Newbie Hoping to switch to bluetooth from good, functional stereo rcvr, but don't know where to start.

[Birck Cox]

In a fairly small space, I have a good Yamaha receiver, currently wired to Sony conventional speakers. I would like to install a bluetooth(-what? receiver, transmitter, adapter?), and put in two powered, non-portable, non-waterproof bluetooth speakers. I've picked out speakers that should work, and I presume that I can use the Yamaha receiver to select between sources: DAT tape deck, Tascam CD player and FM radio, to output via Bluetooth. so what do I need to enable the Yamaha rcvr to transmit to the BT speakers? Brands and models will help.

 

[WaynePflughaupt]

It sounds like you want to send whatever is playing on the Yamaha receiver to the bluetooth speakers. If so, all you need is a transmitter. The Avantree Oasis is a good one.

However, the Yamaha receiver will require RCA output jacks to get a signal to the transmitter. Lacking those, you could use the Yamaha's headphone output, as long you don't mind having the Sony speakers muted.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[MrBoat]

I found it easier just to use my phone directly, since I already had a streaming source on there I was barely using anyway. As much as I love my old CDs, vinyl and rips, I don't mind straying from them for Bluetooth. I've even taken to using it to send to my truck system, which seems so weird since I can reach the CD player easily enough. As soon as I get in to go to work or come home, the Alpine (even as dated as mine is) just connects automatically and plays right where I last left off. The phone also acts like a remote.

As somewhat of a Bluetooth newbie myself, I was pleasantly surprised how this ended up consolidating all of my alternate music systems. The Bluetooth amp I have in my bedroom, the truck, and my system at work. Until this, I really had no use for a cell phone at all, beyond communicating with it.

 

[lovinthehd]

What Yamaha receiver do you have?

 

[Birck Cox]

The receiver is an HTL-5550. It does have RCA output jacks, as well as optical and coax. I don't think I've ever seen coax used as an audio interface, but I know now that bluetooth requires analog input, so-as I found out-optical inputs don't work with BT. I have a lesser, but working, bluetooth adapter that was a non-starter when I tried running optical cables from the rcvr to the adapter (then to two Bose speakers), but when I switched to using the Yamaha RCA outputs-to-the bt adapter, I got audio. When I tried to get instructions from the tiny 2" X 2" folding "manual" that came with the adapter, the optical inputs (?) were labeled, but I couldn't read the type. So I don't know why the device had optical inputs in the first place. I checked, and, apparently bt does require analog input.

 

[Birck Cox]

It sounds like you want to send whatever is playing on the Yamaha receiver to the bluetooth speakers. If so, all you need is a transmitter. The Avantree Oasis is a good one.

However, the Yamaha receiver will require RCA output jacks to get a signal to the transmitter. Lacking those, you could use the Yamaha's headphone output, as long you don't mind having the Sony speakers muted.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

It sounds like you want to send whatever is playing on the Yamaha receiver to the bluetooth speakers. If so, all you need is a transmitter. The Avantree Oasis is a good one.

However, the Yamaha receiver will require RCA output jacks to get a signal to the transmitter. Lacking those, you could use the Yamaha's headphone output, as long you don't mind having the Sony speakers muted.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

Thank you very much for the recommendation. First digging into bluetooth can turn up a lot of unqualified claims and poorly-annotated instructions. Such as the Pyle Wireless BT streaming Tx-Rx. It works fine when connected to a receiver via RCA, but the company that made it seems to be convinced that it can function as a BT transmitter from audio receiver to speakers with optical connections between receiver and BT adapter. Nope. Analog only.

 

[BMXTRIX]

Asking politely: Why Bluetooth over the much better wired/amplified solution you have been using and what the product was designed for? Bluetooth was designed for convenience over quality. It's not horrible, but it is not as good, nor as reliable, as the amplified speakers powered directly off the AV receiver.

That said, your AVR has that optical audio output, which probably isn't work messing with, and it has the VCR-OUT RCA connections. I didn't see any other RCA output connections, so you would just plug in a Bluetooth transmitter into the VCR-OUT connection and it should be able to pair with any compatible Bluetooth speakers or headphones just fine as long as they are close enough.

Not sure what sources you're trying to feed the speakers for sure. I would think long and hard about whether or not this is the specific direction you want to go for this setup personally, but a basic transmitter should work just fine.

 

[Birck Cox]

Thank you for the reply. To your inquiry Why Bluetooth? Yes, I understand that the audio quality may not be as good, but then, at my advanced years(over 70), neither is my hearing ability. I am putting together two separate systems, one for family use, the other for my studio. The Yamaha rcvr has outputs in optical, Coax, 3.5mm, and RCA R&L. For sources, I have a DAT tape deck, turntable, and a CD player in addition to to the FM radio of the receiver. Changing over to Bluetooth will enable me to sell or simply jettison a mixed bag of components acquired over 50 years. In the studio, to respond to one inquiry, I built the wired stereo speaker wiring behind hinged crown molding, so if I'm not happy with BT, I can revert to the original wired system.

 

[BMXTRIX]

I assume your AVR is a Yamaha HTR-5550. This model:

Yamaha HTR-5550

A/V receiver with Dolby Digital, DTS, and Dolby Pro Logic II

www.crutchfield.com

It only has three audio output connections. Optical, VCR RCA Out, and the headphone jack on the front. None of the audio connections are volume controlled except the headphone jack. In my experience, Bluetooth is far more problematic than a wired connection, but it does allow you to move some portable speakers around, which can be nice if that's one of the goals. They can suffer from pairing issues, which can be a headache. Volume, as I said, may only be controllable on the speaker itself if the AVR isn't using a volume controlled output.

