Chromecast Audio as endpoint? [Delivered; B333]

Roon do not promise Chomecast at this time. If they do they will say so. It’s on the wish list and may we’ll be being developed. I don’t know. The developers are not fools they know all this stuff. They also know the problems and restrictions. Also consider there may be NDA considerations.
I would see Chromcast as a nice add on but not my main Roon end point. Certainly not a deal breaker. There are myriad quality products for that at all price levels and the list is growing.
Personally I’d like to be able to stream BBCi Radio Player in Roon. I can’t but i will just use Chrome cast for this. I’ll just have to mix and match until the day I can.
Roon is evolving and we just have to give them time. This is groundbreaking stuff.

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Just run LMS as well and you can use IPlayer and Chromecast.

Kind of off topic, but you actually can add BBC iplayer radio stations, just add the URLs to your radio section for example -

Radio 2
http://a.files.bbci.co.uk/media/live/manifesto/audio/simulcast/hls/uk/sbr_high/llnw/bbc_radio_two.m3u8

Radio 3
http://bbcmedia.ic.llnwd.net/stream/bbcmedia_radio3_mf_p

6Music
http://a.files.bbci.co.uk/media/live/manifesto/audio/simulcast/hls/uk/sbr_high/llnw/bbc_6music.m3u8

Just google for whichever station - simulcast URL and you should find enough info.

As for Chromecast support, it would be amazing. However, Chromecast generally streams stuff from the internet, not from your LAN. Roon plays stuff from your LAN. Chromecast CAN stream stuff from your LAN, but for some reason, this always seems to be done by flaky third party apps. There must be a reason behind this, I would be interested to know. Perhaps Roon could be the first non flaky third party app for Chromecast… :wink:

Regarding iPlayer I mean the catch up app. This is one of the best apps I know of. I have the stations already in Internet Radio and listen live often.

im looking at getting A Naim Uniti Atom as it has Chromecast built in so I can have roon and be able to use Chromecast to cast any other streaming service to the same endpoint and use Roon for Tidal and my own stufft, It seems to be the only Roon Ready device that offers pretty much everything. Roon, Tidal and Spotify connect , Chromecast, Airplay uPnP. Future proof for streaming as you can cast to it if they dont adopt internal support.

Regarding upnp

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/whats-wrong-with-upnp/2101/3?u=chrislayeruk

It’s not only lack of Chromecast support, but more importantly lack of MQA decoding (I use Dragonfly Red) and also lack of the Tidal [M] icon to indicate Master (ie MQA) titles.

Also would be nice if Roon had ability to search/filter by MQA titles too!

So because I can’t play MQA titles (at full quality) through Roon there is no point of me using it instead of Tidal Desktop.

Likewise when I want to stream titles to my Chromecast Audio I’m forced to use the Tidal app on Android.

If Roon added MQA and Chromecast Audio support then I would not need to bother with Tidal Deskop or the Tidal Android App, I could just use Roon to do everything I need and would happily subscribe!

As you know, as announced at CES, MQA unfolding is just around the corner so the Dragonfly will be fine.

You don’t seem to mention the user interface and all it’s advantages and possibilities. This is the main selling point of Roon as I see it. These are the things that delight me and allow me to explore my music collection.

Chrome cast is just an endpoint of which there are many, nice to have in a ‘more the merrier’ kind of way as it will widen overall appeal.

The analogy is like buying a Range Rover and complaining you can’t get it into a small garage.

Anyway, it’s all an individual choice as to what is important and I know Roon will not be for everyone.

Great!
When MQA unfolding (and also the [M] icon to indicate MQA titles) is implemented I will no doubt subscribe.

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The chromecast does not “stream” audio from any of your devices. It is “casting” the conent directly from the internet. That’s a very big difference. Chromecast was never designed to stream anything. Even Google themselves do not support this function for it. IT is in fact nothing more then a stripped chrome webbrowser in a box. The only form of “streaming” it supports is streaming between two chrome browsers. Reliable “streaming” to it from other sources is dependend on quirky third party application at the moment. If Roon would implement this now people would start complaining about it’s inability to play in sync with other zones, inability to use dsp functions and unreliable “streams”. Casting is a different story it just is not the same. That’s what it is made for, nothing else.

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Plex provides two casting mechanisms

  1. From a local Plex media server on a laptop. This is what I use. I use a Chrome browser interface but I believe there is also an app. Content is local not internet. I am happy enough to Sync a down sampled subset of my home library on a work laptop for the road. There can be problems with hotel or student residence wifi maintaining a guest session which can normally be overcome by setting up a hotspot. My experience is it works great up to 320/MP3. I haven’t really tried higher rez. There are similar Android and IOS versions.
  1. Cloud Sync. This is a premium service using a Cloud plex server casting your private library from a Cloud storage provider. This is casting over the internet and something similar has been asked for in several mobile roon threads. I haven’t tried this.

https://support.plex.tv/articles/201889756-cloud-sync-overview/

Being a little bit more specific about Chromecast Audio support for roon, it would be great if roon could do something similar with both variations.

I have to ask, What’s the point. You can get any number of Roon endpoints at all price levels. Just do that.
Perhaps I’m missing something?

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They’re cheap, have multiple use and people may already own them.

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Well sometimes, cheap wont do. Raspberry pi etc are also cheap and very good I’m told. Eventually we all have to invest and with Roon and the quality available, it’s worth it and pays back.

I actually have understood the terms cast and stream completely differently, although essentially I agree with what you say.

I’ve felt that casting is when a device sends content to a renderer, like Airplay and streaming is when a renderer pulls content from a content provider.

Chromecast definitely does the latter in most cases. App tells what/from where to play and Chromecast streams the content by itself. I guess the exception being screen mirroring, which would be casting (by some other device). I wonder if there is a casting possibility in Chromecast audio as well.

I know - it would be great if Roon did support Chromecast but I won’t be cutting my ears off in protest !

[Moderated]

Cheers
Tom

Almost right but It’s the other way around.

Ok… “Casting” rather than “Streaming”.

In anycase the Chromecast Audio has an optical output and can output to the DAC in my amp at 24/96 via the optical input on the DAC.

Sometimes I’m happy to listen to Tidal via the Chromecast Audio and other times I want to listen to MQA titles on my HD600 via the Dragon Fly Red connected to my laptop.

But Roon currently doesn’t let me do either because it doesn’t support MQA unfolding nor ability to control the Chromecast Audio.

What a shame!

I don’t think that those promoting chromecast support somehow see it as an endpoint interchangeable with any audio endpoint at the same pricepoint. It is multi-media, not audio only, and the first thing you do when you set it up is attach the device to a google account. So it integrates you into that whole android eco-system, with your phone, preferences, bookmarks etc. A bit like the apple experience, chromecast becomes very sticky in that way.

I have a goodish system at home on which I do not use chromecast as it makes no sense. I may as well exploit the best SQ I can in that scenario. But on the road the SQ is good enough for background listening, I like the android/google integration and I like a simple almost weightless device that turns the lowest common denominator hotel TV into a smart TV. I don’t want to carry around an additional endpoint/speaker just for Roon. What I would like however is also not to carry around and synchronise two UI’s (Plex and Roon)

That is the exact reason I gave mine away a few minutes after I took it out of its box.