This may be tied to the googlecast-sonos bullcrap going on right now, but so far this only is an issue with Roon:
Google Cast Speaker Groups have mostly disappeared from the Roon service. The groups that remain, when selected, only plays music on the primary speaker (the first speaker in this list) for that group.
This is new behavior this week, and only shows up on Roon. The speaker groups still work as usual on PlexAmp, YouTube Music, Spotify and direct mobile device playback. This is new behavior this week (third week in September 2023).
Anyone else seeing this? Roon support, any advice?
When cc disappear from Roon I would start be rebooting your network gear and the core machine. This tends to clear things. If not then wait until supper can help.
Yep. I already did that. All of the CC rooms show up per usual, but the cast room groups are still borked. I just went thru all of my other app, and even some developer software to do cast discovery and the room groups are still there.
I read an article earlier today that Google has pushed out updates to remove group functionality to only allow a device to be in only one group due to the outcome of another court case.
Not sure if this is related to your problem, but it sounds like it might be and there are reports of user complaints about this causing issues not related to Roon.
You’re correct. Looks like a Sonos patent infringement. Not read the full thing, but I’m aware it’s been ongoing for a good few years now.
As Sonos were, I think, the first to do this whole home speaker business, they patented the ass out of it all to prevent others, or to get paid if they want to do it.
Good business sense.
Note, this might explain why ungrouping Sonos devices is, has been an issue.
This was about Google requiring Sonos to give them their technology under NDA to work on Google Assistant and then copying it wholesale and coming out with their own implementation a few months later.
I am no fan of companies suing each other, but this always smacked of a company who thought they were above the rules and refused to pay.
Now they look like totals dicks and their customers lose out, shocking behavior from Google I have to say. I will not buy another Google smart speaker when mine give up the ghost
Yes it is supposedly a low level change, but I cannot think of anything else likely to cause that, unless Roon Core has lost the network config and it just happens to coincide with this update
I personally know the people involved on both sides, and that is not the complete story. It’s the story that the press likes to tell, and Google never comments on anything so they’re pretty easy target.
The reality is that the suit has to do with the behavior, not the specific technology. This is very similar to Apple’s ■■■■■■■■slide to unlock crap that they tried a few years back. The suit is specifically about the ability to use groups to create zones in homes. It may have started with a technology trade, but the lawsuit was modified so that Google could not change the technology to provide the same functionality.
Google, being Google, refuses to pay sonos’s licensing fees that they’re requiring, so everybody loses. This is not just on Google, this is on Sonos.
The one foolish Google move is that they should spend a few billion dollars and just outright buy Sonos. It wouldn’t be a stain on there p&l sheet, and they would at that point literally own the home audio server market. It’s insane to me that they do not do it.
Well I can, that’s why I brought it up here. Roon has had some issues with Chromecast audio ready devices in the past, this could be the result of an attempt to do a bug fix or some such thing.
As I said no other platform I own is having a hard time with Google speaker groups right now. If this were part of the Google Sonos lawsuit I’m guessing that all of these services would be experiencing the same group outage.
Maybe The issue will show up in a few days in other systems, for right now though it’s only on Roon.
Edit: this from the Android police article. I’m see the issues in established groups, so that implies this issue is not related to the lawsuit:
“For what its worth, a Google spokesperson has told 9to5Google that “There are no changes to existing speaker groups,” which seems to indicate any speakers currently included in multiple groups won’t be removed.”
Yes I have had Chromecast issues myself in the past and eventually mostly bought Roon ready gear and gave away several rooms of Sonos as well. I had about 9 months of a monster Sonos bug that Roon would not acknowledge but managed to fix.
I wish these cases would go away, but people do not seem to want too do the right thing for customers.
