My new phone advertises Auracast Bluetooth — can my old amplifier at home connect to it?
Phone ads say Auracast can broadcast to several speakers at once, making people wonder if their old stereo can join in. The short answer: old amp hardware cannot change, but its USB port can still stream.
If you have bought a new phone or a pair of wireless earbuds lately, you have probably seen ads talking up `Auracast`—a Bluetooth feature that lets one phone broadcast audio to several pairs of headphones or new portable speakers at the same time. Anyone with an older stereo receiver or PA amp at home naturally wonders: now that my phone has the latest update, can the amplifier sitting in my TV cabinet use Auracast too?
The honest answer is no. Whatever Bluetooth chip (if any) was soldered into your amplifier the day it left the factory is fixed for life; updating the phone in your pocket cannot grow new radio receiver parts inside an old amp. And even if it could, Auracast is still Bluetooth coming off a phone—in a shop or a big house, the moment the person with that phone walks out the door, takes a phone call, or lets the battery die, the music in the room still stops.
If all you actually want is for your old amplifier to play music steadily without leaning on a phone's Bluetooth connection, you can skip the new Bluetooth buzzwords completely. Check whether the amp's USB port plays an ordinary MP3 flash drive; if it does, plug a Raywav Stick into that socket and let it connect to your home Wi-Fi to play your music subscriptions, internet radio, or songs off a home hard drive on its own. Leave the new earbud tricks to earbuds, and let your old amp use the USB port it already has.
