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Bluetooth, wifi, send-to-fm, repurposing old speakers and radios

ska invita said:
ive seen a lot of old radios today :D
has reminded me that west dulwich has an old radio museum - suddenly seems very appealing
i will go when covid allows
need to work out what the most recent year is where you could get a radio which was in a great wooden box and had big cones - at some point i think the later 60s it all switches to little transistor radios
img_1293.jpg
londonist.com

Best Museum In A Shed Ever? London's British Vintage Wireless And Television Museum

For lovers of old school tech.
londonist.com londonist.com
Click to expand...
hasn't changed much since 1990 :D
 
It begins...

ive just bought this for £50:
(money goes to a homeless charity too which makes it all feel a bit less pointless!)
s-l1600 (2).jpg
s-l1600.jpg


after much toing and froing ive decided to go down the "stick new bits in it" route. almost bought a 70s grundig model which was seen as one of the best to keep using the existing radio and turntable on, but it was a bit ugly and frankly it would still have sounded a bit crap.

my plan is to put a Denon RCDM38DAB in it, which has an amp with lots of output options, a cd player, FM and DAB+, and I'll add bluetooth to it too.
den-rcdm41dabbkeka.jpg

71H6wnScg8L._AC_SL1200_.jpg

Theyre about £100 second hand, often including speakers. Cheap now because there are about 3 newer models, but the newer ones have worse options around the back IMO, so its a good deal for me.
That Denon series + speakers is a regular 5 star WhatHiFi pick, so hopefully its as good as the say.
www.whathifi.com

Home review

It's been around for a while, but it's still an absolute cracker
www.whathifi.com www.whathifi.com

im going to stick new speakers along the bottom, also attach a little tv bassbin i got given, and thinking of adding a tv soundbar to sit on the top, just to add to the range.

if theres room to leave the existing mono speaker in i will, otherwise that'll have to go

also going to reupholster the materiel along the bottom to something...funkier probably..

Theres no turntable in there at the moment, which I might replace with something one day, but Im not too fussed about that - I dont really have many albums on vinyl, mainly 7s and 12s

its going to take a while to get to the next step - even picking it up is going to be a mission, but having fun already


--------

this was another contender, going for £20 in coventry right now
www.ebay.co.uk

Ferguson Radiogram | eBay

Because of the size, this is for collection only. Condition is "Used".
www.ebay.co.uk
 
Last edited:
ska invita that Denon unit looks nice. I had a very early version of it which had the separates look for my first hifi:

Similar to this:

DENON-D-99-SEPARATE-COMPONENT-STEREO-SYSTEM-With-REMOTE-Superb.jpg


It served me well for years.
 
Cool thread! What beautiful radios.

It looks like you've decided on an amp, but just to add my 2 cents: I purchased a Fosi Audio mini amp with bluetooth a couple of months ago and I'm loving it so far. It's a great sound for something so small. A mini amp like that might make for a simpler build inside the cabinet and would mean you wouldn't need to get a separate bluetooth device.

I've got mine connected to a Raspberry Pi running Volumio, which is a good option if you have a large digital music collection stored on something other than a phone/device with bluetooth. With a similar setup you'd basically be able to access Volumio on any device and play anything from your (digital) collection, as well as stream whatever you like on Bluetooth.
 
retribution said:
Cool thread! What beautiful radios.

It looks like you've decided on an amp, but just to add my 2 cents: I purchased a Fosi Audio mini amp with bluetooth a couple of months ago and I'm loving it so far. It's a great sound for something so small. A mini amp like that might make for a simpler build inside the cabinet and would mean you wouldn't need to get a separate bluetooth device.

I've got mine connected to a Raspberry Pi running Volumio, which is a good option if you have a large digital music collection stored on something other than a phone/device with bluetooth. With a similar setup you'd basically be able to access Volumio on any device and play anything from your (digital) collection, as well as stream whatever you like on Bluetooth.
Click to expand...
yeah im going with this Denon as Ive got space for it and its got more input output options, such as a subwoofer mono out, 3 ins, DAB/FM and Ive got loads of CDs I never play so this might revive those.

But that looks a smart mini amp for sure> re the thread it wold work particularly good in an old radio-revive where there isn't any room - whereas phonograms have tonnes of space

One thing I don't understand with Volumio is...what is it!
Is it like a mini server with your MP3s on it? Is it even for your mp3s or...what!
I've tried reading it but i don't understand ;P
 
from those australian ebay links...
whats great about something like this

s-l1600.jpg


is its an nice way to disguise an 18" cone in your home!
Theyre just furniture-like speaker cabs really

s-l1600.jpg
 
Last edited:
ska invita said:
One thing I don't understand with Volumio is...what is it!
Is it like a mini server with your MP3s on it? Is it even for your mp3s or...what!
I've tried reading it but i don't understand ;P
Click to expand...

