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Comment by ProfessorLayton | Hacker News Reader

This looks interesting!

A bit of a rant, but I long for a digital version of an FM transmitter. Multi-speaker playback with basically no setup and perfect sync that also fails gracefully can already be done with an FM transmitter. I would love it if there was a solution for the digital era.

I have been forced into the bluetooth era kicking and screaming with my iPhone 11 and I constantly feel like I've taken a step back by being forced to use bluetooth. The constant pairing issues, even with Apple's AirPods (which are the most reliable by far) has been a constant pain point for me. Pairing, unpairing, and multiple device management is a UX nightmare for something as simple as audio payback.

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A bit of a rant, but I long for a digital version of an FM transmitter.

For a good 90% of people, FM is plenty good enough, and there are a lot of choices when it comes to whole-home FM transmitters. If you're an audiophile, or someone for whom FM isn't good enough, then I don't think there is a real solution out there yet.

FWIW, I picked up a used AM transmitter at Goodwill for $10, and plugged it into a spare iPod. My wife uses it as her own private radio station, and since most of the music on it is ripped from 1940's-70's crooner records that were mastered for AM, they sound great on the vintage radios she has scattered around the house. Whenever she wants to listen to her music all she has to do is turn in the nearest radio. It's like the future!

For her birthday one year I paid a big-name radio DJ to record a bunch of liners and fake station ID's for it. He went along with it because they won't be heard more than a hundred feet from our property. Very fun.

This is fantastic! Nicely done.

And people pretend that Bluetooth is a replacement for the headphone jack. Not only is it a janky pain in the ass, but it can't be shared with a companion (watching a movie on a plane, for example).

We ARE going backward, partly because spineless apologists defend anti-consumer behavior instead of standing up for themselves and better.

I'll point out a new feature with iOS I recently discovered. It is now possible to share audio to other apple headphones (with their customer BT chip) https://support.apple.com/guide/iphone/share-audio-with-airp...

Very smooth UX and useful when watching a movie on a plane on an iPad.

Thanks for that info.

Unfortunately useless for anyone not using Apple's mediocre-at-best listening devices. Like the huge number of people with Bose wireless cans.

Of all the possible audio quality brands to use in comparison, you chose Bose.

Thanks for that laugh.

It's a common enough product, so isn't it relevant?

Sure. Arguably though, as a brand it's at least as deserving of your "mediocre at best" description as Apple's stuff...

I could take the same slippery slope of audio purism and criticize most of the audio choices that people are making here. But that would be douchy.

Bose has their own version of this and has for some time, as long as both people are using Bose headphones: https://www.bose.com/en_us/support/article/using-music-share...

Which requires both users carry a recent Bose product instead, of course.

I really don't understand why we can't just have the headphone jack back. Did it even take up any significant amount of space?

Sure, it takes up some space. But so does having to carry dongles. If Apple made an iPhone with the jack back again and a couple percent smaller battery, I'd take the jack. The phones has already been getting thicker every year ever since 6 (the 2nd last iPhone so far with a jack), so that's no argument.

Right? Not to mention the dongles break super easily and also I can't charge my phone and listen to music at the same time :/

I imagine it helped deliver on another feature customers have been asking for for years, which is water proofing.

As with many things, it works great as long as everyone owns a recent product from the same company.

Same reason I prefer a wired multi-channel audio system throughout my house. Yes, wiring speakers is not fun and not everyone can do it - especially renters. But there are never sync issues, quality problems, or issues with connectivity. Same goes for wired internet over WiFi.

Wireless tech is pretty great. But when it comes to simplicity and reliability, I'll take wired any day.

https://mobilesyrup.com/2018/03/08/android-p-connect-five-bl...

Just so you know... some of us are still fighting the loss of the headphone jack: I am now on my third first generation Google pixel phone, 90% for the headphone jack (which I use often with my Shure SE 425s... and actually used today while sharing with my daughter via a $4 3.5mm aux splitter while on a plane) and 10% because today's "regular" phones are all LARGER than 2016's "XL" phones.

Did you consider a Pixel 3a?

Yes. The Pixel 3a is larger than the Pixel XL.

I have large hands, and the OG Pixel is the largest screen I can fully use one-handed comfortably. I've used the OG Pixel XL for about 3 months now (because I already had one when my OG Pixel died, RIP) and I still hate the size.

Aside: the screen on all the Pixel 3a display models I've checked out the past few months (I keep getting tempted to finally buy one but) is tinted yellow and has serious burn in issues.

This makes me wonder if there is a way to customize Android's screen resolution so the top of the phone is just ignored (I don't mind if my phone has a large bezel, chin, or forehead).

FYI, if you own a relatively recent Samsung phone, the dual audio feature allows you to play audio to multiple Bluetooth devices.

We use it on long flights to watch movies together.

https://www.samsung.com/au/support/mobile-devices/what-is-th...

Squeezebox had this working in shipping internet radios over a decade ago. Logitech was kind enough to open source pretty much everything on that platform, so that it still lives today. No monthly subscription business plan bs or anything. You could even SSH right into the radios and do whatever you want. Not great for security, but really a fairly amazing line of hardware. I wish Logitech would revive it.

I guess the fundamental challenge with a snapcast setup is that you’re provisioning a computer for each node, and the inherent burden in setup and maintenance that comes with this.

