Disclosed are techniques to automatically determine an audio path for a peripheral speaker. A wireless device uses particular wireless-communication methods or techniques, referred to as an audio path, to wirelessly communicate audio data to a speaker system for playback by a peripheral speaker. The device selects an audio path and attempts to send audio data representing known audio to the speaker system using the selected audio path. If a microphone of the device receives the known audio, then the device determines that the selected audio path is supported by the speaker system and thus can be used to communicate audio data to the peripheral speaker. However, if the microphone does not receive the known audio, then the device repeats the selecting of an audio path and attempting to send audio data to the speaker system using the newly selected audio path.