Bluetake's BT460EX Bluetooth Hi-Fi Audio Station Kit - A Quick Look

Field Tested & Final Words

Like the Albatron Widio, we have a bit of a mixed conclusion with Bluetake's Hi-Fi Audio Station Kit. The problem with Widio was more a matter of approach in terms of how it should be used. Bluetake's problem is a bit different, as our problem stems from actual in-the-field use.

When we had the whole system running initially (it took less than 3 minutes for us), we had the feeling that the audio wasn't in sync with the video. People were moving their lips, but the audio wasn't exactly matching up. It is hard to see if you are just watching on a monitor (even on our 21" CRT) or using a low quality recorded video file, but we were absolutely sure that there was lag when we used our projector to blow up a high quality video file. It seemed to us that the audio lagged roughly about 0.4 to 0.8 seconds.

Click to enlarge.

We set up two simple tests and watched X-men (the first one):

• two PC systems, side by side, using two DVDs
• one PC system with the audio kit used on rear speakers and the generic computer speakers hooked up as the front speakers

Speakers fed by the audio kit were set about 15ft back from the monitor in both scenarios.

Sure enough, there was audio lag in both scenarios. It was hard to get a good scene to compare the audio lag, but we found it when Wolverine was just waking up in the X-Men mansion and grabbing Jean Grey. In that scene, Ms. Grey coughs 3 times. In both test scenarios, we heard the cough 6 times! You can almost compare it to a prolonged echo, or that incessant "stop copying me" game that you may have played with your sibling.

The only possible solution we thought of was padding the audio, which means forcing a delay in the audio to make the audio and video synch up. The only issue with this is that there weren't too many programs that we could turn to with our experiment. We tried to monkey around with padding the audio in Beyond TV 3.5, and the issue was basically solved. However, this still doesn't solve the problem when we were navigating My Computer, where a single audio click turned into almost two.

We haven't seen the audio station kit on either Pricewatch or on AT's Price Engine, but according to some links provided by Google, it runs around $229 to $239.95. At that price, we have to say that this product needs to undergo some improvements before you head out to pay out that much dough.

Bluetake's marketing strategy is to use this with the PC, Home Theater (TV, DVD player, etc.), or an audio player/system. For the PC, what Bluetake needs to do is include a program that can pad the audio for everything that you do on your computer. For the Home Theater and anything else that deals with audio and video, there needs to be some way to fix the audio lag issue. As for a purely audio experience, this works great, and we have no qualms about recommending this for that purpose, but the price tag is still kind of stiff, considering that it is contending with products like Creative's Sound Blaster Wireless Music and others of the like. Granted, this kit makes wiring rear speakers almost hassle-free compared to fully routing it via cables, which we cannot emphasis enough to those who need to punch through drywall, plus the audio quality sounds great. Nevertheless, you will still go nuts when you see people on the screen moving their lips while speaking on a skewed timeline.