My Pioneer stereo system lives in an antique wardrobe that dominates a wall in my living room. It consists of a receiver, a 100 CD changer, and an old turntable (we still have some vinyl records).
I replaced the speakers about 20 years ago with what was, at the time, top of the line Bose speakers.
Over the years, I ripped all my CDs to MP3 files so I could sync my music to my Zunes and my Pocket PCs and so I could carry my music with me wherever I went.
Eventually I stopped turning on my stereo.
For a few years I subscribed to music streaming services but was never satisfied with any I tried. Turns out I like owning the music I play and I find streaming music all the time to be expensive (paying for a subscription and a data connection). Wearing headsets get tiresome and the quality of the streamed music is subpar and inconsistent. I’m no audiophile but I know poor quality when I hear it.
I modernized my old stereo system by buying a couple of bluetooth devices and I’m enjoying listening to my music collection through my stereo system more than ever.
My music collection lives on a barebones desktop computer that runs Windows 10 and doesn’t have any native bluetooth functionality, so I bought a TP-Link USB adapter ($11.23) for the PC to give it bluetooth functionality.
I also bought an Arus bluMe Long Range Bluetooth Music Receiver Hi-Fi Audio Adapter with Audiophile DAC & AptX HD ($79) for my stereo receiver.
Setting these devices up was easy:
Computer Connection: I plugged the tp-link USB adapter into an open USB port on my computer – the computer recognized the new device and I didn’t have to install any software
Stereo Receiver: The Arus bluMe bluetooth receiver includes both analog and digital outputs and I already had an RCA Analog Output cable as well as an Optical Output cable so I didn’t need to buy a cable to connect the adapter to the stereo receiver. I used an analog cable to connect the receiver to an unused port on the back of the receiver – the one I used was originally designated to be used for a DVD/LD.
I paired the computer usb bluetooth adapter with the stereo system bluetooth receiver and I’m listening to the music that is stored on my computer on my stereo system.
I love this setup even more because I’m using the Zune desktop software on my computer to organize my music and podcast subscriptions. This makes it really easy to queue up the music I want to hear into playlists or on the fly.
NOTE: YES I still use my Zune HDs and I sync music, podcasts and audio books to my Zunes via the Zune desktop software – you can see one of my Zune HDs in the photo above.
The Zune desktop software works fine on Windows 10, although I do miss wireless syncing to my Zune HD. I’m not sure if it works on Windows 11. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it (for future reference).