I recently picked up a bunch of NIB Chromecast Audio units to replace my aging Squeezebox hardware, and through that experience I have two tips if anyone is trying to set them up.
These were NIB CCA units manufactured in 2015, never upgraded or connected to the internet. As a result, they are not able to be activated unless the Google ‘Device Utility’ app is used to connect to them. After a few days of having no success getting activation, I was ready to return them until I found a post about the device utility indicating that once your device is detected, you must re-enable your mobile device’s wifi for the remaining part of the activation to work. After re-enabling my phone’s wifi they connected no problem.
After connecting them I was not terribly satisfied with the audio quality compared to the Squeezeboxes, so I dug around in the audio settings for the players in Google Home, and buried under the Audio device features is a ‘Full dynamic range’ switch that was OFF for every single player that I had connected. Flipping that switch is critical to getting these units to sound good.
While I’m still struggling to get them working perfectly (eero 6 keeps dropping the units) I’m pretty pleased with the synchronization and audio quality, definitely worth $42USD/ea.
Got one CCA that’s used in my son’s room, always works well but it’s not in a proper listening situation. I miss my old SB Touch which died a few years back when I plugged my DACs PSU into it by mistake when doing a cable tidy up. still have an active SB Radio ,although it’s starting to play up and stop start a lot these days. Likely will replace it with another JBL Link 20 which is a pretty good Chromecast speaker for the price and works well with Roon. , have one for use in the garden and it’s as good as the SB Radio.
I got my first Squeezebox gear back in the early 00’s, and while I lost that original V3 in the divorce, I’ve been using the same system to play back music at home for 20 years. I still have two functioning V3s, 4 Duets, and 2 or 3 of the Duet remotes, but I can’t stream Spotify or Pandora to those as trivially as the CCAs, so I wanted to try something new.
Hilariously, what might drive me back to that gear is the 2.4GHz-only device since I can’t keep the CCAs from jumping 5GHz APs.
Chromecast Audio Full dynamic range setting is not a dynamic range setting. It is an analog output level setting. Toggled on, Full dynamic range outputs CD standard maximum 2 V, which is expected for modern home audio equipment but which may present an unexpectedly high analog input level for many portables or other devices with stereo miniplug inputs. The setting has no effect on the mini TOSLINK digital output.
Yes, it does, and I did (and do) use them, but I felt like I’d exhausted what those services were suggesting me. Sorry, didn’t mean to say that it wasn’t capable of supporting those platforms, it does ok.
What really appeals to me is the added ability to cast a podcast from my phone to the closest CCA with the flick of a finger. So combine Roon with Spotify/Pandora through the apps on my phone and streaming on-phone content seemed like a fun gamble to try.
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