Amphony 1000 - Manual

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© 2004 Amphony 1
2.4 GHz DIGITAL Wireless Headphones, Model 1000
Q: What is the difference between the Amphony 2.4 GHz Digital Wireless headphones and
current 900 MHz wireless headphones ?
A: The main difference is how the audio signal travels from the transmitter to your headphones.
Almost all of the current wireless systems on the market use a method called FM (Frequency
modulation) which is very similar to the operation of your FM radio. The major drawback ist that this
type of modulation is ‘analog’ which is the reason for the poor performance of 900 MHz analog
headphones.
If you listen carefully to a CD over 900 MHz analog wireless headphones, you will notice significant
noise/static, low signal dynamics and low channel separation. Also, the signal quality will vary when
you move around the room (the noise will increase locally and also the further you move away from
the transmitter).
Our headphones use something which is called ‚digital' modulation. The same way music is
recorded on a CD using 1's and 0's, it is transmitted as 1's and 0's to the headphones. The result of
this technology is that there is no audio quality degradation during transmission, i.e. you will hear
the exact same audio quality as you would with corded headphones.
Because of this digital technology, these headphones are very suitable for high-quality audio, such
as music coming from a CD, DVD, digital satellite receiver etc.
Q: Can these digital headphones also be used for my analog television or receiver ?
A: Yes. The transmitter has an analog audio interface which connects to the standard line output of
your analog television or receiver. The analog audio is converted to a digital signal inside the
transmitter and then transmitted digitally to your headphones.
Please note that even though there is no audio degradation during transmission to your head-
phones, you will hear noise if the analog input signal is already noisy. This is often the case for
analog audio sources.
Q: Is the technology used in these headphones similar to Bluetooth or MP3 ?
A: Even though both our headphones and Bluetooth / MP3 use digital audio, there is a fundamental
difference between Bluetooth and how audio is transmitted to our headphones. Bluetooth is only
able to transmit audio data at very low data rates reliably (typically up to 200 kbps). Therefore, only
compressed audio can be transmitted via Bluetooth. A commonly used technique to compress
audio data is MP3. Our headphones, however, do not compress the audio and transmit the full bit
rate. As a result, the audio quality is not degraded such as with MP3. Also, the audio latency (audio
delay) of MP3 compressed audio is fairly high and thus not suitable for television or video
applications. Since our headphones do not compress the audio and since only a minimum of data
buffering is used, the audio delay is minimal.
Frequently Asked Questions