Good morning, all. Anyone got experience with connecting a phone/tablet/PC to a home stereo by Bluetooth?

Situation: I've got an old JVC receiver in the garage, and some nice speakers. Radio reception, however, stinks. I figure if I could stream music by way of the tablet and connect that to the JVC then I could really annoy the neighbors -- I mean, um -- "improve the working environment" over there.

The local Best Buy used to offer a gadget. A friend has one and has mixed luck connecting to it. Amazon offers a bunch -- the "Esinkin" device seems well-reviewed, but there's a ton of choices. Logitech offers one that looks way similar to the Esinkin gadget, but at almost twice the price. (I do have a higher trust for Logitech than some unknown Chinesium, however.)

Who's got experience with a good product? I do appreciate your input.


Links to devices I've looked at:
Esinkin at Amazon
Logitech

I’ve had a Harmon Kardon BTA 10 for about 4 years that works well.

It’s used to stream music from my phone to my older non-Bluetooth stereo. They’re real simple to hook up. My only complaint would be range. To address that I extended the cable so I could move the antenna to our bay window.

My guess is they probably have newer models with better range.

I have that exact unit (Esinkin) but to be honest I can't remember how well it worked.
I think it was OK but ended up with a different solution that was more optimum for my garage.
My solution was an actual computer in the garage which was what I was looking for in the first place (long story ~ BTW, if anyone is interested in my solution I can elaborate but I didn't want to muddy up the thread).
I can dig it out and reconnect it and give you my review.

I was using an Amazon Basics Bluetooth dongle with an old Pioneer Elite VSX-26TX receiver until the receiver finally died. It wasn’t a great experience, but it worked and was cheap.

The replacement was a small Fosi Bluetooth amp, BT20A.

https://www.amazon.com/BT20A-B...grated/dp/B07BQC7GNL

It’s small and does a good job feeding some 2-way speakers in the home office. I connect to it either via phone or laptop over Bluetooth.

I have used an Amazon Dot in my detached garage to provide music to my outside gazebo. That, coupled with an inexpensive Kasa switch allows me to control everything from my iPhone. The Dot plugs into the receiver with mini jack to RCA plugs. Not limited by distance like Bluetooth but you do need a WiFi signal to the dot. Works great.

Update: I just connected my Esinkin (same as Logitech) to my stereo and paired with my Note 10 Galaxy phone.
Works fine!
Not quite as clear as my computer-connected-USB/DAC but that is as expected.
Adequate gain and no issues.

FWIW, the reason I didn't go this route for my garage was I didn't want to always have my phone in there plus I wanted the flexibility of the computer as well as the increased audio quality of the DAC.
I stream uncompressed audio FLAC from my NAS through my local network as well as stream CD quality from the Internet via my Qobuz app so I wanted the full bandwidth fidelity and any BT will compress and limit to a degree.
Just being an audio nerd doesn't help either and makes me picky.
BUT the USB Dongle does work and quite adequate for most any MP3 or similar.
Nothing wrong with it and it does what it is supposed to do.
.02

I would recommend a product that uses wifi. I use a product called Cobblestone (which I don't think is made anymore). It is similar to Goggle Chromecast (music version) also not made but can be found. I have been looking at the following as I need to replace my Cobblestone's (down to just two working):

https://www.arylic.com/product...ireless-preamplifier

Advantages of these products is that your phone calls and notifications wont be broadcast.
You can walk away from the 20-30 feet range and you will not have any interferance
You can sync multiple products and music is synced in different locations (example my back patio and sunroom have separate stereos but the same music can be played)

Bluetooth audio has some gotchas, because the overall “Bluetooth” label includes a wide variety of actual ways of transmitting audio.

Some of the higher-performance and more recent audio codecs offer pretty good audio quality, but both the transmitting and receiving devices have to support a given codec.

If both devices don’t support the same high-performance audio codec, the connection will seamlessly fall back on older, lower-performance codecs that basically every device supports, but that offer pretty poor audio quality.

Why not just a simple AUX cable from device to receiver?

The receiver has RCA input jacks I assume? Get an AUX cable and an adapter for the RCA end

VTHoky, Audio Engine makes high-quality wireless adapters for this purpose. There is a B-1 that streams high quality Bluetooth (AptX), and a new one called B-Fi that streams Wi-Fi to your network.
They make very high quality powered speakers with built-in BT which I use (I have probably 5 pairs of their speakers), and are very well reviewed in audio magazines.

quote:

Originally posted by sjtill:
VTHoky, Audio Engine makes high-quality wireless adapters for this purpose. There is a B-1 that streams high quality Bluetooth (AptX), and a new one called B-Fi that streams Wi-Fi to your network.
They make very high quality powered speakers with built-in BT which I use (I have probably 5 pairs of their speakers), and are very well reviewed in audio magazines.

A quick note - I was curious and checked, the B-1 actually uses aptX HD, which is one of the codecs with pretty good sound quality. Standard aptX is not great.

Good evening. Thank you all for your input -- I do appreciate it.

A quick surf showed me I have $15 in Best Buy rewards, which makes the Logitech (which I can get locally) and the Esinkin essentially the same price. Those fall into the "cheap solution" category, and that's a good thing.

Thank you, too, for info on sound quality. I'm not sweating that too much in this application because... well... it's the garage. I'll be making plenty of noise there too, so I'm not as picky about superior sound quality.

Dr. T: The B-Fi product (and the Acrylic product that 2001AudiA6 mentioned) looks like in interesting thing for "the upstairs." I'll be looking into that some more.

PASig: Ordinarily, the simple AUX cable would have been the solution. It is in fact, when I've had a Roku unit in place in my little shop. The intent at the moment, though, is to stream audio to the iPad and pipe that through the "big ole" speakers in the garage. There's no AUX out on the iPad, so I figured Bluetooth would be the [relatively] easy choice.

I did spend the afternoon in the garage today, finding while I was there that my old JVC has evidently given up the ghost. I'm more than a little bit bummed about that, but I can't really fault it much -- I've only had that one for 35 years or so.

So it looks like I have a different problem to solve shortly. Grr.
I've got another receiver around here. Looks like I'll be swapping them one evening this week.

Don’t overspend. I use one of these $11 jobs from an eBay seller. Works fine. I also use one of the 5 dollar ones on the aux input on the radio in my jeep.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/32435...1:g:9JsAAOSwsLdfm4CU

quote:

Originally posted by vthoky:


PASig: Ordinarily, the simple AUX cable would have been the solution. It is in fact, when I've had a Roku unit in place in my little shop. The intent at the moment, though, is to stream audio to the iPad and pipe that through the "big ole" speakers in the garage. There's no AUX out on the iPad

If you get a Lighting to headphone jack adapter, you can use an AUX cable:

I have used the Logitech adapter for years on several different old school reciever. Works great with Apple and Android phones and tablets. I use it for fixing equipment and just playing music on my vintage equipment

quote:

Originally posted by sjtill:
VTHoky, Audio Engine makes high-quality wireless adapters for this purpose. There is a B-1 that streams high quality Bluetooth (AptX), and a new one called B-Fi that streams Wi-Fi to your network.
They make very high quality powered speakers with built-in BT which I use (I have probably 5 pairs of their speakers), and are very well reviewed in audio magazines.

Thanks Doc! Now on my wishlist as I've wanted a way to get digital audio to my vintage amp. This looks like just the ticket.

quote:

Originally posted by PASig:
If you get a Lighting to headphone jack adapter, you can use an AUX cable:

"D'oh!!"