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My wife complained that my MythTV DVR was too loud in the living room (I have mild hearing loss, so I believe her, but I can't hear the fans myself). So I moved the box into a utility room and replaced it with a Raspberry Pi 3B+ (the newest model at the time) running Kodi as a frontend.

Kodi compiled for the RPi can be buggy, and I wouldn't recommend this setup for a novice, but it works well enough.

Anyways, I was surprised to find that Kodi on the RPi supports CEC. I was controlling it with a wireless keyboard for a month before, one day after I switched the input and absent-mindedly pressed a button on the D-pad, the RPi responded to my input. It works really well (until Kodi crashes).

If you haven't tried it, try https://libreelec.tv/, I got a new Pi 4 to replace my old Pi 3B+ that I had been running Kodi directly (or whatever the original form of it is called) on and it came with an SD card with NOOBS on it so I decided to install LibreELEC and give it a shot since that was one of the easy-install options. The UI still isn't great and feels like no one has thought through anything, but it's way better than Kodi was (I have yet to have it pop up full screen in the middle of watching a movie to ask if it can update itself) and I haven't had nearly as many crashes (or any, in fact).

Just thought I should point out that Libreelec is Kodi. It’s just a stripped down OS with just enough on it to run Kodi so it can be fast and stable.

The key piece of equipment in this is what sits in front of the amplifier. If you could "AirPlay" or "ChromeCast" to a room of your choice, it would be significantly better than a whole house Sonos. If only the protocols was open, so you could use an off the shelf computer with enough audio out, then it would be nice.

You might like https://volumio.org/

> "ChromeCast" to a room of your choice

This is actually what "Chromecast Audio" was, sadly now discontinued

I bought a bunch before they stopped selling and have them all over my house, attached to cheap dumb speakers

They still work for now, hopefully they will for a while

I use a mix of Chromecast Audio, Chromecast video, and Google Home devices of varying vintage. The Chromecasts are the audio source to a TV and a handful of stereos in different rooms, some with really old gear. The Google things can be grouped across types.

They used to be unreliable, but before I could get annoyed enough to get Sonos gear, Google seems to have fixed the problems. I have whole house audio with relatively little at risk of being EOL'ed, and individually pretty cheap to upgrade if eventually needed.

The key thing is: Audio is not a moving target. My Klipsch speakers are over 40 years old. They are connected to a McIntosh receiver I found literally on the scrap metal pile at the town dump.

This seems to be a more resilient approach than either going 1970's analog with wiring in the walls, or buying a suite of proprietary speakers with audio distribution built in. The expensive bits have an indefinite lifespan. Sonos decided to combine that with microprocessors, NICs and software that, they discover, has to have the lifespan of a PBX or airplane control panel, not a mobile phone.

Not exactly the setup you’re talking about but I use a series of raspberry pi’s each with these great little hifiberry amps and running Volumio software to achieve whole house audio. There’s a plug-in called snapcast that allows for a server that streams audio to all the clients, keeping everything in sync. I control volumes of various rooms/zones through home assistant. Works really well for me.

a couple of years ago, i finally upgraded to a proper home theater system, with everything connected through a yamaha receiver, and i am pleasantly surprised at how well CEC works (given the many complaints i saw online).

since i'd vowed never to pay into the cable cartel, i watch most things via my apple tv. i just have to hit one button on the apple tv remote and the apple tv, receiver and tv come on automatically, and will switch to the right hdmi input (and tv input) if not already set. even if the apple tv is not being used, i can still use the volume buttons on it (easier, since it's radio and not infrared like the receiver remote). it's great!

Isn't this just switching out the Sonos ecosystem for the Apple ecosystem?

Replace AppleTV with a Kodi player and you have the same setup without the Apple ecosystem.

Yeah but then you lose all the Apple TV content and the apps...

Or just sideload Kodi and have the best of everything

Or install MrMC if you've got an appstore capable apple tv and forget about sideloading too.

