Joe Kaplan

I've been playing with bluetooth speakers as a cheap way make spatialized sound in a popup installation (i.e. inexpensive, lightweight, easy to setup and teardown). I'm not too concerned about pristine sound quality, and so far the latency they introduce has not been an issue. 

What I've done so far has worked so well that I'm interested in scaling it.

I'm running into a couple issues with that.

The number of speakers I can connect seems to max out at 3. When I connect the 4th bluetooth speaker the third one disconnects. The 

 says "The official Bluetooth specifications say seven is the maximum number of Bluetooth devices that can be connected to your Mac at once. 

However, three to four devices is a practical limit, depending on the types of devices used."

Does anybody have any insight into what the limiting factor is here? Or how I could expand it? I thought maybe if I add additional Bluetooth USB dongles I might get more bandwidth, but that doesn't seem to change the behaviour. My macbook doesn't seem to be utilizing the additional Bluetooth interfaces.

 instead of the onboard bluetooth controller, but the command didn't seem to have any effect.

I'm curious if anybody has ever tried to do something like this, or has any insight into the technical limitations. I can imagine plugging in a USB hub with 6 usb bluetooth dongles attached and being able to connect 15-20 bluetooth speakers, and then creating an aggregate device so I can use Max to send sound to each of them independently.

It'd be fun to make this work with cheap bluetooth speakers instead of having to spend $$$$++ on a gigantic audio interface and wireless setup.

I've been playing with bluetooth speakers as a cheap way make spatialized sound in a popup installation (i.e. inexpensive, lightweight, easy to setup and teardown).  I'm not too concerned about pristine sound quality, and so far the latency they introduce has not been an issue. 


The number of speakers I can connect seems to max out at 3.  When I connect the 4th bluetooth speaker the third one disconnects.  The  Apple Support Page says "The official Bluetooth specifications say seven is the maximum number of Bluetooth devices that can be connected to your Mac at once. 
 However, three to four devices is a practical limit, depending on the types of devices used."


Does anybody have any insight into what the limiting factor is here?  Or how I could expand it?  I thought maybe if I add additional Bluetooth USB dongles I might get more bandwidth, but that doesn't seem to change the behaviour.  My macbook doesn't seem to be utilizing the additional Bluetooth interfaces.

I tried forcing OS X to use the dongle instead of the onboard bluetooth controller, but the command didn't seem to have any effect.

I'm curious if anybody has ever tried to do something like this, or has any insight into the technical limitations.  I can imagine plugging in a USB hub with 6 usb bluetooth dongles attached and being able to connect 15-20 bluetooth speakers, and then creating an aggregate device so I can use Max to send sound to each of them independently. 

I've been playing with bluetooth speakers as a cheap way make spatialized sound in a popup installation (i.e. 

Connecting 10+ bluetooth speakers to a macbook at once?