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

I am surprised you were told it is speaker level, because I immediately would assume that it is line level. I would try a 2 conductor cable with a shield on one of the two set ups, making sure to disconnect the other, and see how it works.

Also disconnecting one, then the other could tell you if one is producing the hum, or if they both need to be connected for the issue to exist.

Thanks.

Why not just add a dot to the rack and use a 2 foot cable? Im not making any sense of running a 100 foot wire to get alexa back to amps! You can tell one device to play another device. Problem solved.

If this is truly a speaker load output, terminate the amplifier end with a resistor.

Consider the possibility that there is a ground loop.

Finally, how clean is the DOT output? If you use a very short cable, do you have the hum?

The Dot and the Spot have line-level out. You need a mini to RCA, plus whatever length RCAs, plus an available RCA input on a receiver ("cd", "aux" etc)

From Amazon...

"Echo Spot can connect directly to speakers using a 3.5 mm stereo cable or Bluetooth to add voice control to your home stereo system in the living room or den."

I would use Cat5E and stereo baluns like these...

[Link: muxlab.com]



[Link: muxlab.com]

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.

Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't quite get the answer. I get the part about putting a separate dot at each receiver with a short 3.5 rca cable. The part I don't understand is when I am in my living room, and I say "Alexa play the Rolling Stones" how does the echo dot in the basement connected to the living room receiver hear that command? How does the Alexa dot in the living room send that command to the living room Alexa Dot in the basement. And why wouldn't the command be picked up by my other Alexa device? And yes I will keep the echo dot I have in my living room right where it is now. And yes, all my Alexa devices are connected to the same network.

Thanks for the help!

Just say Alexa play Rolling Stones in kitchen and it’ll play to whatever echo is set as kitchen from any echo device.

Just did an Origin acoustics valet amplifier with 4 dots plugged in locally, and he has half a dozen round the house. The 4 in the valet amp are named kitchen, dining room, bedroom and study. At any dot in the house he just says play bob Dylan to any of the room names and it plays, you can change volume etc fine from any dot.

You need to pair the devices that you want to work together. It's part of building the 'skills'. Before buying anything else, I would move one of the ones you have to the receiver and look into setting them up for this function.