If I am understanding the poster correctly, Apple TV is just the input. The speaker system itself is agnostic to what the input is. There is no ecosystem for the audio, as they're all 'dumb' speakers connected to a receiver.

Yes, except (presumably) they are using Airplay to the AppleTV for music (which locks out non-Apple products).

The Sonos equivalent is something like the Sonos beam connected to the TV via CEC. AppleTV v2 is now obsolete and I think was sold until 2015, so that's pretty much the same as the Sonos policy.

But it's a fair point - for simple setups this can work fine.

Recent Yamahas are integrated into googles ecosystem too. To me the point is that the speakers are separable from whatever client you want to use. If it’s 5 years from now and you need new support for driving the speakers, you replace that component. You don’t have to throw the speakers away to stay current.

My Onkyo has Spotify streaming support built into the amp. It's dreadful though - just about unusable because the UX and setup is so bad.

Is the Yamaha experience better?

(Also, the Yamaha MusicCast speakers are exactly the same as Sonos in that they are software dependant, and pre-2015 ones don't get the update to AirPlay2[1]. Not clear if you are talking about this or the amps though)

[1] https://au.yamaha.com/en/news_events/2019/musiccast-update.h...

musiccast speakers are reputed to work well, but they're a little pricey. currently, only the apple tv has an internet connection (via ethernet cable into a router, not wifi). i may eventually extend speaker wire into the kitchen to have two independent audio zones off the receiver.

and to confirm the other responders, i have a set of "dumb" polk speakers connected to the receiver. for audio, i'll often just stream to the receiver over bluetooth from my mbp, iphone or ipad (so yes, i'm apple-dependent, but not in the way you meant =)

airplay works well to stream video via apple tv to the receiver (and then to the tv screen).

Ack yeah this landscape is too complicated, i was speaking about the amps. I picked up a 2019 model Yamaha receiver and it works really well for AirPlay, I’ve only used it a little bit for Spotify Connect and it seemed to work fine but I just didn’t use it enough to recommend up or down. The receiver doesn’t have to be in an “on” state, if it’s off then AirPlay/Spotify will turn on components and start playing. It’s been really low-fussiness, which I was kinda surprised by.

Apple Airport Express is obsolete as well but Apple actually bothered to update them to AirPlay 2. I even tried to buy one used so I could have an AirPlay setup for the entire apartment without Sonos or other proprietary speakers.

While non-Apple products are locked-out (or, require the user to flip inputs on the receiver), at least user isn't forced to spend hundreds (or thousands) on speakers that eventually become obsolete. An Apple TV is relatively inexpensive (in the overall scheme of home theater).

Wait, what? I thought the volume buttons on the Apple TV remote were infrared... (while every other button works via Bluetooth)

Try covering the little black area at the front of the remote and you’ll see what I mean. At least in my case the volume buttons stop working.

Depends on your TV. The IR is a fallback but it can also do volume over CEC:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.howtogeek.com/263008/how-to...

yah, the volume buttons still work through the apple tv to the receiver via radio (for me).

The remote can be configured for either CEC or IR, see also: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT205225#siriappletv. The only problem happens when not playing from the AppleTV and you use the volume buttons. It’ll switch inputs on the TV/receiver to the AppleTV. So it’s no longer an universal volume control, which can confuse family members as they have to remember which input the whole setup is in.

Got pretty much the same setup. Works very well.

I have my system centered around a Denon A/V receiver, with a Sony tv (with a single HDMI cable from the Denon being the only cable to it). Everything works more or less perfect, with the ocassional glitch where the a/v and tv no longer talk to each other (I need to reboot the whole system when this happens).

- The tv and cable remote are both able to turn off the off the tv, which will tell the a/v receiver to turn off

- Pressing home on the fire stick causes the tv and a/v to turn on

- The volume on the tv, cable remote, and denon remote all trigger the volume of the denon to change. The tv and cable remotes do not trigger the denon's volume's "speed up how fast it changes" on the volume (I don't like that feature, so it works out well)

Just pressing the button you would expect to work results in the expected action. I imagine adding sound multi-channel would add complexity (it, picking a channel), but that should be orthogonal to the rest of the setup, and be the same level of complexity between wired and not.

