I purchased the Home Assistant Voice preview and have been attempting to figure out an aux speaker to enhance the sound and give it some personality.
I noticed when I plug in a non-powered speaker to the Aux the sound is great. If I plug in a self-powered speaker, a speaker that has it’s own power supply, I can hear some static, baseline static when the Voice Assistant is idle.
Apart from the ground loops mentioned above, your powered speakers are expecting a line level input. However the Voice PE outputs a low power speaker drive level which expects a low impedance load. The powered speaker is a high impedance load. This causes the input to the powered speaker to be a lot larger than required. The noise floor when idle will also be higher. Try turning the voice PE volume down very low and your powered speaker volume up.
I started tinkering with it and changing volumne like you suggested. With the Bearbrick speaker, I didn’t plug in it’s USB power cord. It works. Seems it’s now just pulling power from the Voice PB. I believe it was just overpowering it like you indicated.
Hello! I am using an old big powered speaker I had laying around my house with the voice PE and the static was bothering me so I investigated and I only found your post talking about it.
Just so I am able to understand, you were able to fix this by using a non-powered speaker right? Since those ones will not cause static noise, as @tom_l explained. Now I understand why my Android phone doesn’t make static noises with the speaker, but the voice PE does.
I tried playing with the volume on the voice PE and the speaker and was only able to remove the static when both have low volume, which defeats the purpose since I want to listen to music loudly.
Basically just wanted to make sure if the only solution is using a non-powered speaker.
Hi I have a somehow related question to this topic.
I connected a stereo speaker system to the audio output. the system works fine. however connecting in to the Voice PE I only get sound on one of the speakers. depending on the connection either left or right.
Any clue? Is my audio output defect?
The aux out from PE had noise present. When input into the powered speaker the noise was amplified. Turning down the PEs volume reduced the noise to an acceptable or negligible level.
For what it’s worth, I have found that the power source matters. I had some ground humming but after trying different USB power bricks and wall sockets for the powered speaker and the Voice PE, I now have no noise.
Hi everyone, I was using MuseLuxe for years but finally abandoned it because it’s so buggy and got Voice Assistant PE.
Generally I like it but the volume is super low. I am looking for a way to make it louder without external power supply. (in some sense, opposite to OP).
So the output of the Voice PE is really enough to drive such an passive speaker in a way, that it works well as a voice assistant in a normal sized room?
I always thought it’s output level would only be “line-out” and therefore would need active speakers.
But this thread seems to suggest quite the difference.
Just want to be sure before ordering this speaker.
Edit:
And is the sound an improvement over the internal speaker?
I don’t want to listen to music on it, but I need something with a little bit better quality for the TTS part of assist.
The voice PE isn’t easy to understand with a little bit more background noise in our living room.
Doesn’t need to be on par with our Alexa Echo Dot speaker, but would be nice if I gets a little bit closer to this in terms of audio quality.
But the CB speaker that @TheHuntyBadger linked doesn’t have a external power source.
So its a passive speaker that would have to be driven by the Voice PEs audio output alone.
Also tom_i wrote:
your powered speakers are expecting a line level input. However the Voice PE outputs a low power speaker drive level which expects a low impedance load
Which is why I asked how this passive speaker setup behaves.
Never had a Gen1 echo dot.
But not sure if it was really that weak at louder volume.
Voice PE vs. Echo dot 2 is night and day when compared on a louder volume level (because you use it in a large room).
On my desk in the office, the Voice PE is absolutely fine, as it would be way too loud in this environment when I set the volume to a level where the Voice PE doesn’t sound good enough for voice playback anymore.
Ok, tested it with an 8 ohm speaker from an old compact hifi that I found in our basement yesterday.
Soldered it to an 3.5mm audio connector, to be able to use it with the Voice PE.
Works pretty good.
Max volume isn’t louder than the internal speaker, but about the same level.
So if you want to use it just for voice but with better quality, this is perfectly fine and you might be able to save yourself some trouble with external power, static noise, ground loops, …
On the other hand, if you want to listen to loud music through the Voice PE, you should most likely use an active speaker set.
But interesting, that the output gain (and / or output power) seems to be higher than a typical line-out where you wouldn’t be able to use a passive speaker at a decent volume.
