Sorting through wireless music’s dizzying array of options.

Starting in the mid 90s, the Internet, the arrival of the MP3 format as a way to compress digital music, and the introduction of the iPod and other music players together spurred a huge transformation in how we listen to music. We have myriad options these days to manage our music collections and to listen to music across an array of digital devices.

In the past few years, the smartphone and tablet have — mostly for the convenience factor — taken over the interface of how we find and consume music, but many users still use PCs as their go-to digital music device. And starting around 2007, streaming music services like Pandora and Slacker, and later entrants like Spotify, Google Music, Apple Music, and others, have reshaped the listening experience, allowing the convenience of radio playlists with the customization and control that no previous audio technology based on physical media ever allowed.

Along the way, the consumer electronics industry has responded to these changes. Innumerable options abound for convenient headphone listening from our devices. But one of the hottest areas in consumer audio in the past few years is wireless speakers. Using the ubiquitous wireless technologies of Wi-Fi and Bluetooth built into just about every tablet and smartphone, music can be conveniently played on speakers placed anywhere in your home. While there are hundreds of choices in wireless speakers, portable and otherwise (mostly Bluetooth), this article will focus on the expandable music systems for the home, from budget to high-end.

Not all too many years ago, if you wanted the same music in multiple rooms in your home, you had to invest in wiring speakers into walls or running speaker wire to feed speakers and having multiple amplifiers to power them, either in a central location or in each room. Today’s systems use the wireless transmission and control capabilities of Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and in several cases proprietary mesh networks to enable a distributed approach to having one or two rooms or a whole house’s worth of speakers for your music – all controlled from your smartphone, tablet, or PC.
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