Convert and make your wired surround sound speakers wireless
I’ve been pretty obsessive about a decent wireless surround sound solution for a long time. I researched endlessly to create the original write up on the wireless surround sound options when I landed on the Amphony wireless set up.
That was about 3 years ago now and recently my poor Amphony surround sound set up developed a popping sound in the back left speaker. Up until this time, it performed very well with no popping and only the occasional dropout when I had too many things in the line of sight of the unit.
The recent popping in the rear left speaker meant it was time to let it go and focus on researching the best ‘new’ unit to buy when converting stereo speaker to a wireless set up.
This post speaks specifically to people with unpowered rear speakers, or any unpowered speakers or subwoofers. The Amphony unit powered my Fluance surround sound speakers with 80 watts of power for each channel and that was plenty.
After extensive research, I have now tested and landed on a new unit which uses much improved updates to provide excellent sound to make your passive speakers wireless.
Introducing the Dynasty ProAudio WSA-5RP wireless surround sound kit. Let me tell you why this won first place in my living room to power my Fluance surround from a Denon x4500h HiFi Amp.
How do wireless speaker kits work?
Specific to this unit, and not dealing with other options like Bluetooth, we’re simply talking about Wireless audio transmission.
Most units transmit audio at a similar frequency to the wireless router in your home. That being 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz. These frequencies have been tested and approved so are easy to reuse for audio transmission.
If you imagine the amount of data you can put through a WiFi connection, you can appreciate that it’s possible to send a decent amount of audio-only signal across the same wireless connections.
Speaker Connection
There is a transmitter, which you connect your speaker wire to from the back of your amp. It’s simple, just take the speaker wire that would normally run to your speakers, surround speakers or similar and connect it to the back of the transmitter.
Then take the speaker wire from your surround sound speakers, or other speakers and connect it to the back of the receiver and that’s it.
Subwoofer connection
If you are connecting a sub then you would ideally use your LFE RCA plag from your amp to the transmitter and then connect your subwoofer to the receiver using a similar LFE RCA/Subwoofer cable.
Frequencies
A lot of wireless units use Bluetooth. Not a fan – distance causes issues and Bluetooth isn’t there yet. A lot of other ones use WiFi, as does the Dynasty ProAudio but they use the 2.4Ghz frequency. It has 106 RF channel auto selection to avoid other pesky 5Ghz signals.
This can be a problem when you have a house crammed with 2.4Ghz signals that can potentially conflict or crowd out the WiFi audio transmitter.
The Dynasty ProAudio WSA-5RP has two signals available. One is 5.2Ghz which is relatively uncrowded in any house and the other is 5.8Ghz which is also relatively quiet. This makes for a perfect solution for your wireless audio.
When you plug in the transmitter and receiver you can click the M button on the back the unit will switch between each frequency so you can choose which works best.
Once has a nice blue light and the other is a nice green light. These are bright but you can always put some gaff tape, electrical tape or something similar to mute the light. I leave it on – looks kind nice as far as LED lights go and you forget it’s there quite quickly.
So, frequency set, you’re good to go.
It’s important to note that you should ideally have line of sight with these units but I’ve not really worried about line of sight and had zero dropouts.
Setting it up
Set up is easy. The Amphony unit has 1 x transmitter and 2 x receivers at the back of the room. Good if you need to have separate receivers based on how your speakers are physically located. Like this question from the Mississippian on our youtube channel:
My speaker system and living area setup needs one transmitter (that goes into the AV amplifier) and two separate receivers for each surround back speaker. I currently have a 5.2 with wired set up, trying to add extra two speakers in the back but it’s hard to run speaker wires to all the way back of living area. Any suggestions would greatly be appreciated.
The WSA-5RP only has one rear unit that powers both rear speakers with 50w per channel. This is plenty even if your amp is outputting more wattage. Keep in mind surround is predominantly ambient sounds and supporting music/audio tracks.
I love this for a couple of reasons:
- Less wires behind my couch
- Only need one power outlet to power it
- Only one volume control for both surround speakers making it easier to balance the signal levels
The other benefit of the Dynasty ProAudio is that it auto mutes with no signal. This makes for no crazy signals, hiss or noise when the unit isn’t in use. For future versions of the WSA-5RP it would be nice if it could go into an auto-standby mode.
