It’s Easy, Order These Items
If you’re in a band or you’re the audio engineer (sound guy/gal), chances are you have some type of music streaming subscription for your phone or tablet. Wouldn’t it be nice just to pipe that music to your mixer on breaks? Well, it’s easy! You just need to order a few items (just 2 with an optional 3rd item). And for under $30 they can be in your hands within a few days and you’ll be ready to go.
Here’s what you need:
Connecting The Bluetooth Receiver
The Bluetooth receiver will come with a USB charging cable (USB Micro B end), a short ⅛” to ⅛” (black) cable, and a ⅛” to ⅛” (silver) double-male adapter. As mentioned, a charging cable comes with the receiver, but not a charger. You can use a standard USB 5V charger or charging port. (Probably by now you have a few of those lying around. See Fig 2.) Sometimes the receivers are not shipped with a full charge. You may want to give it a full charge before starting this connection process. Most phones and tablets will show the percentage of charge the receiver has once you pair the two. (A 100% charged receiver can be see in Fig 5.) We have found that this particular receiver lasts longer than 12hrs on a full charge.
To connect the receiver to the mixer, we’ll be using the ⅛” male-to-male (silver) adapter and the RCA stereo “Y” to ⅛” female cable. (If you ordered the “Y” cable from the list above, it comes in a two-pack. Use one and keep the other as a backup.) Make sure the Bluetooth receiver is switched to the “off” position. Connect the silver adapter to the “Y” cable and the other end of the silver adapter to the receiver (as seen in Fig 3). Then connect the two RCA male plugs into the female RCA line-in ports on your mixer. The full cable and adapter connection into the mixer’s line-in can be seen in Fig 4.
Pairing The Receiver
We’re ready to pair the receiver to your phone or tablet. First, go to your favorite streaming app and begin playing some music. Set the volume to a comfortable low volume. Now turn “on” the Bluetooth receiver and go to your Bluetooth settings on your phone or tablet. Pair your device with the receiver by looking for “BH129”. An example of pairing using Android 13 and a Pixel 6 phone can be seen in Fig 5. Once you pair, some newer phones (and tablets) will immediately set the volume to minimum. So you may have push the volume back up on your device to that “happy medium” volume you set before. You may even have to initiate “Play” again on your device again. We’re assuming, since you’ve used a mixer before, you have experience in adjusting the source volume when it comes to line-in connections, so this article isn’t delving into specifics. At this point, you should see the incoming signal on your mixer’s meter or LED indicators and are ready to send the music out to your mains, monitor, or headphones.
What’s With That Camera Bag
If you’ve been in the business as long as we have, our small equipment and components seem to take the most abuse or “get legs” (get misplaced) and become missing the next gig. Sometimes you’re lucky to find them at the bottom of one of your bags or the floor of your sound trailer – but that’s usually not the case and you’re replacing them before you know it. This bag is inexpensive, plus it’s just the perfect size to hold the receiver and it’s cables. (Catch a glimpse of the photos in Fig 6 that shows how we found the bag useful.) Yes, it’s optional and a recommendation, but we found that other musicians and engineers with this same configuration thought it was an excellent addition that completes the combo.
Satisfactory Results
We’ve used this setup with a small 12 channel Behringer mixer and a 24 channel SoundCraft mixer yielding excellent distortion-free results. If you’re not getting distortion-free sound, then it’s time to troubleshoot the audio coming from your streaming device or the settings in your mix. (We all have crazy distortion stories.) We’ve used this setup involving a range of talented musicians, great technicians, several weddings and outdoor shows – you’ll be satisfied with the results too.
