On September 11, 2018 at 14:09, BRIAN PHOENIX said...
I have an Alexa Dot, and Alexa Spot. The problem I am having is exactly the same on both devices which is a slight hum. I am running about 100 feet of speaker wire out of the 3.5 jack on each device to send the audio to two separate receivers. I am getting a very slight hum from both devices, but enough of a hum to drive me crazy. Any hum is too much hum. I am told the audio outputs on both Alexa devices are speaker level which is the reason I am using un-shielded speaker wire to send the audio to each receiver. Is the hum I am hearing caused by the fact I am not using shielded wire, and if using shielded wire is not the solution to the problem any ideas what the solution might be? I even used a ground loop eliminator on the Alexa Dot, and it did not eliminate the hum.
Thanks;
Brian Phoenix
Shielded cable is used to minimize noise pickup- speaker wire can't do that and an Echo Dot couldn't possibly have a good enough amplifier to send speaker-level signal that far without loss- I doubt the Spot is any different.
You have these in different rooms because you want to use voice commands- I get that but if you put another at each receiver, you won't have to deal with this noise because you can use the voice commands to tell the local Dot or Spot to cause teh one near the receiver to send the music to the receiver, as long as they're all connected to the same network. Yes, it's more expensive, but it would save the cost of the speaker wire & plugs, your time installing the wires and you wouldn't have noise.
FWIW, if you want to connect these with cable, try Belden 8451- it's thin, shielded and it works- I used it for a Dot cat a house with a lot of dimmers & added electrical wiring and there's no audible noise in the system.
