Creative Xmod Wireless review

Full Review

It's all very well having a large music collection on your computer, but it's no good if you want to listen to your music elsewhere around the house, but can Creative's Xmod Wireless system be the answer? We get listening to find out.

The system is made up of two devices: a transmitter and a receiver although you can have four receivers in total. Both are about the size of a small paperback novel, are gloss black, feature a large volume dial on the top that has a blue glowing ring and have audio inputs to connect other devices in or out.

The transmitter features a USB socket to connect to a PC and through a cable supplied in the box, the Xmod Wireless system also connects to a power socket if you aren't connecting it to a PC. The receiver is virtually identical. Set-up is incredibly easy. Plug the in two devices and the units will automatically pair with each other very much like a baby monitor and there is another blue light, this time feedback on the connection status.

For PC use, you can control functions on your computer via the included remote control, although both units also come with basic player controls as well.

You can add up to four further transmitters, although you can only stream one feed at a time be it your music library (WMA or MP3), a podcast, or input from an external source.

In our tests we connected the system to both a PC with accompanying music library and a PlayStation 3 to an amp on the other side of the room. In both cases the Xmod Wireless system worked like a charm giving perfect sound results even though there no wires were involved to connect the two, in fact using Creative's X-Fi technology, the sound at times seemed to be improved by the system.

One side affect we did notice however was that when the Xmod Wireless system was on, the interference of the ad-hoc network played havoc with our own internet wireless network.

Verdict

While the pure audio enthusiasts will say that there is audio loss (we are sure under stringent testing there would be), the Creative Xmod Wireless system allows you to get music from one room to another without having to trail cables around your home simply and easily and that is its biggest sell.

Whether you are looking to share you PC’s music collection out of the study, or as we found ourselves doing, streaming audio from a projector to an amp on the other side of the room, this is a very easy way to do it. The only annoyance is that it doesn’t wirelessly stream video.

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