I will never buy or trust SONOS again after the made the bulk of their equipment obsolete a few years ago and expected SONOS owners to purchase upgrades...it had all the markings of the KODAK management decades earlier.
Automatic software updates are a plague that sometimes break perfectly functioning systems. . Google systems are not the only ones that are affected, a recent update of the Sonos app seems to have broken some functionality for many people. In my own system everything was working fine until I upgraded my router. Then intermittent dropouts and device discovery problems occured not just with the google devices but also some other devices on my network. Since the WiFi was the thing that changed I assumed the router was the problem. I kept looking out for new updates and fortunately the latest one fixed all the problems on all the devices. These are sometimes frustrating problems, and it could have been an automatic update on the chromecast devices or the router that broke things. Before you give up though, I'd suggest doing a factory reset on all the devices and see if that clears the problem.
You have forgot at least one. Yamaha music cast. Similar to Sonos. But with support of better audio solutions tan a single WiFi speaker. The price looks also on equal level either Sonos.
You are right and there are others, Denon Heos, Bluesound (NAD) Cambridge audio, KEF are all good and let's not forget the awful Play Fi system. I left out the ones that weren't clearly cheaper to implement than Sonos.
@ so for me one of those companies should be represented. I do not treat Sonos as a classic hi-fi setup with multipoint extension, rather it is multipoint itself with a strange devices. What makes difference for Yamaha is that you connect your old high quality setup and it can be be extended. I consider this more valuable.
Is there issues with latency with the audio being processed digitally? In other words, when you can hear the audio from two different rooms playing the same song, does the same audio come out of all speakers at exactly the same time and in phase? or do you hear an "echo" in the overlap area between the two rooms?
Good question. all the systems add a delay to the source room so the differences are small enough to be perceived as reverb rather than echo. Some of the systems like the linkplay and chromecast allow you to adjust the delay to get it exact for a given location. Not all devices on the same system may have the same capabilty, for example Wiim streamers allow you to adjust the delay Arylic ones don't.
@@rogergadgetguy Thanks for that info. My previous home used simple analog amps and switching, so any delays were near zero. I was in mobile radio communications where wide-area dispatch and paging systems were simulcast on multiple transmitters over a wide area. They were all linked together with digital microwave systems through which the latency could change. At each transmitter site there was a GPS referenced multiplexer which would delay the audio so it would be transmitted in-phase with all other transmitter sites. The GPS reference also controlled the transmitter frequency within 3 hz of all other adjacent transmitters (operating at 155Mhz which is 3Hz out of 155,000,000Hz). And all this was to make a voice message intelligible where the signals overlapped.
@@brucehislop8860 Ah.....now I understand why you were concerned about phase. I was with Motorola for 36 years I used to design FM radio equipment. You would certainly destroy inteligibility with multiple off freq random phase signals in a radio receiver, but with audio in a home you have sound passing through walls furiture and doors. The wavelenghth varies from fractions of an inch to many feet. it is impossible to keep the multiple paths in phase. Fortunately the result is not only intelligible in the large overlap areas, but rather pleasing, resembling a surround sound ambience effect.
Airplay may be played from a MAC Alexa is not standard but there is an Alexa skill out there that will let you play from a PC if you have the patience to figure it out. The others can be played pretty easily from a PC or MAC. This video shows one way to set up a PC to play music from the PC to speakers on your network using your phone to select and control the music. th-cam.com/video/DZSx9ZPveqY/w-d-xo.html
Do you have any experience with Juke Audio? Looking for a way to tie in 4 zones of architectural speakers to TV soundbars. Essentially, play either TV content or music together in the family room and kitchen.
Hi I don't have first hand experience with Juke, but I see that they have built in Bluetooth receivers. Their website recommends this as a way to connect to a TV. If your TV ( or TVs) don't have bluetooth or if the TV bluetooth signal is too weak to reach a distant amplifier, then you can add a Bluetooth transmitter like the one shown in this video. th-cam.com/video/Tz6wSNouxlE/w-d-xo.html
This is just the video I was looking for. Thank you. Planning to install multi room audio in a house I'm building for my family. We're android, so I'm leaning towards Chromecast. Still a total novice about how to link it to hardwired built in ceiling speakers though.
Your hardwired speakers must be connected to an amplifier somewhere if the amplifier feeds one set of speakers in one room then connect a Wiim pro to it. The Wiim Pro features Chromecast Airplay and Linkplay and works extremely well for all modes. If you have hardwired speakers in many rooms they may be all connected to a single multi channel distribution amplifier in which case you don't need to go wireless to sync up the speakers but you can still use the Wiim pro to use your phone as the music source
I am sorry if you explained in your video but it is not very clear to me. Could I buy (Let's say) 8 Echo Dot 5th gen and place each of them in a different room, all connected and playing the same song simultaneously? Without connecting them to another system or unit, just Echo Dots by themselves. Is it possible?