What kinds of issues did you run into?

Edit: To be clear, I'm an a/v newbie, I doubt I'd be able to offer any advice. I was just curious what issues you saw.

I too have a Denon A/V receiver, although probably older than the rest of you (an AVR-1913 bought in 2013). I don't know if the later Denons still have this, but try finding out its IP address on your network (assuming you have put it on your LAN), and then go to that address, port 80, in your browser.

Mine has a built-in web server running there that serves up a status and settings site that lets you do most or all of the things you'd normally do via the remote and on-screen menus, which sometimes gets tedious.

The web server is very slow, so it is still tedious, but a "twiddle your thumbs" tediousness as opposed to "way to much remote button pressing to navigate" tediousness.

They also have some kind of much faster network access, probably still through the web server but without all the GUI stuff which is apparently where the slowness is. They've got an app on the iOS [1] and Google stores that uses this.

Did any of you have trouble getting ARC to work? It simply would not work for me, until I finally noticed that the Denon manual very specifically says you have to use a “Standard HDMI cable with Ethernet” or “High Speed HDMI cable with Ethernet” for HDMI. I was using a regular HDMI cable. Switching to one "with Ethernet" made ARC work.

This puzzles me. Everything I've been able to find says that for the version of ARC available in 2013 it should not require a special cable. It should work with any HDMI 1.4 cable. A "with Ethernet" cable should only be required for eARC. I don't think eARC was even in the pipeline in 2013, and didn't start showing up on receivers until 2019.

I've checked some Denon manual for later models, and they also have the explicit "with Ethernet" requirement. What is going on?

[1] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/denon-remote-app/id388608880

Arc "just worked" for me, but I was probably using such a cable by default.

As far as it's IP address, I don't have it connected to the internet.

Network remote control is through port 23 (telnet); I hacked up a little remote app with the functions I need most (input select, volume &c.).

Oh, that's neat. For those who want to play with this, Denon documents it in the manuals and downloads section of their site. Go here [1], find the page for your receiver, and look for the document with "protocol" in its name.

If they don't have it listed for your receiver, a couple I know have them are AVR-1913 (Rev 8.5.0 of the protocol document) and AVR-X4000 (Rev 10.0.3).

I tried it and it worked.

  echo -ne MVUP\\r | nc denon 23

increased the volume by one notch.

The remote app on my phone is able to get a listing showing my favorite stations in the internet radio app of the receiver, and I didn't see offhand how that is done via the telnet interface, so I watched via tcpdump while the app did it, after some difficulty [2].

It turns out that the remote app for my AVR-1913 is not using the telnet interface. It's doing HTTP POST to the receiver's web server. All the ones I saw were to /goform/AppCommand.xml. What it posts is some XML with one or more commands. For example, it posts this periodically to get information:

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
  <tx>
   <cmd id="1">GetAllZonePowerStatus</cmd>
   <cmd id="1">GetVolumeLevel</cmd>
   <cmd id="1">GetMuteStatus</cmd>
   <cmd id="1">GetSourceStatus</cmd>
  </tx>

The response is XML with the root element being <rx>, then one or more <cmd> elements. The number of <cmd> elements in the response seems to be the same as the number in the request, and they contain the response for the corresponding command.

Here's what is coming back for the <tx> shown above (formatted a bit nicer):

  <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?>
  <rx>
   <cmd>
    <zone1>ON</zone1>
    <zone2>OFF</zone2>
   </cmd>
   <cmd>
    <volume>-40.0</volume>
    <disptype>RELATIVE</disptype>
    <dispvalue>-40.0dB</dispvalue>
   </cmd>
  <cmd>
   <mute>off</mute>
  </cmd>
  <cmd>
   <source>SAT/CBL</source>
  </cmd>
  </rx>

I've only searched briefly, but so far not found any documentation for this.