I'm not sure what components are beyond those you listed. It would typically be a couple of stereo speakers hooked up directly to the Yamaha and your sources. You don't need more than that, except a bit of speaker wire between the AVR and speakers. Adding Bluetooth means more gear in the mix and more points of failure overall and doesn't simplify anything really. At least, not in my experience.

A stand alone Bluetooth speaker which can be directly connected to a phone for audio playback is a pretty simple solution for what it is. Sonos is a more advanced solution for the same type of final result.

 

[Birck Cox]

Thank you very much for your reply and input. It's barely worth mentioning, but the HTR-5550 actually has two conventional paired RCA-out points, the VCR out and the MD/CD-R out. Plus the headphone and the optical out, which is useless for Bluetooth. I wasted a fair amount of time finding out that BT requires analog input. That BT adapter, which worked fine with the Yamaha and Bose speakers, is a Pyle Rx-Tx. What I'm hoping will work as well or better is the recommended Avantree Oasis BT adapter paired with powered bookshelf Bluetooth speakers rather than portables. And they have their own volume controls. Regarding Sonos equipment, yes, it would be wonderful to have an all-Sonos bluetooth system. My son, who is in his 50's and makes a jillion bucks a month, has exactly that. Can we afford it? To quote Soupy Sales: "Lu-ho, Lu-ho, lu-ho!"

 

[Birck Cox]

A new issue has come up: Does anyone know of a commercially-available audio FM receiver that will output a Bluetooth (TX) signal to bluetooth speakers? We have made a few purchases that simply haven't worked out. It has become clear to us that the term "receiver" can mean a number of different things, but it does not necessarily mean that it will OUTput anything useable for bluetooth. My Yamaha receiver, with numerous RCA inputs and 2 or 3 RCA outputs, with an added BT adapter, did a fine job driving 2 good Bose BT speakers. But a Pyle "receiver", with no RCA OUTputs (a fact we didn't notice when we bought it) Is listed as "bluetooth", but can't even be connected to an adapter. Complete waste of time and money. So: an FM "receiver" with at least one pair of RCA audio outputs?

 

[Eppie]

A new issue has come up: Does anyone know of a commercially-available audio FM receiver that will output a Bluetooth (TX) signal to bluetooth speakers? We have made a few purchases that simply haven't worked out. It has become clear to us that the term "receiver" can mean a number of different things, but it does not necessarily mean that it will OUTput anything useable for bluetooth. My Yamaha receiver, with numerous RCA inputs and 2 or 3 RCA outputs, with an added BT adapter, did a fine job driving 2 good Bose BT speakers. But a Pyle "receiver", with no RCA OUTputs (a fact we didn't notice when we bought it) Is listed as "bluetooth", but can't even be connected to an adapter. Complete waste of time and money. So: an FM "receiver" with at least one pair of RCA audio outputs?

Is this for the studio? Can we assume that the Yamaha and Bose BT speakers have been set up for the family and this is for your second setup with the powered BT speakers?

You should also ask for advice before purchasing. Any forum regular would have told you never to buy anything made by Pyle. It's the cheapest Chinese crap around.

Since you mentioned FM receiver, I assume that you want to stream FM radio to your BT speakers? You could either pickup another analogue receiver or maybe a used AVR (as most have FM receivers) and go with the BT transmitter like on the Yamaha, or get a wireless streaming device like a Wiim that you could connect to the inputs on one of the speakers (I assume the powered BT speakers have multiple inputs). With a streamer you could connect via WiFi to your home network and stream internet radio plus other formats. (The Wiim supports the TuneIn app).

Many Denon AVRs including lower models have blue-tooth. According to this support page, the listed models support pairing these AVRs with blue-tooth headphones. What I'm not certain of is whether pairing to blue-tooth speakers is also supported. I'll have to try that on my Denon AVR when I get home.

 

[lovinthehd]

A new issue has come up: Does anyone know of a commercially-available audio FM receiver that will output a Bluetooth (TX) signal to bluetooth speakers? We have made a few purchases that simply haven't worked out. It has become clear to us that the term "receiver" can mean a number of different things, but it does not necessarily mean that it will OUTput anything useable for bluetooth. My Yamaha receiver, with numerous RCA inputs and 2 or 3 RCA outputs, with an added BT adapter, did a fine job driving 2 good Bose BT speakers. But a Pyle "receiver", with no RCA OUTputs (a fact we didn't notice when we bought it) Is listed as "bluetooth", but can't even be connected to an adapter. Complete waste of time and money. So: an FM "receiver" with at least one pair of RCA audio outputs?

I don't know of any modern fm only receivers myself. Some avrs do have bluetooth reception and transmission if needed. Receiver simply means a pre-amp, tuner and amp in one box (altho tuners are often replaced by digital radio/internet connectivity depending where you live). While an rca line out might be useful to some bluetooth gear, an rca pre-out may be more useful.

 

[Birck Cox]

Thank you both for your input. Things are moving along here; my wife sprung (sprang?) for a second Yamaha receiver ("with bluetooth", meaning that it will accept bluetooth input only). That's for the upstairs, Family audio system. The studio also now has my original Yamaha receiver, so I want to make sure I get a good bluetooth adapter or transmitter to output a signal to two wireless speakers. The most expensive bt adapters I can find are the Auris Blume HD and the Blume Pro. Are they substantially more reliable than the cheaper competition? Any alternative suggestions?

 

[lovinthehd]

When I got a bluetooth receiver I used a TaoTronics brand. Have no idea about brands in that segment, but had good user comments and was priced well. Worked fine. Never had need for a transmitter, but believe that brand also has models with transmitters....