The Best Bluetooth Audio Receiver for Your Home Stereo or Speakers. Among all of the affordable ($6. Bluetooth receivers we tested, both the BT2. A and our runner- up (below) offered the best combination of sound quality, reliable connectivity, range, and number of audio- output options, but Star. Tech’s two- year warranty gave the BT2. A the edge and made it our pick. The BT2. A offers wireless convenience without sacrificing audio quality. ![]() There was a time when Bluetooth speakers were like jelly beans: They were cheap, they all looked the same, and they were invariably of dubious quality. Times have. Discover the best and highest rated Bluetooth speaker. After testing and reviewing dozens of the best Bluetooth speakers, our #1 pick is the Fugoo Sport Bluetooth. Pairing with a Bluetooth source is easy, and reconnection with sources is more reliable than with a number of other models we tested. Its range easily covers a large living room, extending into neighboring rooms, and due to quality components and support for newer Bluetooth- audio codecs, audio comes close to the sound quality of a direct wired connection. Both also include a Toslink optical digital- audio output, so if your existing stereo has better audio circuitry, you can take advantage of it, and both include NFC (near- field communication) circuitry for easy pairing with some Android devices. None of these features are unique to the Star. Tech and Monoprice receivers, but these models offer the best combination of features, performance, and price. The Monoprice Bluetooth Streaming Music Receiver offers identical features and performance as the Star. Tech BT2. A, but with a one- year warranty instead of two years. ![]() Your buying guide to the best cheap Bluetooth speakers. Enhance your audiovisual experience from your smartphone, tablet or laptop with a portable Bluetooth speaker.![]() They’re identical electronically, so if the BT2. A is out of stock, or you find the Monoprice at a significantly cheaper price when you’re shopping, you should feel totally comfortable buying the Monoprice model instead. If you’ve already invested a good amount of money in your existing audio system, the Audioengine B1 Bluetooth Music Receiver is a nice step up, providing sound quality befitting a higher- end system. Its built- in digital- to- analog converter (DAC)—the circuitry that turns Bluetooth audio’s digital bits into musical sound—is much better than what you’ll find in the less- expensive models we tested, and likely even better than the DAC built into your phone or tablet. The result is audio quality that’s roughly comparable to what you’d get by connecting your smartphone or tablet directly to your speakers with a cable, if not better. The B1 sports a small external antenna that helps it achieve phenomenal range for a Bluetooth device. It’s also well- built, and, like our top picks, it has digital- audio output for use with an external DAC. If you have an old i. Phone or i. Pod speaker dock—one that uses Apple’s 3. Samson 3. 0- Pin Bluetooth Receiver BT3. Bluetooth functionality: You just attach the BT3. BT3. 0 with power. The BT3. 0 offers easy pairing and connections, along with range that slightly exceeds that of the Monoprice and Star. Tech receivers. Its audio quality isn’t as good as that of our other picks, but the difference won’t be noticeable through most speaker docks, and its sound is easily the best of the 3. If you’re looking for a portable Bluetooth receiver—say, for using your favorite wired headphones with a smartphone that lacks a headphone jack—we have a separate guide to Bluetooth headphone adapters. Why decide to buy wireless speakers? The best wireless Speakers on the market can provide the ultimate in music listening freedom, as they give you the ability to. Sound all around: best wireless Bluetooth speakers with 360-degree audio. Here are the best Bluetooth speakers you can buy. Our top pick is portable, waterproof, lasts 40 hours on a charge and packs deep bass. For dedicated in- car use, we recommend our top pick for car Bluetooth kits.)Table of contents. Why you should trust us. I’ve been obsessing over audio gear for 1. I care to admit. I spent six years covering audio gear for Macworld, where I reviewed more than 7. DACs, headphone and speaker amplifiers, and computer accessories. I also contributed to Macworld’s yearly headphone and speaker buying guides. I’m passionate about good sound, and I’m not ashamed to call myself an audiophile. But just as important, I love finding great, affordable gear that connects people to the music they love. I also have a Ph. D in computational biology, so I have a strong technical and scientific background, and I’m not afraid to delve into technical details to answer important questions. Who should buy this? Whether it’s because your new smartphone has no headphone jack, or you aren’t ready to give up your old stereo in favor of a great Bluetooth speaker, a Bluetooth audio receiver adds wireless streaming to your existing home stereo or speakers, potentially giving you better audio quality for less money than buying a whole new audio system. If your smartphone, tablet, or computer has Bluetooth, but your stereo or other speaker system doesn’t, a good Bluetooth audio receiver lets you stream music wirelessly to your speakers with little loss in sound quality. Our top pick is for people who have a traditional stereo