Our Mac mini, now almost 2 years old, is what we use to stream and listen to our library of classical and jazz music.
Our Harman Kardon Soundsticks are broken and sounding poorly. Replacements are ~$300.
Instead of replacing them, we own a pair of good quality passive bookshelf speakers which we are thinking to connect to the Mac mini. Our mini has 3.5mm stereo jack, USB A and C sockets.
What hardware do we need to connect our speakers to the mini?
Or…
Do we find a new pair of active speakers instead?
We are looking for guidance, product recommendations and pros and cons of each approach?
What are your bookshelf speakers currently connected to? The simplest way to do this is to get a 3.5mm to RCA cable (Y splitter) and plug the RCA into your receiver that is already connected to your speakers.
My advice would be to go on FB marketplace or similar and buy an old hifi amplifier (or receiver, if that’s your thing). It will not be an expensive purchase in comparison to any piece of Apple kit.
This is what I used, but again it depends on what type of connection
your speakers have. In my case I needed some “volume” and bought a
cheap headphone amp. $5 for the cable, $15 for the amp = $20, All Done.
Thank you @csf111. two options: screw and 4mm banana sockets. The impedance is 15 ohms. Also I Don’t know this, however I doubt Mac mini has enough wattage to drive any speakers without amplification. Was your experience different with the Bose?
That was my issue, I got sound, but it wasn’t loud enough
so I got the headphone amp. I travelled with headphones
so it served dual purpose. The one I have is so old I can’t
read the name of it, but it was something like this
There was a product called a Griffin Twenty a while back that did exactly what you need. I considered this for my bookshelf speakers at the time. It is now discontinued. So you need an amp to power your speakers, and if you get one with AirPlay, your iOS and Mac devices will be able to play to it wirelessly.
I still have HK soundsticks and the subwoofer, and they are USB wired rather than the later BT version. Fed up of the cable clutter, I once asked here if there was anything you could get to make them wireless and the silence was deafening :-). Turns out to do that you essentially need some sort of computer rather than some sort of amplifier. My solution appeared when I got a new display that features a USB hub. The speakers connect there and I have just one wire from my MBP to the display.
Looking at the AudioEngine, it doesn’t have airplay although you could add that via a dongle. Sadly it all ends up costing more than today’s alternatives, e.g. a couple of homepods.
