Wireless Speakers

I'm looking to set up music in another room. My "system" at present is a laptop playing lossy mp3 through an Edifier R103T. I probably don't know what I'm missing, but I have no complaints about that Edifier. It reproduces all the sounds correctly (as far as I know). It's not fantastically loud, but it's for daily tunes not partying. I suppose I could just buy another one together with a really long cord, but presently I'm thinking wireless. The new speaker would be 3-5 meters from the laptop on the other side of a wall. I'm hoping for something with adequate sound, not too expensive, and easy enough to find in China. So what are people buying these days?

You can always just get a bluetooth adaptor.... Plug the speakers into the wall, the adapter draws energy from the speaker and you wind up with a BT speaker that works well enough.

I'd have to buy a set of speakers anyway. I want to keep the old Edifier with the laptop in one room and have sounds in the other room. (I could just turn the old Edifier up loud enough to hear everywhere, but that's neither very neighborly nor much of a listening experience.) However, what kind of Bluetooth adapter? Isn't Bluetooth a short range technology? Bluetooth is the part of the computer I know least about and have never used.

So... bluetooth audio adapters?


I seem to keep finding battery powered wireless speakers, which is not what I want. I want mains powered, fixed position, adequate sound. So, perhaps this bluetooth audio adapter kludge is the answer.

Buy yourself a nice 200-300 RMB set of standard speakers, and buy a bluetooth adapter for them. You'll find that on Taobao, just type in 蓝牙适配器

That search nets a very large number of usb dongle results and one or two results like this:

http://item.taobao.com/item.htm?spm=a230r.1.14.53.ZkwMHj&id=36485574732&ns=1&abbucket=8#detail

BUT I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT IS  THERE'S PICTUTRES OF A WOMAN SPEAKING INTO IT OMG!

Well that almost didn't work.

I've had a Logitech Bluetooth Audio Adapter sitting around for months waiting for inspiration to strike. Well, today I decided I'd buy some speakers and try it out. Then, on a whim I thought I'd try it out with my existing speakers - just to make sure - and it almost didn't work. I plugged everything in and the sound quality was shockingly poor. I was like, wtf did I buy?!

Long story short, the 3.5mm plug connecting the subwoofer and the bluetooth audio adapter was not seated properly. Only the satellite speakers were making noise. Once I jammed that plug in properly, the setup started sounding right. Maybe a bit tinnier than usual, but not so's I notice especially.

Thus, I'm off to buy speakers for the other room.

I might have outsmarted myself a bit with the speakers. I was looking for Edifier R1200T or perhaps R1600 - both of which are a pair of speakers, not subwoofers and satellites. What I bought instead was the R1000 - also a pair of speakers, not a subwoofer and satellites - but the on/off switch is on the back. The volume and treble/bass knobs are too. You see, I shan't be leaving these speakers on. I shall turn them on and off as needed, and shall otherwise leave them connected.

I found, you see, that Windows 7, and presumably all other Windows'z, requires you under Sound settings to elect a default device. This is the device that will play the sound by default, and if, as I have, you have a set of speakers on your desk, and a bluetoothed set of speakers in the other room, it turns out only one can be the default. There's a trick you can do that allows both sets of speakers to operate at the same time. The price is you lose your microphone. But the price of not doing the trick is you have to reset the default device every time you want to switch speaker systems. So, instead of that, the trick:

Open Sound panel
Select Speakers as the default playback device
Go to the "Recording" tab
Right click and enable "Show Disabled Devices"
A recording device called "Wave Out Mix", "Mono Mix" or "Stereo Mix" (this was my case) should appear
Right click on the new device and click "Enable"
Right click on the new device and click "Set as Default Device"
Double click on the new device to open the Properties window
Go to the "Listen" tab
Click on the "Listen to this device" checkbox
Select your [Bluetooth Audio Adapter] device from the "Playback through this device" list

And in this way, both sets of speakers play whatever is coming out of the computer. Switching speaker systems is just a matter of turning one on and the other off. Having the on/off switch on the back of the speaker might turn out to be irritating. We shall see. Presently, with the bluetooth'd set on the other side of the wall from the laptop, sound seems to be playing as it should.

Boom.

Well for some time this Bluetooth solution was the solution. The speakers in the other room played fine. All was well. I've recently changed OS however. I'm on the same computer, same hardware, but now Windows 7 Ultimate instead of Windows 7 Professional. I'm finding the Bluetooth connection keeps dropping. I've reinstalled the Lenovo issued drivers. I'll have to test it more seriously over the weekend, but the last time I tried playing music, it was nothing but choppy sound.

Well that doesn't work anymore. I booted up my old Windows 7, the one where this Bluetooth connection worked fine, and it doesn't work there anymore either. Sound is nothing but chop, then the connection severs. The only thing that's changed then is the time of year. Springtime screws bluetooth connections?

I may be looking soon into the "very long wire" solution.

So it turns out that set up on the other side of the wall, the new speakers sound awful. The bluetooth no longer makes the distance, which, as the crow flies, if it flew through walls, is something less than half a meter. But set up right next to the laptop and still connected via bluetooth the new speakers work fine. And they sound better than the wired subwoofer with satellites I normally use at the computer desk. In case you were wondering. Spring made the wall thicker or something.

I recently bought a Yamaha BDX P11, they have them on Taobao for 900. It's great, portable, decent sound. It's not going to rock your house or anything but it's adequate.