The Sondigo Sirocco is a wireless audio bridge that allows you to play anything from your computer on your home entertainment system. Lets look over the specifications for the Sirocco:

• 802.11b/g capable

• 10/100Base-TX capable

• Supports WEP/WPA wireless encryption

• Offers 5.1 analog audio connections via three stereo mini-jacks, plus a Toslink digital connector

• currently only supported on Windows Versions.

The industry has a plethora of solutions available for delivering content to your Home Theater Center, these range from your basic Audio Bridge to your HDTV capable Home Theater PC, the price range is just as great as well. The issue facing a lot of devices that deliver content to your Home Theater is copyright protected material, to this end, the Sirocco has an advantage. The Sondigo Sirocco is an Audio Bridge that is basically a wireless extension of your PC's sound card (although it is providing the digital to analog conversion unless you are using the Toslink), or better yet, a wireless extension of your S/PDIF out. The unit can be positioned anywhere there is power, wireless signal and of course, a Stereo system (or even headphones). The Sirocco is packaged approprietly and includes the following items:

• AC Power adapter and short extension cord for power strip connections

• Rubber unit mounts to position it upright

• 2 meter Cat5e Ethernet cable

• Wireless antenna (which also allows for you to upgrade to a high output antenna)

• Line to RCA cable

• Software and quickstart guide

In all honesty when I opened the container I was a little surprised to see the unit was white, making it that much harder to integrate with my Home Entertainment Solution. I was struck by the simplistic yet wonderful “quick start” guide, I wish more manufacturers would take the time to come up with something this simple yet useful.

There isn't a lot to the unit itself, there are several connectors on the back of the device (Power / analog 5.1 / Toslink / RJ-45). Installation was just as easy as promised, you simply connect the RJ-45 to your router, then proceed to install the included software. Once the device was detected by the software, it went through a process of asking information about your wireless network (all the time showing you a lot of this detail). If you are using WEP or WPA then of course you must know either the security code or the pass phrase in order to connect to the wireless.

Now that the unit is detected, and wireless is setup, it crashes your network... OK, so it probably isn't supposed to do that but in my case it in fact did. Easily explained, as when I lit up the wireless the Ethernet was still plugged in, which of course is a loop and caused my router to poop itself. So once you are running on wireless only, you simply connect the Sirocco to your home entertainment system as though it were another source for music, which it actually is.

Going through the control panel on the Sirocco you see several tabs that give the ability to program how you want the sound to be delivered. This is similar to the Intel HD software controls we have been seeing the last 12 months or so. Notice on the "Audio Setup" tab you have the ability to chose what you are playing into. I moved it from one setting to the other depending on how I was connecting to my home system, I did not notice a difference when selecting 6ch (5.1) and connecting to my home system with a analog jack. I imagine some of these settings allow for bandwidth conservation. The last tab then shows you the version of software you are running and the DSP in place.

Once the Sirocco is hooked up to your Home Entertainment Solution, then you simply connect to it using the Sirroco software and start playing whatever it is that you would like to play. I do mean whatever!!! It could be movie audio, music or simple television that you have tuned in from a OTA capture card. Whatever sounds are being played from your computer, are being transmitted to the Sirocco and played out through your Home Entertainment Solution. The obvious benefit here is that DRM Protected content will still play, as for all intents and purposes, their is no difference (to the PC anyway) than outputting to speakers as there is to the Sirocco.

The unit isn't instantaneous in it's transfer; their is buffering and of course the wireless delay involved. To test this I played an episode of Jericho, watching it on my PC; however I connected headphones to the Sirocco, then proceeded to watch the show. There was ~1/2 second lag between the audio output and the visual output on my computer. This is after selecting “Movies” on the software (which should put it around 100ms). All in all, not bad and I also have noticed throughout the testing that the Sirocco has yet to drop a packet (or have one not buffered properly) as to introduce a skip in the playback of music et all.

Final Words

Quality of the playback is going to be dependent on two things, quality of the recording and connection to your Home Entertainment System. I used a FLAC backup of my CD "Bad Company – Desolation Angels" then connected the Sirocco into my Akai receiver using the analog jack for R/L (Incidentally, Sondigo use a FLAC based codec for the Sirocco). I then connected the Sirocco to the Akai using Toslink, I honestly could not differentiate between the two (which is actually a good thing as older CD music is recorded 2 channel). I did the same test while playing the Matrix DVD in my PC's DVD player, there was a noticeable sound difference in that the Toslink delivered the surround sound to all 6 speakers (only 5.1 here folks). Also of note is that you can upmix a stereo image to virtual 5.1, while the output is richer, it does not have the depth of a true 5.1 feed.

One thing that bothered me, only a little mind you, is that I was unable to go to the Sondigo website and download the Sirocco software, it currently is required that you use the software on the CD (which admittedly has a built in check system to determine if your software is up to date). I would like to be able to have the ability to download the software in case the CD was ever misplaced, but we all know that never happens... right? :).

If you want to be able to listen to music based on your hard drive(s) or even entertain using a massive playlist, the Sondigo Sirocco could be just the solution you are looking for. That is, as long as you run a windows PC and you have a nice little place to hide the unit so as not to clash with all of your other gear that is probably black or silver.

Hit us up in the Forums if you have any questions.

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