Hacker News Reader

Comment by stetrain | Hacker News Reader

Well one of those options lets me click a button on the phone in my pocket and play music across multiple rooms without running any wires between rooms. And similarly supports surround-sound audio without running wires around or inside walls.

I appreciate the value in a basic stereo system but there are some major differences in functionality to the end user.

View on HN

I'd point out that all that was needed to add that capability to a 1970 stereo is one of these devices:

https://www.sonos.com/en-us/shop/port

Although I laughed out loud that they're asking $450 for that little box. That's pretty cheeky. The BOM on that must be $15. Margin level: Apple!

I wonder if they make it $450 to discourage doing just what I'm describing. To make people consider that for that kind of money they could buy one decent Sonos speaker and "simplify." Even though the Sonos speaker won't have anywhere near the sound quality or longevity of a 40-year-old stereo amp and speakers.

I have a 40-year old amp and speakers at home. My dad’s old stereo. Works fine, but it has so much static buzz.

Sounds great though. I’m just a bit hesitant to leave it powered on all the time which means I don’t use it much compared to my Bluetooth speakers. Old power supplies are not very efficient. They can get hot. There is also a decent amount of dust. And then there is the risk of some old cap blowing.

Buzz is not normal. Either it was really low quality, (unlikely since it has lasted this long), or it is not properly grounded.

It's not properly grounded. I think I need to change out the power cable for one with ground, since the power cable that comes with the stereo only has two wires. There is a grounding point on the back of the chassis, but I don't have anything to ground it to except for the wall socket and at that point I should just use a proper power cable instead.

Sort-of.

Neither a Sonos Port nor something like an Alexa Echo Dot nor the long-discontinued Chromecast Audio can awaken my stereo (whether from 1955 or 2025), select the appropriate input, and allow me to start playing music from my phone.

A Sonos speaker does allow that, though.

And so might a modern sound bar when combined with things like CEC and a regular-ass $25 HDMI Chromecast.

Yes, this is annoying. I settled for the cheap variant: Let any hdmi device grab focus. The tv has spdif to the amp. Amp is always on the spdif input. I can change sources on the tv and the sound will follow, if I want youtube or spotify to play, I have to use chromecast on the tv or airplay to apple tv. It works ok for only a single cable. If the tv is off, the sound is off.

An amp will wake on hdmi (arc) input, but it won't wake on spdif. Unless you figured out something clever you still have to mess with multiple remotes and turn devices on/off individually.

The Sonos Port claims to be able to trigger your amp to turn on, though I don't know how it works. It's called a "12v trigger." Quick searching mostly found people asking on Reddit how the heck they could use it and mostly getting "most hardware doesn't support it."

I did find this interesting comment, though:

> You can get a secondhand Sonos Connect (Gen 2) for about $100 these days; they are the predecessor of the Port and are functionally the same for your purposes.

Also if I wanted to make a product like the Connect/Port I think I would spend another $3 in materials to add both an IR blaster (like the Harmony hub has -- it's so powerful it bounces off the walls perfectly well even to devices on different shelves) for amps with remotes, and to also offer as a separate purchase, a simple relay switch module for old stereos that don't have remotes -- they could be left on and have their power controlled by the Sonos.

As far as I know that's not a thing with any Sonos or competing product, though.

> though I don't know how it works. It's called a "12v trigger."

THX introduced the trigger port to allow one amp to start other amps. Before that amps would have a 110V passthrough socket.

THX trigger is a mono 1/8th inch / 3.5mm TS plug. Each device usually has one 12V in and a 12V out. While it's on, it'll output 12V at up to 30mA[1]. Due to current fluctuation and the low max amp it's recommended to use an opto-electronic isolator at the input.

THX originally introduced it to allow for home cinema surround. At the time commercially available amps only supported 2 channels, so the first THX systems had one receiver decoding the dolby signal, providing a line level output that you'd connect to multiple stereo amps. Due to the currents required the 110V passthrough wasn't an option, so 12V trigger was born.

