Smith @ Sep 24th 2007 1:43PM

First, subwoofer placement in a room makes a huge difference. Most manufacture's tell consumers they can dump the sub in a corner for "enhanced bass" or at any spot because low frequencies are omni-directional. These are half truths. There are things called Room Modes (look them up) which dictate the frequency response of your ROOM. That's right, your room has a response too, and it's mostly in regards to low frequency. If you toss your sub in the corner you will actually accentuate the room modes and get huge spikes and suck-outs in your bass response in different parts of your room. Research has proven that an asymmetrical location will help give a flat bass response giving the listener clean, tight, accurate bass through out the room, instead of boomy bass in a few locations. Likewise low frequencies are omni-directional due to the large wavelength of the signal, but room placement makes a gigantic difference, as those frequencies will not "see" objects that are small relative to the wavelength, but certainly see big things like walls, floors, and ceilings. Hence the phenomenon of room modes where those large omni-directional waves will interact with the walls of your room.

Secondly, wireless power transmission has been achieved by researchers at MIT, but it's certainly years from application. This is something we're at least 50 years away from for consumer use. So unless it battery powered, there will always be a power cord for anything "powered", so let's not be douche bags about the power cord.

Thirdly, not one of you has thought about the benefits of a wireless subwoofer. Considering that most people want to put their sub somewhere other than right next to the tv or receiver, maybe off by a couch or hidden behind/under something, or away from the electronics, people are usually forced into buying some stupidly over priced monster subwoofer cable that is 10 meters long and running under the carpet or all around the room. Now, you just need to find the nearest wall socket to where you want to put the sub, which is usually not that hard as most rooms have power sockets on every wall. Now you have only one power cord wire for the sub, and you can keep all your RCA cables can stay behind the receiver.

Now, if you want to bad mouth these system for things like a $200 premium to add a built in receiver, and a separate transmitter to subs already on the market, or pooh-pooh these using an over used frequency band, right on. Just realize that integrating a wireless receiver into an active piece of electronics that is location dependent is actually a good idea. So why not put it a more ideal location and not have to have some bestbuy home theater know-nothing sell you a $100 subwoofer cable that you don't need.

I can guarantee to all of you that you will start seeing a lot more of these guys in the coming years. Even Boston announced at CEDIA a powered soundbar speaker that also has the build-in transmitter for separate subwoofer that includes the wireless receiver.