Soundcast iCast System Review

The iCast System is the latest product from the people at Soundcast. It is both a stylish stereo accessory as well as a very functional iPod music transmitter. Built to work with just about any iPod out there the iCast allows you to stream your music anywhere in your house with a very simple setup.

Wireless iPod docs are becoming all the more popular these days as the storage on these devices keeps increasing. With the high end iPods capable of 80 gigs they are being seen as perfect little units to run a home media station.

With a theoritical maximum indoor distance of up to 150 feet you should have no problems placing these units anywhere in your home and still get a good signal. They claim that if the conditions are right these suckers will be able to connect to each other outside at a range of 350 feet. Why you would want/need that is beyond us, but just know that you can :)

On the transmitting unit all of you iPod's buttons function normally except for the volume control, that is taken care of by what ever device you have hooked up to the receiving unit. The transmitter will also charge your iPod while it is docked so you won't have to remove it all the time to charge it( its amazing that some systems actually make you do that! ). Small lights will indicate what is going on, from power on, to wireless connectivity.

One problem people have with the device is on the receiver unit you have little control over the songs. You have the ability to select the next song, previous song, pause, and play, but you can't browse your collection like you can on the iPod, so navigating long playlists from the receiver can be a chore.

Reading over the documentation that they ship with the product it seems like a very simple system to setup and maintain. You can actually buy another receiver to add to your system if you want to stream music to multiple locations. They also have the ability to run two of these systems in the same house without any interference via a channel selector on the transmitter.

All in all we think this is a great solution for those wanting to use their iPod as their music hub for the house. The only negatives we can really see with the iCast is that is larger then most systems so if space is an issue or you would rather not have 2 big devices sitting around you house you may want to look at something smaller.
Also the fact that control of the iPod is somewhat limited from the receiver unit can be an issue for large collections.

But in the end we have to say that we are fans of the device. Simple and easy to setup this should win many people over in the streaming audio world.

Available at Amazon.

April 6, 2007

Soundcast iCast System Review