Hi, my new Denon receiver is Bluetooth enabled and I have paired it with my laptop. The first time I did this, the connection worked and I was able to hear playback from Spotify through my hi-fi speakers. I have tried since and it doesn’t seem to be working; the connection is showing there, but now nothing comes out of the speakers. I have tried with Spotify and also music files I have dowloaded on the laptop. When I disconnect the Bluetooth, the playback on the laptop is fine, but as soon as I try to reconnect…silence. Help! I am not a techie in any way, shape or form. I have consulted the manual and online guidance and followed the steps provided, with no joy.
ATM – Bluetooth Playback on Hi-fi
by 43 Comments
I use Bluetooth/AirPlay via Apple devices including MacBook to various wireless active speakers and have experienced similar problems. You may be Windows/Android so I don’t know how useful this is but is the receiver attached to your Wifi network? If so, check that your laptop and receiver are both on the network. If not, run a cable from your laptop – a phono lead or similar – to a receiver and see if it plays back through your speakers. Also, I’d check that the volume on your laptop is turned up sufficiently. If all else fails, I’d reset the receiver with a paper clip. This worked a treat for me recently.
Sorry, don’t have a helpful comment, just to say I feel your pain. Bluetooth can be infuriatingly whimsical in the way it works. For instance, I bought a Sony hi-res music player which works perfectly with my Bose QC35IIs, but flatly refuses to have anything to do with my Sony – yes, SONY – noise-cancelling Bluetooth earbuds. The Sony earbuds work perfectly with my iPhone. Go figure.
Those QC35s are great headphones – prefer them to the B+W ones that are about 100 notes dearer.
Sony runs it’s own proprietary Bluetooth codec LDAC. Your earbuds will use that by default. Maybe that’s the problem. Is there anyway you can alter the codec being used? I run Bluetooth 0.5 in AptX from my phone and it connects to everything with no problems. I had to enable the developer options on the phone to change the codec but it sounds just dandy through my earbuds and via my amp which has an Audioengine B1 Bluetooth DAC hooked up to it via a toslink.
I did not know that – thought there was just Bluetooth. But surely if that’s the case you’d expect the ear buds and the Walkman to play nice with each other and spurn everything else, instead of the other way round?
It is surprising and I’m just guessing without having access to your gear. It’s usually a pairing problem when connection issues arise. You have to sever the pairing to one piece of equipment before the next piece of equipment will pair. If your Bose headphones are paired then your earbuds won’t connect until you disconnect the Bose. All the various pieces of kit will remember what other pieces of kit they are paired to but that is not the same as them being connected and operational. My phone is paired to four different devices but I must sever the connection to three of them before connecting it to the forth. Make sure the connection to your Bose is severed before trying to connect to your earbuds.
Thanks Pencil, I’ll give it a go – if I haven’t already done so. I’ve done an awful lot of fiddling.
You are Dave Swarbrick and I claim my £5.
My phone and bluetooth speaker occasionally refuse to pair properly. Usually it’s because the speaker thinks it’s still paired to my laptop. Sometimes the sound from the phone starts breaking up and I have to re-pair it to the speaker.
Then there are the times my phone just stops playing music because an email, text or Google alert has arrived.
My rather old NAD system has a Bluetooth hierarchy which means that an Apple device (bleh!) has priority and then it works it’s way through every other Bluetooth device till it gets to the one I forgot to disconnect
“Rather old nad system” – you do this on purpose.
My NAD has capital letters unlike yours
BOLLOCKS.
(I say, I’m enjoying the new “third form” feel of the Afterword these days)
NAD UK or NAD German?
Bought in Montreal so I’m guessing …
Both of them?
I have a NAD that’s not even a nad.
From the dark days before the 3020….it’s a
New Acoustic Dimension.
My Android laptop forgets the BT connection to my Naim preamp. I have to go to settings – sound – select device (or something) and go through the ‘pair’ process again.
Mrs F joined CSR, originators of Bluetooth, about 15 years ago. I told her not to bother as Bluetooth was rubbish and a flash in the pan. I stand by my original statement (but not so much the second half).
I’ve done that a few times now They always pair ok, but no actual playback ensues. The frustrating thing is that it worked the very first time I tried – would that I could remember what I did right!
Hijacking this thread for my own purposes, does anyone if there is likely to be any lag when watching movies from an iPad via Bluetooth headphones and does it depend on the devices or age/version of devices? Bad lip sync drives me mad.
Can’t say I’ve ever noticed a problem. Mt iPad Mini is Gen 2 and they’re now on Gen 5 if that helps.
Thanks Mike
I get a sound lag doing PC -> NAD Viso if I’m looking at youtube vids for example. Drives me crazy. If I play it in the small youtube window it’s fine, go full screen – lag.
Thanks. A little investigation required it seems.
Depends which version of Bluetooth you’re running. The latest version 5.0 is noticeably less prone to lagging and has a much longer range before connection breaks down.
And anything non-Apple above 5.0 (2016) can support AptX HD (lossless).
Current version is 5.1 (Jan 2019).
This is true.
Unfortunately, aptX is not lossless. It has a bitrate of 576 kbps, sufficient for transfer of some lossless audio, but not all.
Sounds fine to me. I couldn’t care less about bench tests.
‘Tis lossless (up to 24/48 resolution) in Adaptive variant, it uses Sony LDAC encoding and 50-80ms latency to squeeze the raw 1.4Mbps down to 576k.
Sorry, I am very dull.
Mrs F works for Qualcomm and I have to translate the product launches into civilian-speak for her.
I have 2 of these Denon things and they’re a pain to connect. I connect using my phone or tablet. Never tried my laptop.
Recently I tried to connect my phone with one of them, and it refused. It didn’t show up on my phone when I scanned, and the Denon just showed ‘bluetooth connecting’ on the display.
I made sure my phone was ‘available’ to connect, and scanned. At the same time I held the bluetooth button in on the Denon (I think that was the important bit) and the display changed from connecting to pairing. Bingo!
Good luck.
My Denon receiver maintains it’s Bluetooth connection very well. The problem could be your laptop. Try another device as a start of a process of elimination. Of course you have tried re-pairing I guess? (and switched it off and back on again)
Oh yes!
I have the same issues. i think fentonsteve’s (above) is the solution. It now works for me doing this. No idea why it does it though. It all seems a bit “random”….a bit of an effing nuisance, but quickly solvable.
Bluetooth is device to device, completely independent of any other networking present.
Unfortunately, whether it works reliably at any point in time is controlled by random telepathic connection to the Bluetooth dragons who live on one of Neptune’s larger moons.
Represented on earth by Harald Bluetooth, scourge of virgins everywhere.
You sure it’s not connected to something else? I had this and discovered it had connected to my other Bluetooth speaker in the kitchen.
Bluetooth trap for the unwary right there: only yesterday I was reading a woman on Twitter telling how she was watching porn on her laptop and realised it was connecting to the speaker on her back deck…
No Twang, the receiver specifies that it’s paired/connected to the laptop, and vice-versa.
Ah well, worth checking. On my phone you can connect “media” and “calls”. Don’t know about your lappy but might that be it?
Is your laptop windows or Mac?
I often have issues hearing sounds from my windows 10 laptop on external speakers, the bluetooth connection is fine, but it turns out to be audio settings – windows 10 needs to be set to Digital output for me to get the sound. Not sure if this is your problem, but worth checking if you are a windows user.
I will try that, James. And can I say that if it works, you’ve got a friend. 😉
Er…how do I do this, James? Told you I wasn’t techie…
I have looked on the ‘sound ‘ settings, but nothing obvious leaps out at me.