b standard

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.

Of the devices in this category, this one certainly looks the best! It has a sleek modern look, which goes along with its function. But, as in everything else in life, that physical beauty is only skin deep. The beauty in this device is in what it does!

I was not disappointed that it does dot play streaming audio from the internet, or my movies from my computer. Being in the Army and being faced with lengthy deployments to miserable places, I purchased a Creative Nomad Zen Xtra 40GB MP3 player so I could take all of my CD's with me to enjoy. And then I came across this bad daddy- what an awesome concept. A wireless receiver that will hook into my wireless network and play all of the MP3's in my computer! So I bought it.

Fortunately for me, it has not performed as the numerous reviews state. It has been fantastic. (1) Getting setup. Easy, but could have been easier. I had to manually configure the device to connect to my 802.11g WEP enabled network. Automatic would have been slick, but this also gave me the chance to be hands on, and learn about the wireless network which was also new to the house with this device. (2) Connectivity. No problems here. I live in a modern German apartment building- constructed of steel and concrete. There are two walls and a kitchen between the receiver and the network hub, and it has never lost its connection. Playback has been flawless. (3) Function. Hmm. Here's where it starts to lose a little ground. Why does it take 3-5 seconds to finds the next song when advancing the playlist with the remote? The manufacturer could probably improve this performance with a firmware update. I am not a programmer, but that seems to fix other MP3 products! But, the sound through my stereo is awesome, true to life and very dynamic. And, I have yet to suffer any electronic "glitches" during playback. (4) Features. I don't care that it doesn't play my pictures through the TV or streaming internet audio. I didn't buy it for that. It does what I bought it for and does it well. (5) Network connection. Yes this device is 802.11b and will slow down a "g" network. But Creative thoughtfully has given it an autooff feature, when you dont use it, it turns off and drops out of the network, ensuring that you will maintain the highest rates of through put for data at the other stations. And who cares if it is "b," when I am listening to music I am not surfing the net or playing networked games.

I would definitely recommend this product. But, be prepared to manually "connect" the device to your network and for long lags between songs when manually advancing the playlists. Other than that, enjoy this beautiful new addition your home A/V system!

The good things:
1) The product looks cool and is very compact.
2) It was VERY easy to install on my existing wireless network.
3) It works to some limited extent, but not what I was expecting.

The bad things:
1) The remote barely works in the same room, nevermind in a different room. And it locks up every now and then.
2) There seems to be no way to play all tracks on random without creating a "playlist." A pain.
3) After creating a playlist with about 7000 MP3s, there is no easy way (or any way) to add new songs to an existing playlist w/o creating a new playlist.
4) When starting my playlist and setting it at random, the first song is always the same, and takes literally five minutes to load and then start playing.

No great, not horrible. Three stars.