Yes you can. Just link them all through the Alexa app. I've never tried as many as 8 but they should all work if you have a good enough WiFi signal in all the rooms. You can also link two together in any of the rooms as a stereo pair. They do sound nicer that way. Alternatively you can connect to a full stereo system in any given room through bluetooth. All this can be synchronized through the Alexa app to play everywhere or just selected rooms.
When Sonos got rid of Android support and told me I had to buy a NAS just to listen to music on my phone (where I have all my music stored), I decided to get out of Sonos. The Sonos sound is great but update problems aside, they really are a device for Apple users only.
@@rogergadgetguy the reason i never replied to this was that I ended up buying a bluetooth speaker and although it wasn't as good as the Sonos, it had one major advantage. It just works, every time. Without needs for an update, or without it losing the wireless, or just not working at all. So although the sound isn't top spec, it turns on when I want it to and I don't get really annoyed when, as happened with the Sonos, all I want is music whilst I make toast and Sonos couldn't do that every time, or even every day. So maybe try this Audio Pro that Rogergadgetguy suggests - he probably knows this stuff better.
Chromecast is not reliable anymore for multi room audio, from personal experience. In recent months, speaker groups that previously worked fine have been plagued with endless issues and complaining to Google doesn't seem to solve them.
It might be a trend, like Cable TV cord cutting. I read Sonos was considering launching a subscription model to boost their sagging profits. I wonder how that will go?
There has been a lot in the press about their latest update to the App seems like they really shot themselves in the foot. Hopefully they are working overtime on fixing it!
Nice video mate.. very informative and clear. New sub👍🏻
I will never buy or trust SONOS again after the made the bulk of their equipment obsolete a few years ago and expected SONOS owners to purchase upgrades...it had all the markings of the KODAK management decades earlier.
Automatic software updates are a plague that sometimes break perfectly functioning systems. . Google systems are not the only ones that are affected, a recent update of the Sonos app seems to have broken some functionality for many people. In my own system everything was working fine until I upgraded my router. Then intermittent dropouts and device discovery problems occured not just with the google devices but also some other devices on my network. Since the WiFi was the thing that changed I assumed the router was the problem. I kept looking out for new updates and fortunately the latest one fixed all the problems on all the devices. These are sometimes frustrating problems, and it could have been an automatic update on the chromecast devices or the router that broke things. Before you give up though, I'd suggest doing a factory reset on all the devices and see if that clears the problem.
You have forgot at least one. Yamaha music cast. Similar to Sonos. But with support of better audio solutions tan a single WiFi speaker. The price looks also on equal level either Sonos.
You are right and there are others, Denon Heos, Bluesound (NAD) Cambridge audio, KEF are all good and let's not forget the awful Play Fi system. I left out the ones that weren't clearly cheaper to implement than Sonos.
@ so for me one of those companies should be represented. I do not treat Sonos as a classic hi-fi setup with multipoint extension, rather it is multipoint itself with a strange devices. What makes difference for Yamaha is that you connect your old high quality setup and it can be be extended. I consider this more valuable.
Is there issues with latency with the audio being processed digitally? In other words, when you can hear the audio from two different rooms playing the same song, does the same audio come out of all speakers at exactly the same time and in phase? or do you hear an "echo" in the overlap area between the two rooms?
Good question. all the systems add a delay to the source room so the differences are small enough to be perceived as reverb rather than echo. Some of the systems like the linkplay and chromecast allow you to adjust the delay to get it exact for a given location. Not all devices on the same system may have the same capabilty, for example Wiim streamers allow you to adjust the delay Arylic ones don't.
@@rogergadgetguy Thanks for that info. My previous home used simple analog amps and switching, so any delays were near zero. I was in mobile radio communications where wide-area dispatch and paging systems were simulcast on multiple transmitters over a wide area. They were all linked together with digital microwave systems through which the latency could change. At each transmitter site there was a GPS referenced multiplexer which would delay the audio so it would be transmitted in-phase with all other transmitter sites. The GPS reference also controlled the transmitter frequency within 3 hz of all other adjacent transmitters (operating at 155Mhz which is 3Hz out of 155,000,000Hz). And all this was to make a voice message intelligible where the signals overlapped.
