Stereo Bluetooth Part 2

Continue from part 1

Installing the USB dongles was simple. They are smaller than your average thumb drive, so they are also unobtrusive. Installing the dongle and the drivers from the CD took less than 10 minutes. Once installed, the driver software installs a My Bluetooth Places icon to your desktop and a small icon in your system tray. Establishing connections to a Bluetooth device called pairing is as easy as running a setup wizard and typing the four-digit PIN for the device. (Different software drivers and Bluetooth devices work differently, of course, but in our experience most Bluetooth devices are similarly easy to install and configure.)

Up to seven “slave” devices can be simultaneously paired with a single “master,” with the master in this case being the PC. After a device is initially paired, establishing a connection between the master and slave is simple. In the case of Anycom’s software, for example, you can simply right-click the system tray icon to pull down a menu of devices and select the one to which you wish to connect.

Unfortunately, not every Bluetooth-enabled device supports all Bluetooth profiles, and it’s important to verify the profiles supported by your Bluetooth gadgets before purchasing an accessory. For example, Motorola RAZR V3m test phone supports HSP (Headset Profile), HFP, DUN (Dial-Up Networking Profile), OPP (Object Push Profile), and FTP (File Transfer Protocol), but does not support A2DP.

This was disappointing, given that one of the RAZR’s selling points is that it can double as a music player. We obstinately tried to make it connect to our Bluetooth speakers anyway, to which the RAZR responded with a “Device Not Supported” error message or something similar.

Lesson learned
Before buying Bluetooth A2DP devices, make sure any Bluetooth devices you own or plan to buy are A2DP-compatible. Check the owner’s manual or manufacturer’s Web site for technical specifications. The PhoneScoop website is a good resource for finding specific technical information, including which specific Bluetooth profiles are supported, for various cellular phones

Get Ready To Rock
The real magic of Bluetooth and A2DP happens when you have the appropriate A2DP audio accessories: some A2DP speakers and an A2DP headset. You can have some fun with Anycom’s BIWAS-20 Bluetooth speakers and the Anycom BSH-100 headset.

The BIWAS-20 speakers are a simple 2.1, 20W rms (root mean square) portable speaker system, suitable for a bookshelf or mounting on the wall. The BIWAS-20 weighs less than 10 pounds and makes the perfect shelf or wallmounted speaker system. It wouldn’t be too unwieldy if you wanted to take it to a sales presentation, although you might want something more portable for longdistance travel.

The BIWAS-20 is easy to transport and set up anywhere without the hassle of lugging lots of equipment or having to plug in anything more than a single power cable. All you need is for the speakers to be within range (roughly 30m [indoors] or 80m [outdoors]) of your laptop, PC, or portable music player, and you can play any audio wherever you want. Actual range may vary depending on conditions.

With a portable external speaker system at your disposal, all you need for the road is a nice set of headphones. Anycom also supplied us with their BSH-100 headphones. The BSH-100 combines a Bluetooth headset suitable for use with a cellular phone and stereo headphones. It includes an unobtrusive, detachable microphone for cell phone connections, so two devices virtually ubiquitous amongst office workers and cubicle jockeys.

Pairing the headset with the PC and cell phone let you listen to tunes and still pick up calls on the cell phone. We could even walk all the way to the printer and grab a printout without losing the connection to our tunes or our cell phone, as long as we stayed within roughly 10m of our PC.

Using the BSH-100 headset with our PC and cell phone simultaneously was probably the defining moment for us with Bluetooth and A2DP. When a call rang our cell phone, the headset automatically paused the music and switched to the call we answered. The music resumed when we hung up the all at which point A2DP went officially from “neat-maybe-use-it” technology to “very-cool-I-want-this” technology.