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Comment by swamp_donkey | Hacker News Reader

Is there any substitute for chrome cast audio? I love being able to play in sync audio to the group of receivers I choose throughout the property, using any amplifier. I’m not even using the digital optical input and I love them

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I think Sonos sued the heck out of Google for those, and it caused those devices to disappear for a few years. Sonos lost that case late last year though, so hopefully we'll see a resurgence?

https://www.reuters.com/legal/litigation/google-wins-repriev...

Otherwise, you can DIY it with a bunch of old devices or Raspberry Pis and https://github.com/geekuillaume/soundsync

I am fairly certain that the academic open source community had already published prior art for delay correction and volume control of speaker groups (which are obvious problems when you add multiple speakers to a system with transmission delay). IIRC there was a microsoft research blog post with a list of open source references for distributed audio from prior to 2006 for certain. (Which further invalidates the patent claims in question).

Before they locked Chromecast protocol down, it was easy to push audio from a linux pulseaudio sound server to Chromecast device(s).

The patchbay interface in soundsync looks neat. Also patch bay interfaces: BespokeSynth, HoustonPatchBay, RaySession, patchance, org.pipewire.helvum (GTK), easyeffects (GTK4 + GStreamer), https://github.com/BespokeSynth/BespokeSynth/issues/1614#iss...

pipewire handles audio and video streams. soundsync with video would be cool too.

FWIU Matter Casting is an open protocol which device vendors could implement.

> I think Sonos sued the heck out of Google for those, and it caused those devices to disappear for a few years.

Oh so that was why they disappeared? Seriously, it's time to rework the entire patents system. You should only get a patent granted when you attach a reasonable (!) price tag and agree to non-discriminatory licensing.

I think that's the reason, but I can't be sure. It probably didn't help, that's for sure...

Had I known Sonos would be like that, I wouldn't have bought their products. Their latest app also totally broke the speakers. Stay far far away from Sonos.

The awkwardly-named "WiiM Pro" is a device that claims to support Chromecast Audio (and a bunch of other stuff like Airplay and Spotify Connect). It's been getting good reviews but I haven't pulled the trigger yet.

Check out wiim for hardware.

And also https://roon.app/en/ for music streaming software that can group up devices from a bunch of different manufacturers.

A lot of networked receivers/audio systems have C4A (Cast 4 Audio) built-in, and they should support grouping. I have a Sony receiver-esque audio system and it plays in sync with my Google Home speakers very nicely.

Snapcast https://github.com/badaix/snapcast

You can buy any of the google-enabled speakers, or you can just get some raspberry pi and run your own solution.

The point was that you could have an optical out connection to a Hi-Fi system and things would just work from Spotify, etc... The google speakers don't even have an aux out. A Rasperry Pi isn't at all equivalent as it's not plug and play.

If you're posting on hacker news surely you would be able to install raspotify on a debian raspberry pi or just load the moode audio image.

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