Powergate/RW1 setup

[Frankois]

Hi all,

 

First of all, I apologize for my English, it is not my native language.

Nonetheless, I just bought a powergate with 2 RW1 and a Jamo810 sub in order to make a 2.1 wireless setup.

I tried to play with it, everything is running smoothly for the wifi setup, music is being played stereo ... BUT I can't manage to find a way to stream from my powergate to the RW1s without the phone.

To clarify, the workflow I'd like to implement is the following :

[AUX | PHONO | BT ... ] --> Powergate --> RW1

And so far, this is not working, I need to control all this with my phone and setup a 'line in' zone on the powergate.

I wanted to know if I understood properly and this is indeed not possible, or if I am missing something.

 

Thanks a lot in advance

 

Frankois

[adam2434]

I'm not sure what you want to do is possible.

 

The bigger question for me is why do you wanted to use two RW-1 (powered wi-fi speakers) for a 2.1 system with the Powergate amp?

 

Why not use the Powergate's amp to power standard, passive bookshelf speakers?

 

The subwoofer will need to be connected to the Powergate anyway, so just also connect standard, passive speakers.

 

In this case, you would only need to connect the Powergate to your network/wifi for streaming content.  The Aux/Phono/BT inputs can be selected and played directly on the Powergate without the need for any streaming or use of the phone app.

 

Can you return the two RW-1 and get a pair of passive bookshelf speakers?  

 

Jamo S 803 or Klipsch RP-150M/160M  are a couple options in the "Klipsch family".

 

 

 

 

[Frankois]

Thanks a lot for your answer.

 

In my case, this setup made sense because I want to integrate this with a video projector. In this situation, I will have my video projector at the rear of my living room, with the powergate and the subwoofer closeby. This will allow me not to drag wires from the back-located powergate to the front RW1 speakers.

 

So according to what I tried and what you are saying, maybe indeed this is not possible. If not I guess I will return the RW1 and buy passive speakers as suggested. But then I do not see the point to have a 'connected' amplifier since I need a phone to stream Spotify and what I need would just be any BT receiver on a 'regular amp'. Maybe would be useful to stream some NAS stored content.

 

Anyway, thank you, I will investigate a bit more to try this setup even if it seems not to be possible.

[adam2434]

Yeah, I believe it will be difficult and messy to do what you want to do with the Powergate and RW-1.

 

You would have to use the Klipsch Stream app or Regular Play-Fi app and play both the Powergate (for sub output) and RW-1 simultaneously as a group and try to get a volume balance between the sub and speakers.  There might be delay issues also.

[CraigG]

I agree with everything that was said above.  Currently, I believe the only way to set this up is to use the Klipsch Stream or Play-Fi app, and use the "line in" feature from the PowerGate to stream to the RW-1s. So, unfortunately, you would have to use the mobile app every time you want to set up audio for your video projector, but the app should remember your last configuration to make it a little easier.

 

You will get better quality audio over WiFi / Play-fi than you would over Bluetooth.

[Frankois]

Well thanks to both of you for the answer, so the limitations I encountered seem to be indeed true limitations.

 

I find it surprising that this is not possible though since the powergate was supposed to be a hub for Play-Fi systems, I was expecting that it could handle and manage configuration by itself, without the need to set it up each time by phone (or at least to reactivate it).

 

Anyway, now I know thanks to your answer, I am disappointed for this lack of feature, because audio-wise, the quality of those devices was really good, especially for speakers of this size.

[CraigG]

I think for what you want, an integrated amp, pre-amp or receiver would need to have the equivalent of the Play-Fi mobile app built into it (software that was aware of all the wireless speakers available, what is playing on them, and be able to choose different groups of speakers for playback streams). I'm not sure if any of the multi-room systems currently out there Play-fi or otherwise do that. I think they all require a mobile app to set up and manage the speaker groups.

 

If you use Amazon Alexa for voice commands (which could be an alternative to using the mobile app), it seems to remember the last speaker grouping, but as far as I know, Alexa does not support Play-Fi's "Line In" feature as an audio source. So, I do not think that would help you.