Anyway….we were talking about set-up….
Essentially, connect your speaker wire (or subwoofer cables), power them up, turn them on and you’re done. You can switch channels but they sync up really fast and that’s it.
Good to go!
What speakers does it power?
As mentioned earlier, this unit is for passive speakers. Dynasty ProAudio has another unit if you have powered speakers that you want to make wireless. That is the WSA-5TR.
The WSA-5RP can power two passive speakers, most commonly people will choose surround speakers or Atmos height speakers for this.
I can also send a signal to make a wireless Subwoofer with the subwoofer in and out RCA type-plugs. It won’t power your subwoofer so you’ll need a powered sub.
You can’t run surround speakers AND subwoofer at the same time as whatever audio signal you feed the transmitter gets sent to all the outputs on the receiver so this means you will be playing the same audio through your sub and your surrounds, for example.
Sound Quality
This unit is 24 bit 48Khz audio quality which is essentially CD quality. This is where it really excels.
Immediately after swapping out the Amphony I immediately felt, despite the lower wattage, that the sound was fuller, tighter and punchier. Part of me wondered if this was just that I had the signal louder on the unit but with more testing, I concluded this unit punches harder.
Surround sound effects, music and ambient sounds just felt a part of the Denon’s powerful output like I hadn’t experienced before.
There was no feeling that anything was wireless – it all felt as though it was fully wired in.
It was quick, efficient and enjoyable.
Again, I have to say, the Amphony was really good – the WSA-5RP just seemed better.
Price
It’s cheaper than some competitors but is still a decent investment. But, that investment overcomes the reluctance of your partner or spouse to let you run cables down your living room/home theatre space.
It solves physical issues that many rooms throw up making it, at times, impossible to get surrounds or Atmos speakers where they need to be. It could even be you need to run some bookshelf speakers and the Amp is on the other side of the room.
Accessories
Another big thumbs up here. Not only do you get the units and the power adaptors, you also get speaker wire (looks like AWG 16 gauge which is fine for the power and distance most people will be running).
There are included stands that allow you have these sitting horizontal or vertically.
Conclusion
There are some things about this as a unit to convert your existing speakers to wireless.
One is that the transmitter has input for subwoofer, line in and spring loaded speaker cables (I’m using 12 gauge speaker wire).
But, the receiver has speaker outputs that are suitable for banana plugs? Screw type terminals. I think it would be good in future for the transmitter to also support banana plugs, if you prefer to use those, which I do.
Essentially this unit has been flawless in its operation. It took 5 minutes to set up and hasn’t so much as sneezed since. This is what you want – wireless tech that works.
The sound quality is improved and so are the aesthetics, which matter if you decide to have these somewhere where they can be seen.
I’d welcome any and all questions you might have about these.
Bottom line – these are the current best picks for wireless surround sound, or any wireless speakers you want to run in your home or home theatre set up.
Comments / Questions below.
This post was last updated on 2021-09-28 / Some images from Amazon Product API & some links may be affiliate links which may earn us a commission from purchases.
Thanks for this very informative and helpful review. Based on your writeup, I bought this Dynasty unit to power the rear speakers in my new home theater system. Set up was, as you predicted, a piece of cake. I was worried for a few minutes when I discovered initially that somehow when the Dynasty unit was on my wifi speed in my theater room got knocked down close to zero. But a quick change of the Dynasty to its other frequency quickly solved that problem — and I like the green light better than the blue light anyway! 😁 I’m using it to drive two ELAC wall mounted rears in an all-ELAC system with a Sony AVR. The sound is perfect!
Thanks Harold – That’s awesome to hear. I expect, as I would have been, that it was a bit scary with the conflict on that frequency and router. I’m guessing your wife’s router was using a 5Ghz band. I’ve had similar with the Amphony wireless unit I used too.
I agree the sound is very good. The lights are bright, I also use the green frequency. If people don’t like them they can always put some black tape over them to keep them muted.
So glad they worked out for you!