My personal little wireless setup is not with an FM-transmitter (although that’s pretty elegant!), but I do try to keep some of the analog simplicity. I use these:

https://audioengineusa.com/shop/adapters/w3-wireless-audio-a...

The sending dongle can function as a USB sound card connected to a computer, but you can also have it transmit an analog signal from its aux in. That makes for the most flexible solution: instead of connecting it to your computer, you can connect it to the pre-out of a hi-fi amp/receiver, and then anything playing on the amp will also be wirelessly transmitted. I’ve personally connected the sending dongle to a mixing desk in the living room. Latency is low, setup is minimal, and compression is lossless.

It’s super rudimentary though, the relative volume of the speakers you have to deal with on the speakers themselves, but its simplicity also makes for less problems. It’s a proprietary protocol but since it’s just something I plug into analog equipment and could replace, the vendor lock-in seems minimal.

I just set up my Nest Mini. One of the options was to create a "speaker group." I'm not sure if this is what I think it is, but maybe it lets you stream your audio to multiple speakers simultaneously.

it does and works really well IME.

SKAA (https://skaa.com) may be a partial solution for simultaneous playback and instant pairing (master/slave modes)

AirFoil allows even a mix of wifi and bluetooth, and when all the active nodes are wifi, they're pretty-well sync'd; enough that walking from room to room it's basically seamless. Had that setup (w/ older-gen appletv units as receiving nodes) many years ago. Agreed that BT kinda sucks tho.

Not commenting on the rest of your complaints, but it seems really strange to me that you have experienced any issues with airpods whatsoever, as I’ve never heard of anyone having connectivity/pairing issues with those, and i have quite a lot of friends using those, mostly on androids too.

I’ve been using my original pair for almost two years, then switched to airpods pro a couple of months ago. First year was on an android phone, after that it was on different iphones. At no point have i had any connection issues or had to fiddle with settings or pairing after the initial setup (which was as easy as just tapping the case with my phone).

Do you switch devices that you use with your headphones? I have issues with my Bluetooth headphones when I try to switch them from my phone to my tablet... sometimes I have to go find my other device and manually disable Bluetooth to get it to connect to my other device.

I do not switch between multiple devices often (mostly between my iphone and macbook, but no issues there, it was as simple as choosing airpods as the audio output on the device I wanted to use them on), so that's the scenario where I accept there could be something I've missed.

To Apple's defense, I don't think there is a wireless pair of headphones in existence at the moment that could handle that scenario better than them, let alone handle the switching scenario at all. I tried the hyped up Sony wireless earbuds that were released in August and promptly dubbed as airpod killers, and they do not support switching between multiple devices at all. Like, it isn't even a bug, it is straight up a feature that doesn't exist. If you want to switch devices, you have to reset the pairing and restart the whole process every time you want to switch the device. Returned them as soon as airpods pro came out, zero regrets.

I find it kind of bizarre that they wouldn’t use the same firmware/chipset as they do in their over the ear headphones. I have a pair of the Sony something-bass (model mdr-xb something or another) over the ear Bluetooth headphones and they’re paired with at least 5 devices.

The situation isn’t quite as dire as that with the Sony buds: you don’t have to forget and re-pair, you can just enter pairing mode on the buds and hit connect from a device that had previously paired, which is better but by no means good at all.

Yes, I wasn't complaining about Apple airbuds specifically, but Bluetooth in general.

My experience with AirPods has been that everything is great until it's not. Pairing and checking battery is super slick, just open the case near the phone — until, for no discernable reason it doesn't work.

They work perfectly 95% of the time, but that 5% I'm doing the dance of closing the AirPods case multiple times, hovering the case all over the phone, unlocking/re-locking until it decides to work again. This was the case on my 6s and 11. No feedback or errors, just frustration. My friends also enjoy their AirPods but acknowledge my experience isn't out of the ordinary.

At the gym packed with people using AirPods, my pair will sometimes cut, for just a split second, and is a constant reminder that I'm using bluetooth. I'm not disputing that the overall experience isn't better with AirPods, because it definitely is, but for me it hasn't been as smooth as promised. Especially at the cost of my headphone jack.

Yeah this problem recently popped up for me. I have to reboot my damn phone! I'm always bewildered when Bluetooth fails to work reliably. This isn't specific to Apple -- my car sometimes have the same problem. BT just seems like a technology we should have nailed down by now. Someone more knowledgable might be able to give us some insights into this.

I use both AirPods and Powerbeats Pro with my iPhone, Watch, AppleTV and MacBook Pro. Most of the issues are when I am switching between the devices. Admittedly, this is something ordinary bluetooth headphones would not be able to do at all or be extraordinarily difficult pairing/repairing across devices. So I give latitude to connectivity in these scenarios. But when they fail to switch or when AppleWatch fails to connect, it is a pain to "solve".

I’ve had to replace two pairs of AirPods for connectivity issues. The Apple store didn’t even question when I asked for a replacement pair - just a silent acknowledgment that there can be issues with phone calling and the AirPods can’t be repaired.

I have a pair of Sony Bluetooth headphones and they were paired across several devices without any difficulty. And not just my phone and laptop either. My kids borrow them a lot.

I have had great experiences across multiple Sony BT products.

The only time I experience paring issues is when I switch between multiple devices, such as my phone, laptop, and work computer.

Usually an easy fix but annoying nonetheless

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