Wireless headphones

[teamsaint]

I fancy a pair , mostly for using to listen to the radio in the garden.

Any suggestions or wise thoughts as to which functions are useful?

Don't want to spend a lot, but prepared to go for a bit of quality rather than rock bottom price.

Cheers

TS.

[Serial_Apologist]

Birdsong comes free, mind...

[teamsaint]

Birdsong comes free, mind...

it certainly does . Round my way so does donkey braying, dog barking, cat yowling, and lots of other animal noise. Which is nice.

was that post just to edge you 1 nearer to our exclusive club, S_A?

[Dave2002]

TS

I had a pair once - indeed still do, but I don't think they work well now. The ones I had used infra red, but later ones used "proper" wireless.
Many use FM for modulation, so there's hiss, and a restricted dynamic range. I found that annoying with my pair - plus also if I wasn't in line of sight of the sender/receiver unit they cut off. "Proper" wireless ones shouldn't have that problem, though could fade if a long way away from the base station.

In the last few years others have come out - with digital wireless links. Some use Bluetooth, though I don't know whether this has enough capacity for really good quality. There may be other technologies - I'm not sure if any use wi-fi.

I think there are good pairs, but they might be very pricey. Also remember that there needs to be a power source, which could be via batteries - some might use ordinary or rechargeable batteries, while others may have in-built rechargeable batteries, and come with a charger stand. Batteries may increase the weight significantly, or be a nuisance if they need to be recharged very frequently.

Perhaps someone else has tried new sets in the last year or two, and can bring us up to date.

Oh - and remember also - the actual sound quality itself has to be good too. You can probably get wired sets for a lot less, and use a portable device, such as an iPod which should give acceptable to good quality.

[Beef Oven!]

I fancy a pair , mostly for using to listen to the radio in the garden.

Any suggestions or wise thoughts as to which functions are useful?

Don't want to spend a lot, but prepared to go for a bit of quality rather than rock bottom price.

Cheers

TS.

Why don't you just listen to the radio on your iPhone with any old head/ear phones?

[teamsaint]

Why don't you just listen to the radio on your iPhone with any old head/ear phones?

i want wireless because when I am gardening the wires between the player and the speakers get in the way.

I already thought of your plan !! It works, but I am upping my levels.

Thanks D2K+" for the advice.

[Dave2002]

i want wireless because when I am gardening the wires between the player and the speakers get in the way.

I already thought of your plan !! It works, but I am upping my levels.

Are the neighbours going to enjoy this too, or will you scare them away?

I guess you're saying you have a radio wired to speakers. You want to use that to send wireless signals to devices in the garden. The radio, and/or the speakers connected to it, are not easily portable. If that's so, there are various different ways. Does your device have an optical out? If it's a DAB set it might, otherwise probably it won't.
This could get complicated.

Please confirm what you are trying to do, and with what equipment.

[teamsaint]

Dave

I just have an ordinary DAB/FM tuner , with no optical out.

All i was thinking of doing was getting some sort of radio (or other music signal) through wireless headphones, and wondered if there was a simple way of achieving this.

I don't think whatever I do will scare the neighbours. Haven't managed to yet !!

[Dave2002]

TS

I suspect your idea could cost more than you might have imagined. The easiest way is probably to use an iPhone or similar, if you have one,
and try to extend your wi-fi to give good coverage in your garden. The headphones would still be wired, and connected to the mobile device. For radio there are enough apps which will pick up streaming radio channels to make that work, or you could feed a signal from your radio and player equipment back onto your LAN via a streaming server - maybe Plex would do.

I know that it is feasible to get wi-fi to cover a garden over 100 feet or more, as I've done that, and received signals on iPads.

If you really wanted wireless headphones for the last bit of the link, then it might be possible, though I'm not quite sure why you would need that once the signal has reached the mobile device which you'd have either with you, or close by.

Sticking with your original idea, I rather doubt that most wireless headphones would be able to receive a data or channel (could be analogue) stream over the sort of distances in your garden. There are those simple FM retransmitters which work inside cars for some applications, but they normally only have a very short range, as normally they don't need to transmit very far.

It would probably be much cheaper and simpler to buy a radio for personal use in the garden, which would appear to be your intended purpose. If you wanted anything more permanent - say a link to a shed or summerhouse, or for an event - such as party, then the set up could be different.

Most wireless headphones are intended for use within a home, or within a short distance from a house, and they do offer freedom from being tethered, which can be very useful, particularly if someone asks you to move or do something in a hurry, but you'd get the same freedom with wired headphones from a mobile device carried on your person. There are enough people walking around Waterloo station each day with headphones for us to realise that mobile listening is possible.