[1] https://usa.denon.com/us/downloads/manuals-and-downloads

[2] I set my switch [3] to mirror the port the receiver is on to my Mac, but was not seeing anything with tcpdump on the Mac. Took me an embarrassingly long time to remember that if you don't explicitly specify the interface to monitor, it monitors them all but not in promiscuous mode, so you only see traffic to/from yourself.

[3] TP-Link SG-108E. I highly recommend this or the SG-105E or others in the family. They are unmanaged switches, but they do support port mirroring, some VLAN features, and some QOS features that you normally have to go to an expensive managed switch for. My 108E (8 port) was only $30. The only thing I don't like about it is that the status lights for the ports are in the back, above the connectors, rather than on the front.

ARC (and CEC) is famously temperamental. Even if you have used the correct HDMI port on your TV and receiver, and enabled the functionality both places (keeping in mind that different brands use different terms for these technologies), it may still not work.

I use it between my LG OLED and Denon AVX4300, and it is still a wonder to me why it takes 10-15 seconds upon start-up for sound to make it from TV to receiver.

I don’t have really any remotes at all for this setup.

The amp I bought [1] has a volume dial for each channel, one speaker is wired per channel.

I walked around the house one day to normalize the perceived volumes from each speaker. I’ve never touched the volume dial since. I don’t see the point of wiring volume controls in the walls of each room. I can control the AirPlay source volume on my phone.

The A/V receiver in my living room is a 2-zone system with a Zone 2 Preout. So there’s a 25’ RCA cable ($10 - do not waste money on fancy cables) going from the receiver to the amp.

The amp has two “main” inputs which go to all channels, and then each channel can also take its own dedicated RCA input — but I don’t currently use them. Since all the speakers are on the same floor, there’s no point in driving different sources to different speakers at this point.

If my Receiver had pre-outs for each channel of Zone 1 then in theory I could drive two of the living room ceiling speakers as rear/surrounds when watching movies by just wiring up the RCA jacks.

When I AirPlay from any phone in the house to the receiver it just defaults to playing on Zone-2. There’s an app which lets me change the zone that a source plays on, but I never use it.

In theory I could play a movie on the “house” speakers but then it wouldn’t be 7.1 surround; my receiver anyway can’t do 7.1 on the Zone 1 speakers while also doing a basic Stereo downmix over Zone 2. But I have never missed this.

Basically the use case for the ceiling speakers is listening to music during breakfast or dinner. The kids love choosing songs and having little dance parties morning and afternoon. Anyone can start whatever song they want from their phone. Of course sometimes that results in the children trying to override each other, but usually all in good fun.

IMO it’s definitely worth the ~$600 for dumb speakers, dumb amp, and dumb wiring to have absolutely future proof ceiling speakers throughout the house. The same exact system could easily be pumping tunes 30 years from now.

The AirPlay receiver that drives the amp doesn’t count toward the cost because it’s the same home theater receiver you’re going to buy anyway. It’s also the only piece of the puzzle that runs software and hardware (WiFi) that will become obsolete in a relatively short time frame. It does support CEC and it is also the source selector but honestly the only source right now is the AppleTV. All that is really kind of “besides the point” you could say when it comes to the house speakers. Anything could sit in front of it, as long as you can get an analog stereo output from it. It could be a Raspberry Pi even. The only requirement is being able to AirPlay/Chromecast to whatever is providing the RCA source.

It can be a huge mood boost and a great way to start the day before rushing the kids off to school to blast some tunes while cooking pancakes, and with eight 8” woofers the sound is a lot more immersive than a single “smart” speaker could muster.

[1] - Pyle 8-Channel Home Theater... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002UL0XIQ

Even combined with a Logitech harmony remote the Denon user experience remains terrible, the need to turn on devices in a specific order otherwise the a/v gets confused is serious disregard of ux. I wonder if they ever tested their products outside the lab in the wild.

The Raspberry Pis support CEC (other SBC probably do too).

Does it support HDMI input though?