Does Roon support two Google Home Max speakers as a stereo pair?

Hi:

I have been streaming from Roon to my single Google Home Max recently. The Home Max is a “smart speaker” that outputs [true] Left and Right from one speaker with one pair of tweeters and one pair of mid-woofers [very nicely, the woofer is a dual voice coil driver, so outputs pretty decent bass, but I digress]. Roon streams to it with Chrome Cast in 24-bits. All works great.

Now, the Home Max has a neat capability that when you stand the rectangular speaker vertically one can couple it with a second unit and the speakers can be grouped (within the Google Home eco system) into a stereo left plus right mode of operation.

The Question: does Roon itself support this mode of operation natively? I.e. does Roon see the two speakers that were linked into a stereo pair within the Google Home app, as one speaker?

When I use one, it’s a simple normal single zoned device. I do know how to link zones and I could force one speaker to get left and the other right with the DSP tools Roon offers us; I know how to do all that. But hoping to avoid that very thing (plus my experience is linked zones sometimes comes with unwanted time delays intermittently when music is stopped and restarted.)

I’ve been thinking about buying a second Home Max from the secondary market. But as I don’t use anything but Roon as my music source/server, I’d like to verify that it will be as easy to config and use the two Home Max speakers acting in a grouped stereo pair as it is to use one Google Home Max from within Roon, before I buy a second and go down this road.

Thank you,
-steve

Hello @Steve_Mato,

Thanks for connecting with us on the Roon community and for sharing details about your setup and the issue you’re experiencing. It’s pretty awesome to see your excitement - keep digressing :sweat_smile:

While we haven’t tested this specific configuration, Roon implements the standard cast APIs, so, if it does work with other apps, it should work with Roon as well.

There’s a report of this working here:

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Ah, my search criteria was too restrictive. I searched for discussions about the Home Max only. Not realizing other Google smart speakers support stereo pairing too.

Fantastic. Thank you very much.

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