Before 12V trigger existed the IR/Remote port, which allowed you to connect an external IR receiver to TVs, VHS recorders and Amps. This used the same plug, but would modulate the IR remote signal directly.

You could also use this to connect multiple devices and allow them to send remote control codes to one another. But that feature disappeared quickly due to limited compatibility.

In computers 12V trigger and remote ports inspired the I²C based DDC standard for VGA monitors, which allowed turning them on or off or changing settings. DVI and DisplayPort kept DDC as is, while HDMI expanded DDC into the CEC standard, which also allows controlling volume or sending media controls in a standardized way. Nowadays 12V trigger is mostly being replaced by HDMI CEC.

________________________

1. Some devices support up to 80mA, Sonos even provides 100mA

Such a 12v trigger would be useful for a plain stereo amplifier, which are relatively simple things -- so simple that they may not even have a volume control.

This would allow a Sonos Port to have a dedicated amplifier connected (for driving one big stereo pair of speakers, or maybe an array of 70v distributed audio speakers, or who knows what) and control when it is powered on.

But it won't turn on my AV receiver (it has 12v triggers, but they're all outputs), nor switch its input mode appropriately.

(Yeah, sure. I can hack something up with an ESP32 with IR or RS-232 or even Lego Mindstorms or something from Switchbot, but Sonos buyers and hardware hackers are naturally somewhat diametrically opposed: A person who buys Sonos gear wants stuff that just works, not a new hobby.)

Chromecast Audios are still easy to pick up on eBay (or if you're in the UK, CeX, that's where I got one).

Any old cheap plug tied to Home Assistant (or plain old Google Home in my case) for auto powering on my Cambridge Audio amp. (I'm not fancy enough to care about automated input switching between TV and music, I just get up and turn the knob, but turning off the hifi remotely I like)

Music Assistant supports streaming to Chromecast from TIDAL at the native (24 bit, 96khz, flac/m4a?) format. And TIDAL mobile app itself supports casting to Chromecast devices as you'd expect.

Those 3 things combined got me an old school hifi set up which I can include in my Chromecast groups of shitty sounding second-hand nest minis, so I get multi room audio where one room has the most audio :-) but I could swap out the shitty pucks for some more CC audios if I wanted to fork out for more amps and bookshelf speakers.

I trust Google to at least not intentionally brick their old devices and chromecast is built on mDNS and documented http endpoints enough that you can automate your own stuff in your LAN that you should be able to keep that stuff working in home assistant + music assistant should Google ever decide randomly they wanna sunset Google home (so, 50% chance of them announcing that in 2025).

Homebrew you can roll your own DIY multi room hifi audio using stuff like Hifiberry, too. Pipewire/PulseAudio/JACK on raspberry pi / NUCs should be able to get you surround sound over the network with minimal latency (although you probably want decent ethernet), since you can make a virtual sink that bridges the audio servers together.

You have one of those fancy hifis that has hdmi inputs and digital input selection and whatnot? Okay yeah you'd have to roll your own HDMI CEC automation again with a raspberry pi or whatever. Eminently doable.

There's definitely ways to get multi room audio of equivalent or better quality and at-least-equal user experience as long as you're willing to invest the time in doing loads of DIY shenanigans, but honestly it's pretty easy these days. For me, I think the "this is too complicated for me to implement" bar is not high enough to warrant buying Sonos

I would be surprised if that device can power cycle or control the volume of a stereo from 1970.

My favorite recent discovery in the HiFi world (after losing interest about 15 years ago) are the WiiM network streamers. Connect them up to any old system via RCA, toslink or coax and you can:

- stream from a wide number of subscription services

- stream from your own DLNA server or samba share

- cast from Chromecast or AirPlay

- with multiple devices, you can do multi-room synchronized streaming

- apply parametric EQ, including (in the higher end models) auto room correction

- hook up a digital source (eg, TV) so you can apply EQ

- hook up an analog device (like a turntable) and stream it to the rest of the devices in the house

The app's surprisingly good, the firmware updated regularly.