[MrGongGong]

Last weekend I did a performance with the entire audience wearing wireless headphones
30 people from one transmitter and we used a very cheap system
but the range was about 100m before it started to deteriorate , and that was through a couple of walls a windows
The expensive Sennheiser systems that folks buy for domestic use have quite a long range depending on the conditions.

My experience has been that (fairly obviously!) in the outdoors the range is much more than in a building.
You do get what you pay for and some systems are very sensitive to interference.

A small FM transmitter would also work into a garden (I've used these as well in performances) but more "flaky" than the headphones.

Playing around with the local conditions is the only real way to work out what works best.
It's also worth getting a system that has multiple channels as you might possibly tune into someone else's signal.

I would avoid bluetooth unless it's the "new" spec as it's a pain to set up and doesn't really work (my geekwizard mates tell me there is bad code in the stack )

[Beef Oven!]

TS

I suspect your idea could cost more than you might have imagined. The easiest way is probably to use an iPhone or similar, if you have one,
and try to extend your wi-fi to give good coverage in your garden. The headphones would still be wired, and connected to the mobile device. For radio there are enough apps which will pick up streaming radio channels to make that work, or you could feed a signal from your radio and player equipment back onto your LAN via a streaming server - maybe Plex would do.

I know that it is feasible to get wi-fi to cover a garden over 100 feet or more, as I've done that, and received signals on iPads.

If you really wanted wireless headphones for the last bit of the link, then it might be possible, though I'm not quite sure why you would need that once the signal has reached the mobile device which you'd have either with you, or close by.

Sticking with your original idea, I rather doubt that most wireless headphones would be able to receive a data or channel (could be analogue) stream over the sort of distances in your garden. There are those simple FM retransmitters which work inside cars for some applications, but they normally only have a very short range, as normally they don't need to transmit very far.

It would probably be much cheaper and simpler to buy a radio for personal use in the garden, which would appear to be your intended purpose. If you wanted anything more permanent - say a link to a shed or summerhouse, or for an event - such as party, then the set up could be different.

Most wireless headphones are intended for use within a home, or within a short distance from a house, and they do offer freedom from being tethered, which can be very useful, particularly if someone asks you to move or do something in a hurry, but you'd get the same freedom with wired headphones from a mobile device carried on your person. There are enough people walking around Waterloo station each day with headphones for us to realise that mobile listening is possible.

And if he bought a shirt with a breast pocket, he could put a little sports-radio (Roberts do a good one for £30) in it, and tuck the wires in.

This one, that I bought 3 years ago is brilliant and smaller than a packet of 10 cigarettes!

[teamsaint]

well excellent advice all round, so thanks very much for the technical stuff Dave and Gongers, and the advice on clothing Beefy.

Think I may have to deal with this by better wire management !

[Hornspieler]

I fancy a pair , mostly for using to listen to the radio in the garden.

Any suggestions or wise thoughts as to which functions are useful?

Don't want to spend a lot, but prepared to go for a bit of quality rather than rock bottom price.

Cheers

TS.

I use a set of Panasonic cordless headphones.

The sound quality is far superior to TV or Radio set speakers.

The base station is powered from the mains and any sound source can be plugged into it - FM or DAB Radio, TV, Cassette Recorder, CD player, Amplifier etc.

The headphones are adjustable for fine tuning quality and volume and, when parked on the base set, the headset's internal 2 AAA batteries are automatically recharged until topped up.

Range is about 70 yards and is operable through walls and ceilings.

Not expensive. I think mine cost less than £50.

Hs

[Beef Oven!]

I use a set of Panasonic cordless headphones.

The sound quality is far superior to TV or Radio set speakers.

The base station is powered from the mains and any sound source can be plugged into it - FM or DAB Radio, TV, Cassette Recorder, CD player, Amplifier etc.

The headphones are adjustable for fine tuning quality and volume and, when parked on the base set, the headset's internal 2 AAA batteries are automatically recharged until topped up.

Range is about 70 yards and is operable through walls and ceilings.

Not expensive. I think mine cost less than £50.

Hs

How long have you had them HS?

I had a pair £39, IIRC. They were fine for about 10 months then became temperamental and no fun. Not being married to them, I was able to just walk away. A waste of money, for me.

[gurnemanz]

I use a set of Panasonic cordless headphones.

The sound quality is far superior to TV or Radio set speakers.

The base station is powered from the mains and any sound source can be plugged into it - FM or DAB Radio, TV, Cassette Recorder, CD player, Amplifier etc.

The headphones are adjustable for fine tuning quality and volume and, when parked on the base set, the headset's internal 2 AAA batteries are automatically recharged until topped up.

Range is about 70 yards and is operable through walls and ceilings.

Not expensive. I think mine cost less than £50.

Hs

I echo all that and use mine a lot in the garden. They have done a good job for about 3 years, despite getting bashed around a bit. They replaced a similar pair from Sennheiser which gave up the ghost.