BCD325P2/BCD996P2: External speakers

[SMITHIT2708]

I’m wanting to run a speaker in my living room from the BCD996P2 in the bedroom. I want to have 2 speakers one in the bedroom and one in the living room, but may add additional speakers in the future. I have read that the headphone and ext speaker jack are supposed to be stereo. But when I plug stereo earphones into the headphone or REC jack I get stereo, mono when I plug into the ext.
jack. My question is how would I go about doing this safely without harm to scanner. Like can I run a stereo male to mono female adapter in REC jack to an amplifier for other rooms and leave internal speaker as bedroom speaker or ????

I have read you don’t want to run a mono jack in a stereo plug so that’s where I’m kind of hesitant I guess. Don’t want to blow the smoke seal and make a 400$ brick.

Also which amplifier would you all recommend. Looking for something that will plug into wall but also have a way to set speaker volume independently.

I apologize if what I’m asking is as clear as mud. I kinda know what I want to do, just not how to accomplish it. Thanks in advance

 

[sonm10]

There are a couple options - You can can use headphone extension cables and a y-adapter from the external speaker jack. This is the option I personally deploy. The other option is bluetooth transceivers. You can find them on Amazon.

 

[SMITHIT2708]

Do they need to be mono extension cables though? Since I’m only getting left out of the external speaker jack.

Don’t really want Bluetooth.

 

[sonm10]

I guess I always have used stereo cables

 

[RandyKuff]

See highlighted in yellow...

 

[n1chu]

Wouldn’t the stereo plug require 3 wires? (A ground and two channels?) But whichever it is, using the same amount of wires as a Uniden external speaker will work. Uniden makes both an amplified speaker (which requires a 12 volt DC power supply) and a non amplified version.

 

[RandyKuff]

This is what I use from the radio to a speaker... With only the "Left Channel" connected... And ground...
It works great...
I went this way because it's easy to try different speakers to get the best sound output...

 

[SMITHIT2708]

I appreciate the help and info but can the scanner run 2 car speakers that's what I've already got. Just wondering how to go about it. Thanks

 

[RandyKuff]

If your car speakers are 8 ohm... And you run them in parallel... Then to the audio amp in the radio it looks like 4 ohms... (also what a Y connector will do)...
The radio is rated for 8 ohm spearkers.... Will it hurt the amp... Probably not... As long as you don't crank it up to full volume...

 

[SMITHIT2708]

Sorry for the late reply, I had a couple events pop up that wasn’t planned. I have a stereo solder jack and two 4 ohm speakers I was going to wire in series to make 8 ohm. They are rated at 100-120w just didn’t know if the scanner would have enough juice to run them like that, where I could comfortably hear them without driving the scanner so hard. That’s why I was asking about some sort of amp. That way if I smoke the amp it’s not a huge loss as I’ll still have the internal speaker. Most uniden external speakers I see are rated for 7-20w is why I’m so hesitant

 

[JoeBearcat]

The scanners use stereo jacks with mono audio (same audio on left and right leads).

The speaker referenced above only uses the left lead.

 

[n1chu]

Curious why stereo jacks when both channels are supplied with the same mono input… or is there reason to expect two separate mono channels to be fed through the stereo jack at the same time in the future? Possibly a need for a second speaker? …And what would that need be?

 

[JoeBearcat]

Frankly, I don't know. That decision was made long before I was in charge.

 

[n1chu]

To be blunt, I didn’t ask about WHO made the decision, but WHY. If you aren’t going to inquire of those that DO know, I can only surmise you do not consider the question worthy of bothering with …for any number of reasons. And that’s fine. I expect there are more important issues you need to deal with than why stereo instead of mono. But the question is a curious one none-the-less. It goes to the history of the scanning hobby and the companies that produce the receivers.

 

[Ubbe]

They are rated at 100-120w just didn’t know if the scanner would have enough juice to run them like that, where I could comfortably hear them without driving the scanner so hard.

It's probably more or less the same hardware circuits used as in BCT15x and then speaker amplifier are protected, as I guess all modern scanners are, against overload and over temperature. But if your speakers are rated 100W then they usually have very low efficiency and will give a low volume level. Connect the speakers in parallell to get 2 ohm. I use 2 ohm speakers with scanners without any problem. You will hear distorsion if you try and crank up the volume too much. The BCT15x uses a TDA1905 speaker amp and the data sheet says:

THERMAL SHUT-DOWN
The presence of a thermal limiting circuit offers the following advantages:
1) An overload on the output (even if it is permanent), or an above limit ambient temperature can be easily
tolerated since the Tj cannot be higher than 150°C.
2) The heatsink can have a smaller factor of safety compared with that of a conventional circuit. There is
no possibility of device damage due to high junction temperature.
If for any reason, the junction temperature increases up to 150°C, the thermal shut-down simply reduces
the power dissipation and the current consumption

/Ubbe

 

[JoeBearcat]

To be blunt, I didn’t ask about WHO made the decision, but WHY. If you aren’t going to inquire of those that DO know, I can only surmise you do not consider the question worthy of bothering with …for any number of reasons. And that’s fine. I expect there are more important issues you need to deal with than why stereo instead of mono. But the question is a curious one none-the-less. It goes to the history of the scanning hobby and the companies that produce the receivers.

I did not address WHO either. All I know is that it was a decision made over a decade ago and the person who made it likely is not around anymore. As for the importance, I will ask why it is so important to know why it was made that way? It is that way and changing isn't really warranted without a good reason, so what is the reason to change it?

I can see a reason to not change if you are using a stereo headset. Mono or stereo will still have audio 'everywhere'. If you change it to mono only, then a stereo headset will only have audio on one side.