Playing and streaming music from one device

I’m planning a party soon where I want to be able to play music in one room, from a laptop or Android device via the headphone jack, and in another room via a wireless connection of some sort (cable is not an option).

First thought was Bluetooth, and I have a little BT transmitter/receiver like this…

that could take care of one end. But apparently android can’t send audio to the headphone jack and via BT at the same time. Can I do that in Windows?

I could use a physical splitter on the headphone jack and the BT transmitter but would need a way of receiving it and spitting it out of the headphone jack on a device – I could buy a second transmitter/receiver but I’m not they would pair with each other. Is there an android app that would receive via BT and spit it out the headphone jack?

There’s WiFi at the venue, which seems like the best solution, and UPnP/DLNA seems like it should be able to deal with this, but I can’t work out how to cast a stream and listen to it at the same time. Can any techy people give me a clue?

Know anyone that can lend you some Sonos speakers or something like that? Or if you’re happy to spend some cash, then you can buy Bluetooth speakers that can be linked together and play the same music in different rooms.

How much is a couple of JBL Flips? They can be synced together and run from one device with no wires.

2x Wiim Minis. If cost is a problem, sell second hand afterwards (even buy second hand before too if you want).

Probably should have mentioned that I want to play the remote audio through an amp, so a little BT speaker won’t cut it – I just want an analogue signal I can stick into the jack input of my amp.

Don’t want to spend much, or ideally any money on this, or the hassle of buying and selling stuff (I spent a whole day this week listing stuff on eBay, it’s tedious!). I’m sure between a laptop, tablet, BT transceiver, WiFi network, and old android phones if necessary I should have all the necessary hardware… It’s just working how to stick it together!

Not fussed about quality either.

Think I’ve got a solution: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.georgie.SoundWire on an Android device to receive and the corresponding server on a Windows laptop to send: https://georgielabs.net/

Tested the free version and it seems to work pretty seamlessly – £3.69 to remove voice ads and enable compression so there’s less chance of dropping out seems like a reasonable price to pay.

As far as I know, Windows (by default anyway) can only out put from one device at a time – when you click the Volume control in the system tray, it pops up the choice, of which you can only select one. There may be a dongle, or application (or on a workstation, additional controller card) you can install to change this, but I’ve never seen one. Does it have to be the same music playing in each room?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Headphone-Splitter-VIOY-Extender-Samsung/dp/B08LB4SPZ4

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Cable-Mountain-Plated-3-5mm-Phono-Blue/dp/B007BKO59E

And your BT dongle.  Bear in mind though, BT range is limited.  I’d have a dry run ahead of the event if I were you.

… alternatively, a couple of Amazon Echoes.  The full-sized ones have a 3.5mm audio out (from memory the Dots only have audio in).

I have music throughout the house via Echoes.  I can say “Alexa, play [music] downstairs” and it does.  Though I do have a paid-for Spotify sub also.

Think I’ve got a solution

If that works for you then why not. They get no prizes for UI development on their webpage though! Didn’t realis you were looking for a 0 cost solution, this is STW after-all 😉

Spotify and two phones on a group session?

Think I’ve got a solution

Cool, phone apps to the rescue 🙂 Might try that one meself

One thing that the networked (Sonos etc) devices do is ensure that the audio is synched – if the rooms are fairly close together you may get a delay / echo effect. It may or may not be noticeable (or enough to be annoying) but you won’t know until you actually try it (which may be too late).

As a solution, it sounds fraught with failure possibilities! ‘Tech solves everything’ is great until it doesn’t, your party has no music and you’re stood there trying to figure out why it’s stopped working 🙂

Buy some long audio cables, or a speaker loud enough to only need one 😁

One solution that might work for you is a windows virtual mixer.

I’ve used VB Audio VoiceMeeter before which allows some cool stuff in Windows. One of the key features I used was the ability to create an audio bridge between playback devices. In theory, if your bluetooth device shows up as a playback device in windows, you can create a virtual audio device, and bridge bluetooth audio to this, then set the output of the virtual device to the laptop 3.5 audio.

Spotify and two phones on a group session?

Want to play from local files, for a variety reasons, but Spotify can do that, so that’s not actuallya bad shout as a backup plan.

Second room is far enough away that perfect synchronisation isn’t necessary.

long audio cables

As I said, not an option, there’s no route for the cable.