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PROBLEM OF THE FORTNIGHT

Can I connect to multiple Bluetooth speakers?

Q I have digitised all my vinyl records. I keep the audio files on my computer and play them through a Bluetooth speaker placed next to it. My wife would also like to hear the music from a different room. Is it possible to connect to two speakers in different rooms to Bluetooth so we can both listen at the same time? Love your magazine, incidentally!

Philip Johns

A Yes, it’s possible, but almost certainly not with your existing equipment. To understand why, we need to explain some of the background details.

The original Bluetooth standard was designed for one-to-one connectivity. With audio, that means one device streams and another receives, which is your current setup. Remarkably, while the Bluetooth standard has been updated many times over the years, this particular limitation has remained the status quo for decades.

A couple of years ago, the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (www.bluetooth. com) – the industry body responsible for the standard – introduced Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) Audio. Among its improvement is a feature called Auracast, which allows one-to-many streaming, so one device can broadcast to multiple speakers simultaneously.

Auracast-compatible devices are now beginning to appear, such as the JBL Go 4 portable speaker (around £40, www.snipca.com/56735, pictured above right). Even so, it’s not simply a matter of buying two new speakers. The transmitting device must also support Bluetooth LE Audio and Auracast.

If your PC or Bluetooth adapter is more than about a year old, it almost certainly won’t support LE Audio, and support remains limited even among new adapters and computers. The same applies to smartphones and tablets, whether Apple iOS or Android. That’s likely to change over time, but for now LE Audio compatibility – and therefore Auracast functionality – is far from widespread. Auracast-capable Bluetooth LE Audio USB adapters exist, but while Windows 11 already supports LE Audio, the Auracast features are still under development, so that part of any dongle is currently out of use. The same applies to Apple devices and most Android models.

In the meantime, some manufacturers developed their own solutions. JBL’s PartyBoost feature, for example, lets you connect multiple compatible JBL speakers to a single audio source via the JBL app (www.snipca.com/56737, see screenshot left). However, the app is available only for iOS and Android devices, so it wouldn’t help you broadcast from your PC. What’s more, manufacturers are gradually moving away from their own systems as they adopt Bluetooth LE Audio and Auracast, so tying yourself to JBL’s platform now would be a mistake.

The upshot is that what you want is possible but only if you buy manufacturers’ own systems, which we wouldn’t recommend. Thankfully, the situation is improving, and by this time next year Auracast-compatible dongles and speakers will undoubtedly be much more mainstream.