as advertised - and sounds great!
Review: I have been looking for a wireless product to play my 10000+ MP3's for a few years. (I started converting my music to MP3's 5 years ago, with the hopes that future technology would bring forth a device to play my digital music through my home stereo.) And finally, Creative Labs have come thru with the Sound Blaster Wireless Music System. It is not the cheapest of options out there, but it is definitely the one system that has most of the features I have been looking for. To start with, I have a single PC running Windows XP which is located on the second floor of our house, and my Stereo/Entertainment center is located on the first floor, hence the wireless product. (Wired was not an option)
I first started with the Lola Wireless System by X-10. For $ 70 I couldn't pass it up. I had to try it, and now, I am sorry I wasted the money. It is analog and AT BEST, my music sounded like a scratchy record. But the idea was there. I was able to view my entire digital library including album cover art on my TV. I found that to be a plus over certain hard drive type components which only offered a very small LCD screen on the unit to display and browse my entire collection. I was against that from the start, since I did not want to be inconvenienced by having to get up, and kneel down and try to read the small screen to see what was playing, to browse or to select my music. So after being introduced to the Lola system, I realized that viewing my library was a huge feature to look for. But on the negative side, with Lola, you had to have your TV on and switched to AUX input to view all of your music, which I did not like, since that meant that every time I wanted to listen to my music, my TV had to be on, and unavailable for others to watch.
SoundBlaster's Wireless music came up with a very simple idea, have an LCD screen on the remote! Makes perfect sense, and works well. You can select either Artist/Playlist/Genre/Album. Then you are able to scroll through the Alphabet to select the letter that each one starts with, and then onto the specific selections. For such a huge music Library, I can't think of a better structured method of viewing it.
Let's start at the beginning. I bought the Wireless Music System online, and found a decent deal. I couldn't pass it up, so I jumped on it, and then realized that I didn't have an existing wireless-G (802.11g) network. This is a requirement for the system to work. Now, I AM NOT a computer savvy person, and I don't know that much about computers, so I had some headaches trying to ask around to see what the minimum and cheapest hardware I needed to buy in order to have a wireless network set up. I do not have a high speed internet connection (still chugging along with dial-up!) So I didn't think a wireless router was for me. But after researching and comparing prices, a wireless router and a wireless access point were the same cost, but the router provided future capabilities if I decided to get a high speed internet connection, or another computer to network together. So I bought a Linksys WRT54G wireless router for about $ 70. All I had to do was plug the router into my computer via the provided Ethernet cable, plug the router into an outlet for power, and that was it! My computer recognized the network right away! No setup required, since I was not connecting to the internet or another computer.
I then installed the software bundled with the Wireless Music System, which was very easy. My music is saved in a very structured way on my computer in many folders, and I have been very careful about entering the ID3 tag information for each track. (Artist, Track name, Album name, Track #, Genre, and Date.) All of my hard work in the past paid off. The software recognized it all, and in less than 5 minutes my entire music collection was available. However, if you don't have all the Tag information ahead of time, the Music Media organizer makes it very easy to enter.
Now came the moment of truth. I went downstairs, plugged the receiver into the wall, and then into the back of my stereo receiver with the RCA cables provided. I hit the power button on the remote and....Voila! It recognized the network, and I had all 10,000+ songs available at my fingertips instantly! I hit the play button, and the music was perfect digital quality. No static, pops, hisses at all. (Another good feature with the remote is that it is Radio Frequency, not infrared, so you can be in another room, and still select your music.) It took some playing around with the remote to get used to it. A great feature is it's 'smart' playlists. But it is just as simple to play a whole album, by simply selecting an album and hold the play button for 3 seconds and it plays the album in its entirety. (The same works for specific artists or genres)
That is it, as simple as that!! Almost in the time it took you to read this review, I had my system up and running. I have been waiting a very long time for this! Congratulations to Creative Labs for this product.
The ONLY thing you have to do once it's up and running, is to download from their website, the latest upgrades for the firmware and drivers. They have improved on a lot of features and performance, and as with previous Creative Lab products, I know that they will stay on top of this product and continue to offer support and upgrades as they are needed. Hopefully this review helps your decision.
Rating:
Summary: Can't Get It To Work
Review: I must give this product 1 star as I have never been able to get it to work. It could not find the wireless network from my LinkSys router. The troubleshooting documentation is not helpful and the online support refers you back to the same inadequate documentation. The people on the online forums offered suggestions, but nothing helped.
Others love the product, but for me it is useless.
Rating:
Summary: It works!
Review: I purchased a different system first and returned it because it would work and tech support could only say "router incompatibity". Although this system did not "immediately" recognize my network, I went to the second step and used the USB connection to configure and it worked instantly. My only complaint is that the playlist does not allow you to shuffle or rearrange the music. I will definitely buy at least one more unit to add to my system.
Rating:
Summary: AWESOME!!!
Review: I recently got married and my wife has as many cd's as I do. We each have over 500 cd's. We have 3 400 disc cd changers. We have no idea what cd is where. This "system" from Creative is EXACTLY what we needed. This thing is just so much fun and so easy to use it's unbelievable. I converted ALL of our cd's to the MP3 format using the included software. The included software is top notch and allows you to edit EVERYTHING before AND after you rip the cd's. Installation was a snap...I downloaded the latest firmware and software via the Creative web site. Everything works perfectly and works quickly too...No lag here!! The remote kicks butt!! It's perfect. Of course in the future a larger Color display with cd artwork would be nice, but for the first release this is just too cool!! I have NEVER written any kind of review. I am so INCEREDIBLY happy with this item that I am submitting this review. BUY THIS!!! You will be so happy!!!!!!!!! I know have 3 400 disc changers for sale!! Anyone interested??
Rating:
Summary: Wireless Music Blaster Issues
Review: I think by now everyone understands the "Pros" of this unit and most of the cons. I thought I should mention my "Cons" for anyone interested.
1st - If you own a 2.4Ghz phone system, you will have dropouts. This happened to me everytime the phone rang. You then had to reset the system (by unplugging the power cord). I eventually upgraded to a 5.8Ghz system and this problem went away.
2nd - Range of the receiver is very limited. Even though I have a fairly strong signal where the receiver sits, it occasionally won't lock-on and just sits there blinking at me. Move it closer and it works.
3rd - Still unexplained lockups. Occasionally, the unit will still "lockup" for no good determinable reason. Again a reset is required.
4th - If you have a song in the playlist that for some reason is not available (i.e. the file no longer exists), the system will lockup and not respond. I have found that the mediaserver software likes to rename files and occasionally "looses" them because they have been renamed. Make sure you run the option to look for all your files periodically to prevent this problem.
When it works, it is indeed a "cool system". I almost threw the remote last night when it couldn't locate the sever AGAIN. I'm not sure that Creative will ever be able to fix all the software/hardware problems with firmware/software updates. I have the latest and greatest versions and I am still experiencing the problems described above.
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