Think about Volumio as a sort of winamp/foobar/whatever you use to play mp3s for a small-scale computer.

It's an app that delivers hi-fidelity audio using small-scale computers like the Raspberry Pi. I use it like you say, as sort-of a mini server with my MP3s on. I attach a big USB drive with my music collection directly to the Raspberry Pi. Alternatively you can tell Volumio to get your tracks from a drive attached to your network (a NAS drive).You can also add web radios to it (which I use a lot).

When I first started looking at it (as someone who hadn't used a Raspberry Pi or the like before) it was a bit intimidating, but turns out its pretty straightforward. I'll be happy to help if you want to investigate further!

Thank you for the Aussie radio links! Friday night sorted :p
 
things progressing here....hopefully by next week stage one will be complete

i had planned not to bother with a deck, but am reconsidering. it is more complicated fitting one, as the cabinet space is tiny and the deck might need to have a custom bit of wood cut to make it fit, plus if i buy and old cheap deck and its a bit fucked i dont have the skills to fix it. I could sell it on though i guess.

my question is, if anyone knows, if you get an old Garrard deck like this....
s-l1600.jpg



what do they look like on the underside without the casing?
can they free stand on their own?
its surprisingly hard to fine a picture of one that makes it clear
i presume they come out of their cases no problem

hear are a couple out of their cases
gerardsp25.gif

11111.png

but how happy are they just sat there - IYWIM - do they need to be suspended or can the deck rest on the ground like that
 
ska invita said:
things progressing here....hopefully by next week stage one will be complete

i had planned not to bother with a deck, but am reconsidering. it is more complicated fitting one, as the cabinet space is tiny and the deck might need to have a custom bit of wood cut to make it fit, plus if i buy and old cheap deck and its a bit fucked i dont have the skills to fix it. I could sell it on though i guess.

my question is, if anyone knows, if you get an old Garrard deck like this....
s-l1600.jpg



what do they look like on the underside without the casing?
can they free stand on their own?
its surprisingly hard to fine a picture of one that makes it clear
i presume they come out of their cases no problem

hear are a couple out of their cases
gerardsp25.gif

View attachment 258215

but how happy are they just sat there - IYWIM - do they need to be suspended or can the deck rest on the ground like that
Click to expand...
Having watched some refurb videos I think these decks can stand on coiled spring legs, designed to take a bit of vibration and stop the deck from jumping, but in general the guts are just hanging down below the deck
 
Nivag said:
It's a shame Google discontinued their audio Chromecast, that would have made it easy to connect to a small amp and speaker setup.

If you did gut the insides you could put a Google Nest speaker or Alexia equivalent and then have it as a smart cabinet.
Click to expand...

I have 2 of these lying around somewhere that I'm sure could be posted out for a donation to the server fund....
 
ska invita said:
It begins...

ive just bought this for £50:
(money goes to a homeless charity too which makes it all feel a bit less pointless!)
View attachment 255651
s-l1600.jpg


after much toing and froing ive decided to go down the "stick new bits in it" route. almost bought a 70s grundig model which was seen as one of the best to keep using the existing radio and turntable on, but it was a bit ugly and frankly it would still have sounded a bit crap.

my plan is to put a Denon RCDM38DAB in it, which has an amp with lots of output options, a cd player, FM and DAB+, and I'll add bluetooth to it too.
den-rcdm41dabbkeka.jpg

71H6wnScg8L._AC_SL1200_.jpg

Theyre about £100 second hand, often including speakers. Cheap now because there are about 3 newer models, but the newer ones have worse options around the back IMO, so its a good deal for me.
That Denon series + speakers is a regular 5 star WhatHiFi pick, so hopefully its as good as the say.
www.whathifi.com

Home review

It's been around for a while, but it's still an absolute cracker
www.whathifi.com www.whathifi.com

im going to stick new speakers along the bottom, also attach a little tv bassbin i got given, and thinking of adding a tv soundbar to sit on the top, just to add to the range.

if theres room to leave the existing mono speaker in i will, otherwise that'll have to go

also going to reupholster the materiel along the bottom to something...funkier probably..

