What is Auracast?

Bluetooth Audio’s biggest upgrade yet.

Auracast™ is a new Bluetooth broadcast technology that transforms how you can connect and share sound. Traditionally, Bluetooth only allowed one-to-one or a limited number of device pairings. Now, with Auracast, you can stream music wirelessly across multiple speakers - indoors, outdoors, or across rooms - at the same time. Built on Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) Audio, Auracast delivers better sound quality, lower latency, and extended range and battery life. Whether you’re hosting a backyard gathering or filling your home with vinyl vibes, Auracast-enabled devices make it effortless to create a whole-home or whole-yard listening experience, all from a single input. 

How does Auracast™ work?

 
Auracast works by combining two parts: transmitters and receivers. Think of the transmitter as an FM radio station and receivers as car or home radios. Auracast makes Bluetooth work the same way. A transmitter is the device that creates and sends out a broadcast, similar to a radio station. It can take an input, such as a wired connection, Bluetooth input, or even a turntable, and then broadcast out that audio. A receiver is the device that picks up a broadcast from a transmitter and plays it in perfect sync with any other receivers. Auracast transmitters and receivers are typically set up to be public or private. When they are private, it typically means they are only designed to pair with devices in their own ecosystem or brand. When they are public, it means they can connect to broadcasts or send a broadcast to other public Auracast devices that may be outside their ecosystem or brand.

Within Victrola, our Auracast-enabled products are all designed as public transmitters and private receivers. This means that the Auracast broadcast that Victrola products transmit can be picked up by non-Victrola Auracast receivers if they are public receivers, typically using an app or on-screen device. On the receiver side, Victrola products are set up as private receivers, this means that they will only be able to connect to an Auracast transmission from another Victrola product. The primary reason for this is to simplify the user experience. Because our receivers are only searching for a specific broadcast ‘code’, they can quickly and easily connect to that broadcast with a simple button or switch and without the need for an app, touchscreen, or lengthy setup process.

How Victrola is integrating Auracast™ into our products:

There are two primary use cases Victrola focused on when implementing Auracast, the first is In-Home Multi-Speaker Setups. Victrola has two new products that act as Auracast transmitters, our new Wave turntable and Tempo bookshelf speakers. In the case of the Wave, creating a public Auracast broadcast means any Auracast receiver nearby can listen to the turntable at the same time. If you use the Tempo bookshelf speakers as receivers (as shown below), this means you can create a whole home system playing simultaneously with each having their own manual volume control. With the benefits of Auracast range, this includes in different rooms, or different floors even due to the extended range of Auracast. At the same time, the Tempo’s themselves can act as a transmitter. This means that any Tempo speaker can take an input, such as Bluetooth from a smartphone or one of the wired inputs and create a similar broadcast for any nearby receivers to play the same content.

 

The second use case is Outdoor Multi-Speaker Setups, beginning with the new Victrola Zen Outdoor Speaker. After connecting a smartphone to a Zen speaker, that Zen can then become an Auracast transmitter and create a broadcast for other Zen Speakers to join. Once that broadcast is created, an unlimited number of Zen speakers can connect to the broadcast and play simultaneously. Besides the ability to pair an unlimited number of speakers, there are two big advantages of using Auracast on the Zen speakers. First, the pairing range with Auracast is over 200 feet compared to traditional Bluetooth that is usually around 33 feet, making it ideal for large outdoor spaces. Second, Auracast uses Bluetooth LE (Low Energy) when transmitting and receiving, making it more efficient for battery-powered products like Zen speakers. A key feature of the Zen is that volume control is managed entirely from the linked smartphone, rather than on the speaker itself. This is intentional, as the Zen speakers are meant to be placed farther apart outdoors, making centralized control from the smartphone more practical.

Note: Zen speakers do not have volume control because they are designed to be placed away from the user and rely on the volume control from a smartphone. Because of this, while you theoretically could pair them with other Auracast products like the Wave or Tempo, they would not treat volume the same and are designed to be used within their own family instead.