Wireless audio - bluetooth or wifi?

[scaryjim]

Question for the hexus hivemind!

We've just had our kitchen refitted, and I'd like to put some speaker on top of the units so we can have music playing at reasonable quality while we're cooking. I already have the speakers (in fact, I've got several sets to choose from), but they're all wired. Since they'll be on top of the units ideally I'd like to go wireless, playing music to them from whichever device happens to be most convenient at the time - usual suspects will be smartphones/tablet/laptops.

I know one or two people on here have discussed bluetooth adapters before, but one issue with that might be pairing the devices - since the speaker will be on top of the units I won't easily be able to prod any pairing buttons or access the adapter. Looking around last night I noticed that similar devices that operate over wifi exist, and might be more suitable for the hard-to-access positioning.

So, who's got experience using such adapters, and does anyone have any good advice for the easiest way to do what I want (i.e. easily play music wirelessly to speakers hidden on top of kitchen units)?

Cheers!

[jimbouk]

Chromecast audio? I use BubbleUPnP and have a DLNA NAS, also works with various streaming apps such as Spotify if that's your thing: https://www.google.com/intl/en_uk/ch...romecast/apps/

[scaryjim]

Chromecast audio? ...

Interesting possibility, although I'm not sure I'll get 100% support across my range of devices (Windows 10 on both PC and Mobile, as well as Android and, potentially ... BB Playbook!). It looks like there might be workrounds, but I've yet to find a Win 10 app with good reviews for streaming local media to Chromecast.

Sadly there also seem to be obstacles to using a DLNA device from Windows 10 (by design, apparently). These things are never straightforward, are they...

[jimbouk]

Sadly there also seem to be obstacles to using a DLNA device from Windows 10 (by design, apparently). These things are never straightforward, are they...

The Chromecast isn't directly DLNA compliant which is a shame, but because of how it works with parts of apps actually running on it this gets round it. Definitely need to work out where your music is coming from and how you want to control it. For the price of a fancy system you could just get a cheap Android tablet and attach it in your kitchen as a controller?

Or just get a fancy Sonos thing...

[Disturbedguy]

Do you want to use what you already have or would you be willing to spend....a bit?

I've heard very good stuff about Sonos equipment

[scaryjim]

... Definitely need to work out where your music is coming from and how you want to control it. For the price of a fancy system you could just get a cheap Android tablet and attach it in your kitchen as a controller? ...

I think if there's no obvious cheap solution that's something to consider. Thing is it's likely to be various sources depending on what we're listening to and who's in the house - the whole point of looking to go wireless is so we can just connect whichever device happens to be handiest, be that an Android smart phone, a Windows smartphone, a Win 10 tablet/laptop, or - as I mentioned above - possibly even my BB playbook.

Perhaps I should just connect the playbook up to it permanently and work out a wall mounting so I can channel the cables.... *ponder*

Do you want to use what you already have or would you be willing to spend....a bit? ...

Budget is minimal, although if I can source from Amazon (where I have a chunk of vouchers still on my account) that will help. I reckon £50 is probably the sensible limit (at that point I could just buy a dedicated audio player for the kitchen) and I'd prefer to spend no more than ~ £30...

[peterb]

I've just bought one of these https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/...?ie=UTF8&psc=1

To use with Blutooth headphones. They are transmitters or receivers (switchable) and it seems to remember the pairing (until you change mode from to to RC. In fact it was so good, I've just bought a second one.

[scaryjim]

... it seems to remeber the pairing ...

I suppose that's the key thing for me - if a BT module will remember pairings I can just pair it with all our devices before I hide it away on top of the cupboards

Does that one have an auto-off feature? I've noticed a few of them advertise that, and if it turns off completely that could be a pain as it'd mean having to scrabble on top of cupboards to turn it back on again....!

[peterb]

I haven't seen it turn itself off. It is recharegeable, but it works just as well with the charge lead plugged in. I tend to use mine as transmitters, rather than receivers but you would need to disconnect device 1 before connection to device 2, once the two devices were paired.

[Dashers]

I didn't want to faff about with bluetooth when I did my kitchen. For one, I've found the quality of bluetooth poor. In the end I just went for a standalone amp (which worked well as it has A/B outputs and I have 4 speakers) and it's fed off of zone 2 of my main amp in the lounge. I control it with with my phone, but you have to have room to stash the amp, and be able to turn it on.

Another thing I did look at briefly was what seems to be the replacement for the mini-hifi. A small unit with a built in amp but with network services available to it. Again, control via a remote or app and it can stream your music from your media server or off the net. I'm tempted to get one of these for the bedroom.

[benboy1983]

i thought bluetooth is not that good for audio quality?

[peterb]

i thought bluetooth is not that good for audio quality?

MP3 isn't that good quality compared with FLAC or Ogg-Vorbis. But unless you have good system to compare the two, I'm not sure you would notice the difference.

Bluetooth has a bandwidth of 800Kb/s (which will increase with BT5) but that is greater than the bandwidth of CD audio.

A lot depends on the Bluetooth implementation

https://www.lifewire.com/what-to-kno...etooth-3134591

A kitchen is probably not the place where absolute sound quality is essential anyway where convenience may outweigh absolute audio quality, but the quality will be good enough.

[chinf]

Vogt-Orbis

I assume this got mangled by auto"correct" - I guess peterb meant Ogg Vorbis (i.e. .ogg audio files).

Standard red book CD audio (16 bit 44.1kHz) is 1411kbps.

There is this article about bluetooth audio codecs. The max bandwidth of the bluetooth audio data channel (A2DP) is 721kbps (so somewhat less than the uncompressed CD audio bandwidth), but usually the codec used will take up far less than this; the article suggests 328kbps for SBC or 352kpbs for Apt-X. The latter is not going to have a perceivable impact on audio quality, but the former might in cases where the source audio is already heavily compressed (so compression artefacts are magnified when re-coding).

Ultimately, bluetooth audio is capable of high quality audio, but there are at least these factors that can constrain the quality of the audio:

• which codecs your speakers support (ideally the same as your source to avoid recoding if your source is lossy encoded)
• your source encoding format and coder quality
• local radio interference or congestion could restrict the data rate achieved over the bluetooth connection, but in practice codecs only use a small part of the available bandwidth so this is not normally a problem
• quality of your speakers (you could have good digital transmission but poor analogue rendering)
• acoustic environment and how the speakers match it

[scaryjim]

iirc all my mp3 rips are at 128kbps anyway - they're intended for listening on the go from my phone, and ime at the lower end the cost/quality of the audio kit you're using has a much bigger impact on sound quality than the degree of compression!

In the end I went for one of these: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Bluetooth-R.../dp/B00O8GASEA

It's been perfect for my needs - the speakers (Edifier MP300, if anyone's interested ) sit on top of a bookcase (currently, they will eventually be moved on top the of the kitchen cabinets) and the aukey works perfectly, including re-pairing with any device that has previously connected. They do have an auto-off feature, so you do need access to the receiver to turn it back on if it hasn't been used for a while, but I should be able to find some way to make it accessible while keeping it tucked out of the way

The only thing that hasn't worked so far was trying to stream radio from the BBC website via my Toshy Click Mini - but I suspect that's down to the tablet, not the receiver!

[peterb]

Can't go wrong for that price! Glad you found an acceptable solution!

[scaryjim]

Can't go wrong for that price! ...

I had a chunk of amazon vouchers left on my account, too, so I spent very little actual cash on it