Theres no turntable in there at the moment, which I might replace with something one day, but Im not too fussed about that - I dont really have many albums on vinyl, mainly 7s and 12s

its going to take a while to get to the next step - even picking it up is going to be a mission, but having fun already


--------

this was another contender, going for £20 in coventry right now
www.ebay.co.uk

Ferguson Radiogram | eBay

Because of the size, this is for collection only. Condition is "Used".
www.ebay.co.uk
Click to expand...
Looks great, if you go down the raspberry pi route it'd be cool to somehow incorporate the radio knobs as inputs for something perhaps volume and some kind of back / next selector - or even better as some kind of controller for a streaming radio app.

I had a quick google to see if anyone had done similar and came across this very comprehensive write up (note PDF) https://bobrathbone.com/raspberrypi/documents/Raspberry PI Vintage Radio.pdf - quite a few other people have done similar though.

That being said I have a cupboard full of half finished projects and very few I've actually completed so keeping simple has it's merits!
 
I hope no one minds but I'm going to post all the steps of this project. It's about the only thing going on in my life.

I've now got all the audio bits ready to go into the radiogram!

IMG_20210311_180201.jpg

Got lucky on eBay with a pair of Q Acoustics 2010i s , only £35, mint condition, and nice banana plugged speaker cables too.
These are a what hifi award winner in class, and are going to only just fit in the gram, it's tight in there. Less than 8 inch gap!

Denon M38 receiver was £100 with postage, again, great condition, not a scratch, im chuffed.

There's an old realistic 5 band eq I've had for years, a £10 house clearance job. I think it's good.

Then there's a piece of shit £20 new Bush sound bar. This will have a purpose as filling a bit of audio space up top, as the Q's will be quite low to the ground. It's volume can be controlled separately (by remote) so it wont be harsh. It's really crap sounding on its own but as a little top end stereo filler it does the job. Keep it on but low.

There's also a beast of a subwoofer out of shot that Nivag so kindly gave away.. Will get to that!

It's sounding heavy, in fact with the bin its too much as the gram is going in my little living room which has neighbours the other side of it, but my theory is you can never have too many speakers, just don't turn them up!
 
Last edited:
A couple of photos


The gram!
Polished up nicely. There's a couple of small scratches which I'm waiting on a scratch pen to fix.

IMG_20210311_182418.jpg
Where the Q speakers will go

IMG_20210310_130920.jpg

That board at the bottom will need taking out, cutting some much bigger gaps in it for the sound to come out of, and also will be reupholstered. This weekend I hope!
 
Wanted to share my experience with Bluetooth receivers:

So my main use/source of sound here is my laptop - for music also movies/yotube etc.
At present I send audio via the laptop's internal Bluetooth to a Bluetooth speaker.
Works fine, but when watching visuals (via a projector) you get slight delay and the lipsync is a tiny bit out. Not enough to worry about though


Anyhow I got looking into Bluetooth codecs.
If you want to send audio from a laptop (or any other souce - a phone - whatever) to a receiver (which'll plug in to the amp) without losing audio quality the receiver needs to be APTX-HD compatible.

First one I picked up was APTX, but not APTX HD. I did side by side test of the Bluetooth signal versus line in, and especially on bassy music you really lose something with the standard APTX or even SBC (the most common) codecs.
Its pretty subtle, but when i did a headphone test you really notice the difference, particularly on the sub-bass end.
So I returned it.

This is a good breakdown of codecs, but deceptive as kbps isnt the whole picture, 320 should be enough really IME of hearing difference, but I think SBC also compresses the sound and does other shit to it. Theres loads of articles on the detail.

BT-Codecs-kbps_LK-2-1024x663.jpg


So I bought an APTX-HD compatible receiver

This is called a Golvery - though there are loads of these that are identical and rebranded with all kind of made up names
61Ym%2B9I9fvL._AC_SL1500_.jpg

key thing to look for is "bluetooth receiver APTX-HD"

So plugged it in, did the headphone test again, and it was still sounding lossier than a straight line in! Very very annoying.:mad:

Much head scratching later it turns out the source - in this case my laptop - also has to be APTX-HD compliant on its bluetooth signal. And mine isn't. In fact few are yet.

So I bought a 1mii B10 USB dongle that is APTX-HD enabled - this plugs into the laptop
s-l400.jpg

And now all is well, and yeah the bluetooth sound comes through exactly the same as going directly line-in. This isnt just snake oil, theres a real loss in audio quality - not something you cant live with - but definitely there, and readily picked up by the ear if you test side by side.

That 1mii B10 also has APTX-LL (low Latency) mode, which reduces the audio quality a smidge and gets rid of lip sync errors as mentioned at the start. Perfect for films.

