F*ing bluetooth speakers! Rant incoming.

[Shuvi McTupya]

my mission, should i choose to accept it..
Improve the sound of my google home.
Secondary objective: Improve the sound of my TV and get rid of surround sound.

First thing i did was purchase a budget JBL soundbar with bluetooth.
Secondary objective fulfilled, but (a known) issue with bluetooth reception meant random annoying audio drop outs..next!

lets go bigger and better!

I bought a display model Arcam Solobar Bluetooth Soundbar, it is a beast!

I am happy with its performance as a speaker but it seems to have a few issues.
There seems to be an issue with the HDMI switching so it doesnt always work when switching from one source to another. when this happens the speaker has to be disconnected from power for a second (not just turned off).
solution for that issue is a wifi plug so i can just ask google to turn the speaker off and back on again without having to get up off my lazy arse.

Then there is another issue with the way it interacted with the google home. if it was switched on at all , google home would detect it and try and use it as the external speaker even if i was watching TV though it at the time. The result would be that google home had no sound, until i switched sources on the soundbar and then i had no TV sound.

So, i decided to just forget using the Arcam for everything and buy a second dedicated Bluetooth speaker just to use with the google home!
Yesterday I took delivery of a rather chunky 'Gear4 Xorb' which isnt supposed to be 'portable' as it has no internal battery. I intentionally bought something that was designed to be connected to the mains at all times. It paired up to the google home and is a good improvement volume wise so I thought my job here was done!

Not so fking quick. A couple of hours later and i ask google home to play something and i only get audio through the google home speaker. It turns out that The Xorb speaker goes into standby mode if it doesn't receive a signal for an hour and it can not switch itself back on automatically!!

So now I will have to get up to turn the bloody speaker on after giving a voice command to google to play some music! I might as well just have a digital radio!!

What the fk!

That is three speakers i have now purchased and not one of them seems to be able to carry out the simple task of working seamlessly with google home!

TV sounds good though..

[HRL]

Ditch bloody Bluetooth!

[Shuvi McTupya]

HRL said:

Ditch bloody Bluetooth!

My google home doesn't have any other way of connecting to an external speaker.

I guess maybe it is that that i need to change

[gregs656]

does your sound bar have an input? The little Bluetooth transceiver I have doesn’t go into stand by, they usually have batteries but you can just leave them on charge. They’re cheap too.

Also quite handy on planes if you have wireless headphones.

[Shuvi McTupya]

gregs656 said:

does your sound bar have an input? The little Bluetooth transceiver I have doesn’t go into stand by, they usually have batteries but you can just leave them on charge. They’re cheap too.

Also quite handy on planes if you have wireless headphones.

Yeah the soundbar has a 3.5mm aux input.
Thinking about it though, I imagine the google home will have the same problem even if it is hooking up to the soundbar into the AUX input via a bluetooth dongle rather than directly through bluetooth!

I got a really good deal on the gear4 Xorb speaker though so its no biggy if i dont use it.
These things go for over £100 on ebay (overpriced IMO)


Picked mine up for £5 from a nice old lady on FB marketplace

Edited by Shuvi McTupya on Tuesday 1st October 13:51

[tendown]

Look at a Chromecast audio to effectively provide an audio output for the Google home. We have ours setup so if you ask the Google home to play something it'll automatically come from the Chromecast audio in the same room. She speaks to you from the little speaker still. Works well

Edit- I'm looking at adding a TV to that room soon, so hoping a Chromecast (TV rather than audio) will do the same task, using hdmi CEC to get Google home to turn the TV on when I ask for music/radio/TV etc. Then the amp/speakers can be hooked up to the TV and don't ever need to change the source. Disadvantage is that the TV will be on when just listening to music.

Edited by tendown on Tuesday 1st October 14:02

[The_Jackal]

Welcome to the hype of bluetooth speakers and switching sources.

[ARHarh]

tendown said:

Look at a Chromecast audio to effectively provide an audio output for the Google home. We have ours setup so if you ask the Google home to play something it'll automatically come from the Chromecast audio in the same room. She speaks to you from the little speaker still. Works well

Edit- I'm looking at adding a TV to that room soon, so hoping a Chromecast (TV rather than audio) will do the same task, using hdmi CEC to get Google home to turn the TV on when I ask for music/radio/TV etc. Then the amp/speakers can be hooked up to the TV and don't ever need to change the source. Disadvantage is that the TV will be on when just listening to music.

Edited by tendown on Tuesday 1st October 14:02

chrome cast audio is no longer produced, which is a shame as they do just work. I have 2 in everyday use for nearly 2 years now.

[2Btoo]

ARHarh said:

chrome cast audio is no longer produced, which is a shame as they do just work. I have 2 in everyday use for nearly 2 years now.

It's a crying shame - I have three that I've been using daily for about as long as they have been produced (5 years? More?) and they are simply EXCELLENT. It's a shame that Google seem to want to push us down the Google Home route to do something similar from now on.