Listening to music a couple of nights ago (streamed from Spotify on my MacBook, though I’m not sure how relevant that is), I found that my Bose SoundLink Mini II speakers kept turning off after 5 minutes (running on battery power, connected with a cable). Spotify kept playing but the sound stopped until I turned the speakers off/on again.

I hadn’t seen this issue before – and I was using the same 3.5mm AUX cable setup that I often use with our small TV (to improve its sound quality), so I hit the interwebs to see what I could find…

Some hunting around suggests that the issue may have been the low volume level on my MacBook (I was in the room directly under my youngest son’s bedroom, after bedtime).

“The Speaker does have a power-save mode, but it will generally only enter this when no audio is detected. The most likely explanation here is that the speaker is getting a very weak signal […] and boosting it enormously with its internal amp.

[…]
If you are using a headphone jack or similar […], try increasing the […] output level while turning the speaker’s volume down. This should provide a stronger signal on the AUX port which would prevent the speaker from sleeping automatically.”

Sure enough, increasing the volume on the MacBook to around level 4-5 and decreasing the volume on the speakers seems to stop the power-down. Indeed, to make sure this was the case, I turned the MacBook’s volume back down to 1 and waited for the music to cut out… then, when it did, I just increased the volume to around level 4-5 again and the speakers came alive!

On a related note… I stumbled across these Spotify tips and tricks that might be useful…