I'm perfectly happy listening to music in mono with a SBC codec on my mono bluetooth speaker - good music is the most important bit! - but I think if you are wanting to use bluetooth for a hi-fi and get the best hi-fi sound quality you can its really worth going down the APTX-HD route.

I spent more money on this than I wanted to, my laptop already "does bluetooth", and the Mii Receiver I picked up first and returned I got for £15 second-hand, and thats about as much as I wanted to spend.
The above receiver and dongle were about £35 each. Is that little bit of extra audio quality worth it? In this case it is to me - i'm going in on this so, might as well go all the way. Also that lipsync thing is a bonus for me.
As its new technology I saw no second hand ones out there
 
Last edited:
ska invita said:
Wanted to share my experience with Bluetooth receivers:

So my main use/source of sound here is my laptop - for music also movies/yotube etc.
At present I send audio via the laptop's internal Bluetooth to a Bluetooth speaker.
Works fine, but when watching visuals (via a projector) you get slight delay and the lipsync is a tiny bit out. Not enough to worry about though


Anyhow I got looking into Bluetooth codecs.
If you want to send audio from a laptop (or any other souce - a phone - whatever) to a receiver (which'll plug in to the amp) without losing audio quality the receiver needs to be APTX-HD compatible.

First one I picked up was APTX, but not APTX HD. I did side by side test of the Bluetooth signal versus line in, and especially on bassy music you really lose something with the standard APTX or even SBC (the most common) codecs.
Its pretty subtle, but when i did a headphone test you really notice the difference, particularly on the sub-bass end.
So I returned it.

This is a good breakdown of codecs, but deceptive as kbps isnt the whole picture, 320 should be enough really IME of hreaing difference, but I think SBC also compresses the sound and does other shit to it. Theres loads of articles on the detail.

BT-Codecs-kbps_LK-2-1024x663.jpg


So I bought an APTX-HD compatible receiver

This is called a Golvery - though there are loads of these that are identical and rebranded with all kind of made up names
61Ym%2B9I9fvL._AC_SL1500_.jpg

key thing to look for is "bluetooth receiver APTX-HD"

So plugged it in, did the headphone test again, and it was still sounding lossier than a straight line in! Very very annoying.:mad:

Much head scratching later it turns out the source - in this case my laptop - also has to be APTX-HD compliant on its bluetooth signal. And mine isn't. In fact few are yet.

So I bought a 1mii B10 USB dongle that is APTX-HD
s-l400.jpg

And now all is well, and yeah the bluetooth sound comes through exactly the same as going directly line-in. This isnt just snake oil, theres a real loss in audio quality - not something you cant live with - but definitely there, and readily picked up by the ear if you test side by side.

That 1mii B10 also has APTX-LL (low Latency) mode, which reduces the audio quality a smidge and gets rid of lip sync errors as mentioned at the start. Perfect for films.

I'm perfectly happy listening to music in mono with a SBC codec on my mono bluetooth speaker - good music is the most important bit! - but I think if you are wanting to use bluetooth for a hi-fi and get the best hi-fi sound quality you can its really worth going down the APTX-HD route.

I spent more money on this than I wanted to, my laptop already "does bluetooth", and the Mii Receiver I picked up first and returned I got for £15 second-hand, and thats about as much as I wanted to spend.
The above receiver and dongle were about £35 each. Is that little bit of extra audio quality worth it? In this case it is to me - i'm going in on this so, might as well go all the way. Also that lipsync thing is a bonus for me.
Click to expand...

Did I understand right, you're listening in MONO?

Also is the latency reduced to the point where you could edit music, DJ etc? Or is it still there, just less so?
 
skyscraper101 said:
Did I understand right, you're listening in MONO?
Click to expand...
yeah for a while now ive got a minirig regular + bassbin
minirig.png

thats a mono set up. you can get another minirig and go 2.1 stereo, but i never have (put off by cost - and I like to carry it around, to the shower etc, 3 speakers is a lot to carry!)

i use that for all day to day radio/tv/movies/mp3 listening

perfectly happy with it - love it even

this radiogram will be taking over most of those duties! In stereo! how exciting
 
Last edited:
ska invita said:
i havent tried that. There will always be a bit of latency. APTX-LowLatency seems super fast

here are some contradictory graphics ;)
aptx-low-latency-lossless-sound.jpg

maxresdefault.jpg
Click to expand...

Interesting yeah.

I'd love to test it all out with some APTX headphones. I DJ and use Aerodrums with wired cans still and if the latency can get to a point where I don't have to have a wire trailing from my head then that would be some achievement.
 
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