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Introducing Google Cast for audio

chrome.blogspot.com

101–110 of 172 posts

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#101
post #8

I own a Chromecast and like all about it except it's ability to play oyur own content. I understand why they forbid it, but for the same reasons I'm using it much mroe rarely than I would otherwise. Additionally this could have easily been an addition to the original Chromecast via a simple extractor.

https://github.com/xat/castnow let's you play local files from the command line

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#102
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't want to cast from the cloud. It certainly helps battery life for your mobile device to step aside as soon as playback has started. When casting video it doesn't matter even if I turn the device off.

You know, UPnP has media renderers, servers and control software as three separate matters. This is already a solved problem. And, well, I had controlled mpd running on my desktop machine (that has the speakers connected) and streaming from my NAS from my N900, like, 5 years ago. Replace desktop with something like rPI and the tech is here.

That's nice. This lets normal people do it.

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#103
post #4

> Google Cast Ready speakers come with Cast technology built-in, so you don’t have to buy any additional equipment. Except for, you know, the entirely new speaker(s). I love this idea, but I want a simple, small dongle, like the chromecast, that outputs audio only rather than HDMI. I already have a speaker/amp in my living room that has a mini-stereo in. I simply want a way to connect a chromecast to it.

I use this HDMI audio extractor to turn a Chromecast into what you describe: http://www.amazon.com/J-Tech-Digital-Premium-Extractor-Conve...

this thing works great, I do the same thing. I wonder if these integrated speaker devices will support playing content that is not audo-only... like youtube videos. it's great to be able to get music from youtube videos. I hope they don't limit the stuff you can cast to audio-only with these new google-cast for audio devices.

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#104
post #4

> Google Cast Ready speakers come with Cast technology built-in, so you don’t have to buy any additional equipment. Except for, you know, the entirely new speaker(s). I love this idea, but I want a simple, small dongle, like the chromecast, that outputs audio only rather than HDMI. I already have a speaker/amp in my living room that has a mini-stereo in. I simply want a way to connect a chromecast to it.

You could try to build it yourself https://jeena.net/rp-airplay-radio

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#105
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do this with a raspberry pi. I set up an AirPlay service on it, and added a tiny USB wifi dongle and put it in a nice white casing. Works great and cheaper than airport express that will do what you need also. http://www.raywenderlich.com/44918/raspberry-pi-airplay-tuto...

The problem is that the quality of the audio out of the raspberry pi is terrible. I wonder if these HDMI audio extractors I see in the comments are any better. I have a raspberry pi connected to a projector that doesn't have audio out and I can't decide between a sound card for the pi (think wolfson), or a HDMI audio extractor in order to improve the quality.

You can use a USB audio dongle though.

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#106
post #4

> Google Cast Ready speakers come with Cast technology built-in, so you don’t have to buy any additional equipment. Except for, you know, the entirely new speaker(s). I love this idea, but I want a simple, small dongle, like the chromecast, that outputs audio only rather than HDMI. I already have a speaker/amp in my living room that has a mini-stereo in. I simply want a way to connect a chromecast to it.

Maybe Chromecast v2 could have that, alongside HDMI 2.0? That, plus 802.11ac and 2x2 antennas would make it absolutely perfect. (And probably more expensive than $35, but possibly worth it)

That already exists. It's known as the Nexus Player, which is "Google Cast Ready", has HDMI 2.0, and 802.11ac 2x2.

http://www.google.com/nexus/player/

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#107
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe Chromecast v2 could have that, alongside HDMI 2.0? That, plus 802.11ac and 2x2 antennas would make it absolutely perfect. (And probably more expensive than $35, but possibly worth it)

That already exists. It's known as the Nexus Player, which is "Google Cast Ready", has HDMI 2.0, and 802.11ac 2x2. http://www.google.com/nexus/player/

Good point, although I'd prefer to pay less to not have Android TV (I don't think the TV platforms make any sense compared to "Casting" content from mobile devices).

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#108
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do this with a raspberry pi. I set up an AirPlay service on it, and added a tiny USB wifi dongle and put it in a nice white casing. Works great and cheaper than airport express that will do what you need also. http://www.raywenderlich.com/44918/raspberry-pi-airplay-tuto...

The problem is that the quality of the audio out of the raspberry pi is terrible. I wonder if these HDMI audio extractors I see in the comments are any better. I have a raspberry pi connected to a projector that doesn't have audio out and I can't decide between a sound card for the pi (think wolfson), or a HDMI audio extractor in order to improve the quality.

HiFiBerry is a very good option

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#109

  >"Google Cast streams your music directly from the cloud instead of from your phone, so you won’t lose any sound quality."  

Huh??? This is almost _never_ the case in my opinion, especially when using popular cloud services for music playback. Pretty sure I just had to nerf a high quality .WAV file to a .WMV 20 minutes ago before I could even upload it to google music.

Re: Introducing Google Cast for audio

#110
I use an Airport Express as an AirPlay receiver, which is connected to a line input on my Sonos setup. Nice thing is that Sonos can switch to that input automatically when it senses a signal.

I've also used Shairport[0] on a Raspberry Pi as an AirPlay receiver - it worked great, I just wanted to keep tinkering with the Pi so I switched to the Airport Express, which I already owned.

[0]: https://github.com/hendrikw82/shairport

Edit: I see someone else already said that, whoops. FWIW, I didn't have any major audio quality issues in the brief time the Pi was used for AirPlay.

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