A cheaper way to play music wirelessly around your house
There are several ways to play music wirelessly to different rooms in your house, while controlling it all from a smartphone or tablet. Narrow them down to those that are easy to set up (for example, Sonos) and cost no more than £50 (certainly not Sonos) and your options are much more limited. Crystal Acoustics’ Widaptor, however, promises to tick both these boxes.
The neat black plastic casing, a little smaller than a pack of slim cigars, has a rubberised finish and would look great - if it didn’t have writing all over it. But you can easily tuck it away out of sight somewhere near your speaker or hi-fi. Along its sides you’ll find 3.5mm audio input and output jacks, an Ethernet network socket, a microUSB port and a full-size USB-A socket. Wi-Fi is built in, with a WPS button to make it easy to connect to your network.
Simply hook up the Widaptor to your network (using Wi-Fi or an Ethernet cable), then to an amplifier or a set of powered speakers, and you can then use the free WiSound app (for iOS and Android) to stream music to it. Services like Spotify and Pandora are supported as well as the built-in music apps (Apple Music is currently not available to any streaming product). You can also use a Mac, PC or Android device with DLNA server software. Alternatively, on your iPhone or iPad, you can select a Widaptor from the AirPlay options in Control Center. At least, that’s the theory. It didn’t work for us.
Its big appeal is the ‘multi-room’ feature: the ability to hook up two or more Widaptors in different places, give them different names and send audio to them independently. We found this simple to set up, thanks to the instruction manual and WPS button, and it worked flawlessly.
Although audio is received digitally by the Widaptor, its only output is analogue, which limits sound quality. And its low price excludes a mains adapter, so you’ll need to use your own USB charger. It’s easy to see where corners have been cut to make it affordable, but for everyone except serious audiophiles, this is a quick and simple way to get multi-room audio.
VERDICT
Not one for the audio purists, but the Widaptor lets the rest of us stream music around the house with touchscreen control for a relatively affordable £50 per room.
SPECIFICATIONS
1x USB port • 1x Ethernet port • 802.11ac • 1x analogue out jack • 1x line-in jack • Supports DLNA, UPnP • 83x83x25mm (HxWxD) • Two-year warranty