Playing a soundbar, a Bluetooth speaker and a Mac together

A guide from Acoustic Orbit.

I build Acoustic Orbit, a Mac app that turns the speakers you already own into one synced system. The short answer: a Mac can play to a soundbar, a Bluetooth speaker and the Mac's own speakers at once, but they will not line up on their own. Each device runs on its own clock and has its own delay. The free fix is a Multi-Output Device in Audio MIDI Setup. With Drift Correction ticked, it keeps the sample counts aligned, but it does not measure the delays, so a fixed gap stays. This guide gives the free fixes first, with their limits, and says what my app does only at the end.

Why the paths differ in delay

Each speaker keeps its own time. Press play on all of them and the beat smears across the room. The first cause is the clock. Every device runs from its own crystal. Two crystals never run at exactly the same speed, so two devices slowly drift apart.

The second cause is a fixed delay on each path. The Mac's built-in speakers and a USB speaker both report a short path, yet a microphone can still find the USB speaker late. A soundbar fed through a TV adds a hop. A Bluetooth speaker has a large delay of its own.

The third cause is a delay that moves. The Bluetooth buffer wanders while the speaker plays, so the gap changes over time. A steady gap is easier to live with than a gap that moves.

Here is a capture from my own setup in October 2026. The laptop speakers were the zero point. The microphone timed the JBL Flip 7, connected by USB, at 57 ms after them. The soundbar was on a Raspberry Pi node over Ethernet. For that node the app reported a path latency of 161 ms, which includes the margin the node waits for. The capture has no microphone arrival for that node. No path in it was Bluetooth. The free macOS tool measures none of these differences.

The free fix built into macOS

Audio MIDI Setup can join several outputs into one device. You find it in the Utilities folder inside Applications. The steps:

• Connect the Bluetooth speaker first, so it shows in the list.
• Open Audio MIDI Setup and click the plus button at the bottom left.
• Choose the option that creates a Multi-Output Device.
• Tick the soundbar, the Bluetooth speaker and the Mac's built-in speakers.
• Set Primary Device to a wired or built-in output, the device the others follow. Avoid the Bluetooth speaker here.
• Tick Drift Correction for every other device.
• Open System Settings, go to Sound, and choose the new device as the output.

Where the free fix stops

It fixes the slow drift. Drift Correction resamples each device to the Primary Device, so the sample counts stay aligned.

It does not fix the gaps. It does not measure when sound arrives, so a fixed delay difference between two paths stays as an echo. A soundbar through a TV is one example. A Bluetooth speaker is another: it can join, but its delay is large and it wanders, and nothing corrects that. The same limits apply to an Aggregate Device.

Two smaller limits. A Multi-Output Device has no volume control of its own, so set each speaker's level separately. It also has no setting to delay one speaker.

Settings and placement that help

Each of these helps in a different way. Some shrink the gap. A delay setting can close a fixed gap, but it cannot follow one that moves.

• Cut hops. If the soundbar has its own HDMI input, connect the Mac to the soundbar instead of through the TV. macOS lists an HDMI output as a normal device, so the soundbar can be ticked in the Multi-Output Device. The catch is that the Mac then has to reach the soundbar directly.
• Use the delay setting. Many TVs and soundbars have an audio delay or lip-sync control. It delays that one device by a fixed amount. Use it on the speaker that is early. It cannot speed up a late one, and a fixed amount cannot follow a Bluetooth delay that wanders.
• Match distances. Put the speakers at similar distances from where you sit, so the sound from each takes a similar time to reach you. Placement cannot remove a delay that comes from the electronics.
• Use a cable where you can. A cable removes the radio link, so there is one less thing to wander. Keep Bluetooth for the speaker a cable cannot reach.

What Acoustic Orbit does about it

Every speaker you own, playing as one. The soundbar, the Bluetooth speaker, the laptop, the phone in the drawer. One microphone, one clock: wired and Wi-Fi to about a millisecond, Bluetooth compensated and graded for video.

Wired, USB and Bluetooth speakers; a Raspberry Pi for HDMI; an Android phone as a speaker. Ask once and a microphone times the room. No receiver. No new speakers. They don’t even have to match. Two devices are free for as long as you like.

Bluetooth is compensated and graded for video, not held to a millisecond. It needs an Apple silicon Mac on macOS 15 or later, with a microphone (built in on laptops and iMacs; a USB one on a Mac mini or Studio). No iPhone or HomePod yet.

Acoustic Orbit: what it does, the price (two devices free).