@@brucehislop8860 Ah.....now I understand why you were concerned about phase. I was with Motorola for 36 years I used to design FM radio equipment. You would certainly destroy inteligibility with multiple off freq random phase signals in a radio receiver, but with audio in a home you have sound passing through walls furiture and doors. The wavelenghth varies from fractions of an inch to many feet. it is impossible to keep the multiple paths in phase. Fortunately the result is not only intelligible in the large overlap areas, but rather pleasing, resembling a surround sound ambience effect.
What I missed from this video is whether these speakers require an app or not. What if you just want to play music from your pc and not from a phone?
Airplay may be played from a MAC Alexa is not standard but there is an Alexa skill out there that will let you play from a PC if you have the patience to figure it out. The others can be played pretty easily from a PC or MAC. This video shows one way to set up a PC to play music from the PC to speakers on your network using your phone to select and control the music. th-cam.com/video/DZSx9ZPveqY/w-d-xo.html
Do you have any experience with Juke Audio? Looking for a way to tie in 4 zones of architectural speakers to TV soundbars. Essentially, play either TV content or music together in the family room and kitchen.
Hi I don't have first hand experience with Juke, but I see that they have built in Bluetooth receivers. Their website recommends this as a way to connect to a TV. If your TV ( or TVs) don't have bluetooth or if the TV bluetooth signal is too weak to reach a distant amplifier, then you can add a Bluetooth transmitter like the one shown in this video. th-cam.com/video/Tz6wSNouxlE/w-d-xo.html
This is just the video I was looking for. Thank you.
Planning to install multi room audio in a house I'm building for my family. We're android, so I'm leaning towards Chromecast. Still a total novice about how to link it to hardwired built in ceiling speakers though.
Your hardwired speakers must be connected to an amplifier somewhere if the amplifier feeds one set of speakers in one room then connect a Wiim pro to it. The Wiim Pro features Chromecast Airplay and Linkplay and works extremely well for all modes. If you have hardwired speakers in many rooms they may be all connected to a single multi channel distribution amplifier in which case you don't need to go wireless to sync up the speakers but you can still use the Wiim pro to use your phone as the music source
I am sorry if you explained in your video but it is not very clear to me. Could I buy (Let's say) 8 Echo Dot 5th gen and place each of them in a different room, all connected and playing the same song simultaneously? Without connecting them to another system or unit, just Echo Dots by themselves. Is it possible?
Yes you can. Just link them all through the Alexa app. I've never tried as many as 8 but they should all work if you have a good enough WiFi signal in all the rooms. You can also link two together in any of the rooms as a stereo pair. They do sound nicer that way. Alternatively you can connect to a full stereo system in any given room through bluetooth. All this can be synchronized through the Alexa app to play everywhere or just selected rooms.
When Sonos got rid of Android support and told me I had to buy a NAS just to listen to music on my phone (where I have all my music stored), I decided to get out of Sonos. The Sonos sound is great but update problems aside, they really are a device for Apple users only.
Thanks for posting. Its helpful for everyone to see real world first hand experience with these systems.
Thank you for this. Are there speakers you recommend for Androids?
@@Joy-kl3te The Audio Pro A10 MkII has Google Cast for best Android compatibility. amzn.to/4ex8LLq I have the MkI version it sounds really good.
@@rogergadgetguy the reason i never replied to this was that I ended up buying a bluetooth speaker and although it wasn't as good as the Sonos, it had one major advantage. It just works, every time. Without needs for an update, or without it losing the wireless, or just not working at all. So although the sound isn't top spec, it turns on when I want it to and I don't get really annoyed when, as happened with the Sonos, all I want is music whilst I make toast and Sonos couldn't do that every time, or even every day. So maybe try this Audio Pro that Rogergadgetguy suggests - he probably knows this stuff better.
So tired of Sonos and network issues. And then the crappy app on top on that...
I've been hearing about the new Sonos app from multiple sources. You are not alone.
Sonos is finished
Chromecast is not reliable anymore for multi room audio, from personal experience. In recent months, speaker groups that previously worked fine have been plagued with endless issues and complaining to Google doesn't seem to solve them.
Sonos sued them. Has never been the same and will never be the same.
I bit the bullet and ran wires - Network switcher and Wifi receiver. Sold my Sonos to some unsuspecting Gen Z'r
It might be a trend, like Cable TV cord cutting. I read Sonos was considering launching a subscription model to boost their sagging profits. I wonder how that will go?
Sonos is possibly the best … But their ios app is utter shite !
Quite possibly the worst software I’ve ever used.
There has been a lot in the press about their latest update to the App seems like they really shot themselves in the foot. Hopefully they are working overtime on fixing it!