How to connect a turntable wirelessly to an Echo-controlled amp

January 2, 2019 8:38 AM

We moved our hifi amp when putting the Xmas decorations up, and really like where it is now. Problem is we can't put our occasionally-used turntable on that side of the room. Am hooking up an Echo Dot to the amp with a cable, so we can stream Spotify to it from our phones. Rather than running cables half way around the walls, I'd love to be able to somehow feed our turntable's signal wirelessly to the Dot...is this possible?

If I fed the turntable output (it has an inbuilt pre-amp) into a bluetooth transmitter, could the Dot see that? In a nutshell, I want to be able to drop a needle on a record and have the sound emerge from the amp on the other side of the room without wires, in a way which would have me condemned as a witch not that long ago.

posted by reynir to Technology (3 answers total)

You're loosing the analog mojo by doing anything bluetooth, you witch, digitizing your signal more crudely than just streaming the same material from Spotify. So how much do you believe/hear analog mojo? The bluetooth transmitters I've tried are all pretty flaky at keeping a connection, but they didn't cost much more than speaker wire. Which is to say I've found that wires are less frustration for mixing old and new audio gear.
posted by bendybendy at 9:05 AM on January 2, 2019

Yes, you can play Bluetooth audio through an echo dot. Bluetooth audio transmitters are cheap so worth trying but I have previously found the quality poor and syncing unreliable, I would personally just get a 10m phono cable but then I'm quite tolerant of cable mess!
posted by JonB at 9:30 AM on January 2, 2019

This is more or less a problem I have also dealt with. As mentioned above, you could do a Bluetooth transmitter/receiver, or connect it to the echo. However, each of those has problems that end up unpleasant.

At least on my receiver, to have a separate Bluetooth input would require me to switch inputs and thus prevent hearing the Alexa output. As for routing BT through the dot, I have found that to be a bit flakey and often requiring manual reconnection.

I ended up buying a mixer and a long cable and so far (3 months) it's worked with zero problems. If I were dead set on Bluetooth, I would buy a mixer and a dedicated Bluetooth receiver/transmitter unit.
posted by Maecenas at 10:33 AM on January 2, 2019