Whereas most connections combine positive and negative connections into one plug, banana plugs have separate plugs for positive and negative. Like with speaker clips, banana plugs have designated positive and negative plugs. Banana Plugs and Speaker ClipsĪ final speaker connection you may encounter is a banana plug. However, if your speaker has speaker clips or uses banana plugs, it may be more complicated. If you have speakers with an RCA connection, finding an aux female to left and right male RCA cables is usually not too difficult. You will need to find a cable with a female aux connection on one side.
If you are using a car audio Bluetooth receiver, you will need to get a converter cable. The easiest to hook up to a Bluetooth device with be RCA, since most Bluetooth receivers have RCA outputs and therefore only require standard RCA cables to plug in. Speakers generally come with one of three kinds of connections. Where you may run into trouble is with the speakers themselves. Use the Bluetooth device to control the volume so that you don’t disrupt the volume settings for your other devices. This will likely make the audio very low when your Bluetooth device is at a normal volume. If your A/V receiver doesn’t have an HT Bypass or Direct In, you can still hook it up to an empty audio channel. This is because the Bluetooth device effectively acts as a preamp. The HT Bypass or Direct In channel skips the preamp stage so that your A/V receiver doesn’t control the volume, gain, or EQ settings. If you have an A/V receiver, ideally, you should hook the Bluetooth receiver into the HT Bypass or Direct In channel. If you are using a power amplifier, you can hook the Bluetooth receiver directly into any open audio input channel. With passive speakers, you need to amplify the line level signal with an amplifier or A/V receiver. Passive speakers do not have their own power supply. Connecting Bluetooth Receiver to Passive Speakers Otherwise, your Bluetooth device will be the volume control, and you will need to remember to set it to the appropriate volume before you listen every time. If your powered speakers do not have their own volume control, it is highly recommended that you get a preamp. Because of this, you can plug a Bluetooth receiver directly into a set of powered speakers.Īlternatively, if you want to add a Bluetooth audio channel to your powered speaker system, you will want to hook your speakers up to a preamp’s output channel, and plug the Bluetooth into one of the audio input channels of the preamp and use the other channels for your other audio devices.Ī preamp is also a good way to add volume control to powered speakers that don’t have one. Powered speakers use this power supply to add voltage and current to the line-level signal. Powered speakers have their own external power supply. It depends on the active/powered speaker system. Connecting Bluetooth Receiver to Powered or Active Speakers Typically connected via RCA cable. In general, the aux outputs are intended for computer speakers whereas the RCA outputs are intended for home audio speakers. If you chose to get a car adapter, however, it will come with a male stereo aux output. However certain set-ups will require you to improvise.įor the most part, a Bluetooth receiver will have female stereo aux and RCA outputs. Sometimes, these cables will be easy to find.