Great sound... no strings attached

You know all those speaker systems that have an iPod dock and let you play your tunes out loud? Well a new set-up from Creative takes that idea a step further by adding a wireless element.

You put your iPod on the Xdock transmitter then plug the X-Fi receiver unit into a sound system or set of powered speakers. The two wireless units pair automatically and your streamed music comes out of the speakers.

It is a little bit difficult to see the point of this if you have only one receiver – you could simply connect the Xdock or your iPod directly to the sound system or speakers with a cable rather than beaming the music wirelessly across the room.

The system would come into its own if you had more than one receiver – say one for each room in your home. Then you could send music from the transmitter into any room you wanted or to all of them at once, though you would need to connect a sound system or active speakers to each receiver. But before you head off to buy all those receivers bear in mind that they cost Dh399 each.

The wireless reception limit is 30m, though there is some deterioration in sound quality as you approach that distance. At shorter range the signal is steady and reliable, with no mood-spoiling interruptions as you chill to your favourite sounds.

Each unit comes with a remote control that lets you operate your iPod. If you go for the whole home option you will of course end up with yet more remotes cluttering up the place, but in fact it would be handy to have one in each room. Your iPod charges up while it is sitting on the Xdock. A clever feature is the X-Fi – it stands for Xtreme Fidelity – Crystalizer technology designed to improve the quality of compressed audio files. All that music only fits onto your iPod because the files are compressed into a format like MP3 or AAC. Some of the original bits of sound are lost during this process, but this system sort of guesses what has been cut out and restores it.

Creative boasts that the feature makes MP3 tracks sound better than CDs, and whether or not you agree the results are certainly impressive – you can hear the difference clearly as you switch the system on and off.

The transmitter and receiver can be used with any sound system or powered speakers and even home theatre set-ups. Creative's clever CMSS-3D technology converts the stereo signal into surround sound – it keeps the vocals in front and distributes the music around you. And if your home theatre set-up supports DTS decoding you can hook it to the Xdock with the supplied optical cable for even better sound.

The Xdock has S-Video and RCA sockets that are meant to let you show pictures or view movies from your iPod on a TV screen, but there are issues regarding which iPod models are supported. Certainly this feature did not work with my previous generation 160GB Classic – it seems to be compatible only with even older models.

Other connectors on the Xdock include USB for syncing your iPod with a PC or Mac and headphones, though it is difficult to understand when you'd ever use the latter – surely you'd just plug your phones directly into your music player?

I tested the units with Creative's GigaWorks HD50 Speaker System, which is a fine illustration of the huge advances in speaker technology made over the past few years.

The sound was remarkably precise, clear and strong, and each instrument could be heard distinctly – all this from speaker cases measuring just 9.1cm by 7cm by 14.1cm each.

These high quality powered speakers can be used with desktops and laptops – both PCs and Macs – and all makes of MP3 player. They would be particularly good if you had a laptop that was rather underpowered sound-wise as they would let you listen to music with the correct amount of oomph.

The speakers are very well engineered and feature advanced technology – for example they produce a good bass sound even though there is no subwoofer.

Creative was a pioneer of portable digital music players, launching its NOMAD range way back in April 1999 – the first iPod did not appear until more than two years later.

However the Singapore-based company's products were swept aside by the Apple phenomenon, though it did manage to secure the patent for the invention of the user interface for portable media devices.

Now, following the $100 million (Dh367m) settlement in its favour of a lawsuit against Apple, Creative makes some of its profits by selling accessories with "Made for iPod" printed on the box.

Creative products have a nice quality feel about them. They are well manufactured and the company is not afraid to use advanced materials such as, in the case of the speakers,

titanium. The transmitter and receiver are solidly made, work well, are easy to use and have a shiny black finish and cool blue lights. But the Xdock's design invites comparisons with Apple's slick styling when you place an iPod on it and suffers in the process – it looks too big and not very elegant.

Also the use of the word wireless is a little misleading. It is true that the link between the transmitter and receiver is wireless, but you still end up having lots of leads as none of the units is battery-driven – you need power cables for the transmitter, each of the receivers and each set of speakers, audio connections between each receiver and set of speakers, and wires between the left and right speakers.

Still it all sounds pretty good – particularly the speakers – and in the end that is what really counts.