system, computer speakers, or a soundbar—pretty much any speaker system with an auxiliary- input jack that doesn’t already have Bluetooth. Our upgrade pick is worth considering if you’ve invested roughly $5. Bluetooth audio from a longer distance: farther than 9. You might also want a Bluetooth receiver if you have an older speaker dock with Apple’s 3. A dock- compatible receiver will let you inexpensively and easily add Bluetooth capability to most docks (details below), eliminating not only the need to dock your device, but also the need for a 3. Lightning adapter. Such a receiver will let you use your old speaker dock with any Bluetooth- equipped smartphone, tablet, or computer. How we picked and tested. We began by looking at the most popular models on Amazon and checking the websites of high- profile manufacturers, ultimately assembling a list of 7. We then considered how these products are used in order to identify the most important features and specifications, which resulted in a short list of serious contenders: eight models for general home use, two higher- end models, and four dock- connector models. The main appeal of a Bluetooth audio receiver is the convenience of playing audio through your existing speakers without having to plug in a cable. This means that pairing and connecting your devices to the receiver should be easy and reliable—if connecting your phone to a receiver is too finicky, you’ll just reach for the simplicity and reliability of a cable. Also, the receiver’s range should be long enough to cover a typical living area—wireless isn’t particularly useful if you can’t roam with your device. Ideally, a Bluetooth receiver should sound as good as a direct, wired connection—if wireless audio sounds bad, you’ll likely put up with the inconvenience of a cable to get better audio. Whether a receiver comes close to this standard depends on the quality of the receiver’s built- in digital- to- analog converter (DAC) and other audio circuitry, as well as how the audio is compressed for transmission: Bluetooth doesn’t have enough bandwidth to transmit uncompressed CD- quality audio, so Bluetooth devices use one of several codecs to compress audio for transmission, and can vary the bit rate of the compression based on available wireless bandwidth. The receiver decodes the transmitted data for playback on your speakers. Top row, left to right: Star. Tech BT2. A Bluetooth Audio Receiver, Satechi Bluetooth Music Receiver (discontinued). Middle row: Motorola Moto Stream, Avantree Roxa, Grace Digital 3. Play. Bottom row: Nyrius Songo Hi. Fi (discontinued), Kinivo BTR2. Monoprice Bluetooth Streaming Music Receiver. Matthew Ward. All Bluetooth devices support Low Complexity Subband Coding (SBC), a codec with low bandwidth and computational requirements, but that can sound downright bad in some implementations. To provide better sound quality, many newer Bluetooth receivers (including our top pick) support the apt. X codec; some also support MP3, AAC, and other codecs. Windows and Mac computers, and most Android devices, support apt. X; i. OS does not, but it does support AAC. We found that receivers that support apt. X also sound pretty good using SBC—if a receiver supports apt. X, it can likely receive good- quality audio from your source device in some form or another. So we considered apt. X support an almost- mandatory feature for our top pick. That said, we considered two models (the Avantree Roxa and Moto Stream) that lack digital output because they offer other intriguing features not found elsewhere. Matthew Ward. Because few speaker docks have outstanding sound quality, we didn’t weigh audio performance as heavily for dock- connector receivers as we did for our main pick. However, we did connect each model to a full- size stereo system (using a powered, 3. The audio of our dock- connector pick is good enough that any deficiencies are likely to be hidden by the limitations of the speaker dock itself. Similarly, few speaker docks have the audio quality to make apt. X an important feature, and it’s rare in these models, so we didn’t require it for this category. One feature we didn’t give much weight to was NFC circuitry for pairing. NFC pairing works only with certain source devices (such as some Android phones), and pairing is generally a simple process that you perform rarely for each device, so we didn’t think it was important enough to impact a buying decision. However, our two picks for most people do have this feature. Matthew Ward. To test our contenders, I paired each one first to a Mac. Book and then to an i. Phone to see how easy it was to pair source devices to the receiver; how reliably the receiver connected and disconnected from sources once paired; and how easy it was to switch to a different source. For devices that could pair with multiple devices simultaneously, I used up to six devices to test this feature, and up to nine to test pairing. For example, a dock- connector receiver should connect to a source immediately when the dock (which is usually off or unpowered when not in use) is turned on. Models designed for a home stereo, on the other hand, will generally be left on—most don’t even have a power switch—so it’s best if connections to these models are initiated manually to avoid your phone’s audio being routed through your stereo when you don’t want it to be.
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