Unlike consumer applications of Bluetooth, there are sometimes more complications for commercial use beyond connecting and playing. Things like feedback, dropped connections, interference and volume drops may not be necessarily the fault of a problem with the actual device, but the circumstances unique to these commercial applications. In this article we'll be troubleshooting some of these unique applications and how to resolve them.


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Bluetooth and Wifi Connections

Bluetooth and Wifi by value of being a wireless technology run on the same 2.4 gHz spectrum. It is normally not a problem, because Wifi will stick to one spot for connection while Bluetooth bounces about on the spectrum sending information and not really settling. However, if you have a bunch of people connecting to a wifi connection at the gym/in the area, then the bandwidth Bluetooth can use is then limited, because instead of having one spot of the spectrum being taken up, potentially every device could be on that frequency could be connecting to smart watches(which uses a Bluetooth BLE connection) and Wifi. Suddenly you have a crowded highway, and you'll notice that latency goes up at best, and connections drop at a fraction of the distance advertised at worst.


In these instances, your best bet is to ask participants to use an Airplane mode on their phones, if they are able to during the lesson, along with turning off their own Bluetooth/Wifi on their devices for the moment. This will minimize the connections along the frequency spectrum and allow the Bluetooth signal to do what it needs to.


If using a computer that needs to have access to the internet while using bluetooth, it may help to clear up your connection to try an ethernet cable into the computer and keep those lines of communication separated. If no Ethernet connection is available, please consider a USB>Ethernet adapter for these scenarios.


Bluetooth Connections to your own Phone

Another consideration that may not come up often is how other devices and applications will try to interfere with your own Bluetooth usage. Bluetooth is a 1-1 connection, so if you've got another device that connects via an app to your phone like a smart watch/Fitbit, an Alexa, some glasses, or even something that just uses a Bluetooth backdoor or sends a pairing request once it senses the device is in range, it's going to try and take over the connection, dropping the current connection to the Denon Pro. While this may be something you might see while you're using your Bluetooth devices socially, it's common to not even notice them, as even something like Push notifications can duck your music level when it sends.


That's normal, but to fix this you'll have to forget some devices in your phone's Bluetooth memory, put the phone into do-not-disturb mode and try to limit any background apps/close any unused apps on your phone to see if it solves the issue.


Phone Resources Preventing a Stable Connection

Calendars, alarms, appointments, old browser tabs- You may notice that when your phone connection to a Bluetooth device is dropping, your phone is also lagging. This is normal- when we're productive, we multitask. When we multitask, we tax our devices. 


Remember, Bluetooth is a type of handshake connection, and if for some reason your device is running too slow or running out of memory, then it's not going to respond in time for whatever the player is trying to do and may disconnect in that instance. Make sure you're always clearing out any unused apps and any browser tabs that may be eating up system resources if you notice a large amount of lag when trying to play or switch between apps, or the system may time out thinking it's just not getting anything. When all else fails, simply restart your device and open only the streaming app you're using.