Wait a minute you said speakers and devices, so does that mean both your streaming device (phone, tablet, computer) and bluetooth speaker have to be version 5.0 or higher to support dual audio?  Yes that is correct. Bluetooth is backward compatible, but not forward compatible, so if you had a speaker that was version 5.0 (or higher), but your phone had bluetooth with a prior version, than dual audio would not be capable with your system.  You would need to upgrade your phone or see if the manufacturer had a software update to make it bluetooth 5.0 or higher. 

For more information on dual audio click or tap the link below.  This shows an example for setting up dual audio on Samsung speakers and phones.  The important note is if you scroll down toward the bottom you will see samsung makes it clear you must have certain bluetooth speakers and devices that are version 5.0 or higher or it will not work. 

That is one way of looking at it, but is there another way to play to multiple bluetooth speakers. Yes, but this would require purchasing new speakers.  Samsung and Sony (along with others) provide bluetooth speakers that can connect to two phones (or portable devices) and then play to multiple speakers.  These are generally sound towers or party speakers etc... If you do this you need to purchase multiple sound towers (or compatible speakers usually of the same model).  These multiple speakers are connected to each other through bluetooth allowing multiple speakers to be heard by bluetooth from your device.  But you are still limited to the bluetooth range and how well bluetooth will operate and transmit.  

This starts to get into the discussion of what is the better way to transmit audio to a wireless speaker.  I generally find if you want to transmit to multiple speakers, from multiple devices Bluetooth is not your best option but finding speakers that offer these features via Wifi is the better bet.  Two companies I have found that offer these features with Wifi is Sonos and Sony.  (no they are not the same company...I've had people ask me that).  Before we get into that check out below more information on Samsung sound towers.  By the way we happen to keep in stock Samsung sound towers.  Check it out here.

So can I operate these wireless speakers as rear speakers for my surround?  Yes there are many companies that make wireless speakers to be used as surround sound speakers.  However the reliability and quality will be greatly affected by how this happens.  For example do the speakers use bluetooth or WiFi to obtain audio as a surround sound speaker? We had a pair of Yamaha wireless speakers, which can be used as a stand alone bluetooth speaker or a pair of surround sound speakers.  Simply put these speakers were awful in surround sound reliability and did not stay connected as surround sound speakers. This was primarily due to the bluetooth connection causing problems with these surround speakers. 

Initially, these speakers would connect and be paired as surround sound speakers, and then on their own, whenever they decided they would disconnect and no surround sound speakers would be in the system. This is where Sonos and Sony enter the picture.  These two companies when using speakers as surround sound (and other ways) use WiFi to transmit audio to the speakers.  This is a much more reliable system as long as your WiFi coverage is good throughout your house.  (That's another story for another blog). So with my experience in this "Wireless speaker" field, wireless speakers using WiFi technology are much more reliable than bluetooth technology.  Especially when clients want more than one speaker, and want to connect multiple devices to their speakers. 

I hope you see where we are going with this.  Depending on how the company designed their wireless speaker will greatly affect the reliability of that speaker and your system.  Since Sony engineered their wireless speakers to use WiFi the reliability greatly increases.  Remember those unreliable Yamaha speakers...as of the writing of this blog we have not seen these types of problems with Sony (or Sonos...well get to them).   One thing to note with these wireless speakers, we are talking only about the wireless audio, not power.  This means these wireless rear speakers still need to plug into power.

Regarding the power, Sony even has a wireless rear audio model that has a built in battery.  This we have not tested to see how well the battery performs, however it would truly make that speaker wireless in all regards.  When the battery dies, then you charge it again.  Though I'm not sure this would be my preferred option.  The point is if a client is looking for a solid wireless rear speaker option, I would refer them to Sony or Sonos because of how they engineered their speakers. You can see one option for Sony wireless rear speakers below. 

Okay so we are at Sonos and their wireless speakers.  When Sonos speakers are used as surround sound they are using WiFi to transmit the audio.  Some of their new line of speakers are bluetooth, such as the Era100, Era300, and Move 2.  Sonos allows devices to connect to these via bluetooth or WiFi, but these are not capable of to be used as surround sound speakers when in bluetooth mode. Also when these speakers (which are connected with bluetooth to your device), transmit to additional Sonos speakers they do this with WiFi instead of bluetooth.  This is because WiFi is much more reliable with audio transmission especially with surround speakers and multiple speakers.  

When installed correctly, Sonos is very reliable with audio especially when it is being used in the WiFi mode for audio.  An advantage Sonos provides is the ability to connect to multiple speakers throughout your house (inside and out) and have great reliability because they are using WiFi for audio transmission and not bluetooth.  Sonos allows the client to have excellent theater systems, and also audio throughout your house in a reliable way.  We have installed many Sonos systems with very few callbacks and problems.