MicroLink dLAN Audio review

How annoying is it to be stuck in the garage, listening to some halfwit DJ prattling on when you could be listening to your own MP3 collection? But that would involve dragging your PC out of the house. And this would be a huge hassle.

That's where the MicroLink dLAN Audio comes in. It's a networking adapter that's specially designed to receive audio signals through your home's electricity mains. To get it working, you just plug the dLAN Audio into a wall socket in the room where you want to listen to the music. Plug your stereo, or a set of active speakers, into its line-out connection. Plug a Microlink data adapter into your PC's Ethernet port (you'll have to buy this separately - use ID68354 on our Web site to read a full review) and install the software you get with the dLAN Audio. This will install a plug-in for Windows Media Player that will allow you to stream music from your PC over your home's mains to whatever device is plugged into the dLAN Audio.

Setup was relatively easy, as long as you had a device like a router that worked as a DHCP server and assigned the plug a unique identifying number, known as an IP address. If you don't have a DHCP server, you'll have to assign the IP manually. This isn't tricky, but you'll have to know where to find the right settings. The quality of the signal wasn't affected by the distance between the sending and receiving device. We did, however, notice a slight delay that increased the further the two appliances were apart. Otherwise, music quality was no different than it would have been if we'd used the same speakers and PC, and hooked them up to each other directly.

The really annoying thing about the dLAN Audio is that it's either too big, or the phono connectors are in the wrong place. If you plug the Audio into a normal socket the phono connectors point downwards, to the floor. The trouble is, they're so close to whatever surface is underneath them that the rubber sheath protecting the phono plug heads ends up getting bent.

That design flaw aside, the dLAN Audio is simple to set up, easy to use and lets you listen to your MP3s or Internet radio stations all around the house