The cheapest version is under $100. They're like Chromecast Audio's on steroids. When (eventually) they die or get superseded, it's easy to replace without needing to touch the rest of the system.

I have 3 at the moment, the main one hooked up my amp and speakers from the 80s, which I picked up used in the 2000s.

Well said. I have a Wiim Pro & Mini, and love them both. And it's the best way of minimising waste (given some waste is inevitable as standards change, until they let us change the board inside the Wiim or something!)

I've been really impressed by how they keep pushing features out to old devices. Like, there was no reason for them to give the Mini 10 band PEQ - they could have made people upgrade. But no, the working (seemingly quite hard) to get the performance out of the chip in the Mini to do it, and pushed the update out to everyone.

I have a raspberry pi running an AirPlay server[0] and nothing else. Turned some nice analog speakers into airplayable for like $20

[0]: https://github.com/juhovh/shairplay

If only there was a small and very cheap device with wifi and aux out that you could plug into your old stereo, and instantly get the possibility to cast music directly from all your Android apps. Like a Chromecast but for Audio.

Seriously, this was a thing 10 years ago! I bought five, and they all still work perfectly. They do multiroom audio. They are compatible with the new Nest speakers. The only reason we can't have them today is corporate greed and rent-seeking MBA fuckers.

The Chromecast Audio was a wonderful device. I unfortunately lost all mine in a move but there’s been absolutely no way to replace them :-(

They're still out there.

In the US, MSRP at launch in 2015 was $35.

With inflation, that's worth ~$46 today.

I see one on eBay right now (open-box, allegedly never used) for $60, delivered, in buy-it-now format.

$60 is not an ideal sort of price, but it's not something that seems extortionist or anything compared to the inflation-adjusted price from 2015.

True, but relying on old units available on eBay is not a long term solution.

There are companies out there that make similar devices now luckily (sadly they're more expensive :/ )

It is Probably just fine for the next 10 years. Chromecast audio are working great for me with my 70’s receiver and modern mini amp and Bluetooth speakers with line in.

That's irrelevant.

A self-updating hardware/software combination from Google can never be a long term solution. Reliance on old units from eBay (or not!) cannot make that situation any better nor any worse.

Used Airport Express is pretty good if you're an Apple household.

Belkin SoundForm Connect + a physical power button amp. So many people chasing so much complexity, but this seems like the precursor to the WiiM(?) - first I'm hearing of that one.

(FYI, I chased that route, there is/was _one_ model that worked as an airplay2 device, but it still didn't feel as "native" as the modern HomePods ... icon was different, pairing was slower and slightly flakey... I moved to the belkin directly and have been happier. That and home assistant allowing single target airplay1 support to chrome cast / google nest devices sometimes is useful in a pinch)

People seem to like the WiiM streamers, but I have not tried one yet.

I have 3 - they're awesome.

Oh interesting. I was recently in my local HiFi shop (been a customer there for 40 years) to buy a new CD player and I noticed a WiiM box behind the counter in a display cabinet. I just assumed it was some sort of aging Nintendo Wii gimmick.

I'm being serious. If it has nothing to do with Nintendo then it's terrible branding.

There are a bunch of hifi brands that are making great products but don't have great name branding: SMSL, Topping, WiiM, Fosi (I own 3 of those 4, lol).

The upside is that they mostly seem to care about making good products rather than branding.

Right. I'll go back to the shop and have a closer look in that case. I like the idea of a streaming device to connect to a normal stereo system.

TBH, I didn't even know such devices existed. I thought that if I wanted to stream from Spotify without a PC I would need to go down the Sonos route, which I obviously don't want to do.

The problem with not having good branding is that potential customers walk right past your products. It's only chance comments in this thread that's made me take a second look. Thanks for the info :-)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com