12 ms·

Introducing Google Cast for audio

232 points by Navarr 12y ago

dlevine 12y ago
So Google has decided to compete with Airplay. Although I guess this is better, because I'm assuming it will work with any router, and not just special ones sold by Apple.
- jamesbrownuhh 12y ago
  Is that what you meant to say? AirPlay isn't restricted to special Apple routers either.
  - ubercore 12y ago
    That is true, but I also believe there are some lower level "nice to haves" they enable on their routers to make sure Bonjour/mDNS works properly for airplay. If not intentionally, I do know that some routers (Actiontec / FiOS comes to mind) that have particular difficulty with providing reliable Airplay connections.
    - ubercore 12y ago
      I'll bite, can someone help me understand the downvotes? Actiontec routers (among others I'm sure) may not work well with Bonjour out of the box: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=actiontec%20bonjour https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e... Airports generally don't need attention for airplay, and that probably leads a lot of people to the impression that you need an Apple router.
- JoelSutherland 12y ago
  It's actually more like Sonos. Airplay streams from the device to the receiver. With this (and Sonos) a command is sent to the device which does the streaming on its own.
  - matthewmacleod 12y ago
    I'm not sure that's totally accurate – I think AirPlay has multiple modes of operation, including the ability to stream directly from a third device. I don't remember the details of this off the top of my head.
- pat2man 12y ago
  Even better I bet speaker manufacturers will ship both and basically your speaker will "just work" regardless of what platform you are using.
  - mikecb 12y ago
    This is the best news yet coming from the auto manufacturers and Android Auto/Apple Carplay. I personally would never choose one of the two, but the option will make both ecosystems more successful.
mankyd 12y ago
> Google Cast Ready speakers come with Cast technology built-in, so you don’t have to buy any additional equipment. Except for, you know, the entirely new speaker(s). I love this idea, but I want a simple, small dongle, like the chromecast, that outputs audio only rather than HDMI. I already have a speaker/amp in my living room that has a mini-stereo in. I simply want a way to connect a chromecast to it.
- jluxenberg 12y ago
  I use this HDMI audio extractor to turn a Chromecast into what you describe: http://www.amazon.com/J-Tech-Digital-Premium-Extractor-Converter/dp/B00BIQER0E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420478005&sr=8-1&keywords=hdmi+audio+extractor http://www.amazon.com/J-Tech-Digital-Premium-Extractor-Conve...
  - brerlapn 12y ago
    That is pretty slick. I've had a Squeezebox for years, but it's not too helpful for Youtube benders. For now, I've just got audio out from the TV to the stereo which works fine for casting. The audio's not hi-def but usually the quality of the source audio is the bottleneck in my experience, not the RCA audio connection.
  - andybak 12y ago
    Here's a slightly cheaper way to do the same thing: http://liliputing.com/2014/02/10-adapter-turns-chromecast-into-cheap-sonos-competitor.html http://liliputing.com/2014/02/10-adapter-turns-chromecast-in...
    - rcraft 12y ago
      I can confirm that that little device no longer works. The old models worked without the VGA portion needing to be plugged in, however the new models shipping from China don't work unless the VGA unit is plugged into something, which basically defeats the purpose. I am now using this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DMZOUVK/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DMZOUVK/ref=oh_aui_detai... which is working great.
Jack5500 12y ago
I own a Chromecast and like all about it except it's ability to play oyur own content. I understand why they forbid it, but for the same reasons I'm using it much mroe rarely than I would otherwise. Additionally this could have easily been an addition to the original Chromecast via a simple extractor.
- Scaevolus 12y ago
  Plex works well with Chromecast to play your own media.
- Reebles 12y ago
  There are actually many apps that allow you to play local content now. It was pretty bad for a while before they released the SDK though. The two I use are Videostream for Google Chrome, and BubbleUPnP for Android.
  - _lce0 12y ago
    Have you seen which permissions those kind of apps require? I don't want to allow these apps to read my history, share my contacts, or expose the current running apps just to cast some media ..
    - parfe 12y ago
      https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bubblesoft.android.bubbleupnp&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bubblesoft... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.videostream.Mobile&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.videostrea... Which permissions do you take issue with? I don't see anything like what you claim.
    - Shog9 12y ago
      https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.findsdk.apppermission&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.findsdk.ap... I won't even run the Facebook or LinkedIn apps without locking them down first. Frankly, it's somewhat negligent that this isn't built into the Play Store installation UI.
Reebles 12y ago
Will we finally get gapless playback in the Chromecast's native music player? I've tried to use my Chromecast for music, but the gaps between tracks are just complete deal breakers for many albums. I had just assumed audio was not a priority for google.
- Navarr 12y ago
  Chromecast is just a web browser - so I imagine that's due to the client (which each service has their own, I think). Not sure what exactly they're doing for audio casting, but I imagine it's dependent on the service to implement properly
- rikkus 12y ago
  It's a deal breaker for me, yes. It took years to persuade Spotify to fix this problem.
- radley 12y ago
  The sdk offers gapless playback but the OS still can't actually do it. Poweramp is one of the few apps that can do gapless, but it uses ffmpg instead of native.
drdaeman 12y ago
"Google Cast is designed to give you more freedom while listening to music." I sense some irony in this statement.
- makomk 12y ago
  It almost makes AirPlay open by comparison. At least that lets you stream your local music collection rather than restricting you to approved cloud music services.
  - bitskits 12y ago
    Google Play Music supports this. Upload your audio files; stream from anywhere. No subscription needed.
    - ubercow 12y ago
      emphasis here being on local music collection. I don't want to have to upload a huge library of music just to stream it to my local network, where I already have the music on my hard drive.
      - 9point6 12y ago
        There are other apps that allow you to stream your local music if that's what you want to do (AllCast, BubbleUPnP, etc). But I've always wondered about this argument - Why wouldn't you put your local music library on Google music? It's free and means you've got access to your library everywhere. I could understand before they had matching that uploading 100+GB of music is probably not desirable, but it now even big libraries are fully uploaded in a day or so.
  - BHSPitMonkey 12y ago
    If you expose your local media over HTTP (doesn't even need to be world-accessible), a Chromecast on the same network can play it.
  - djur 12y ago
_lce0 12y ago
I don't want to cast from the cloud. Just make the device able to receive any media from my LAN!! it's nice that the dongle can stream from the web, but it's way more useful to make the device aware of upnp/dlna devices over my local network. Because of this I've moved to raspberry which - exposes itself over the network as a upnp device - plays remote media in the main TV - acts as a nas, it can stream to kids' room - downloads media via torrents (that I can remotely control) Plus it's a fully Linux environment that I can fine tune as desired
- andybak 12y ago
  > I don't want to cast from the cloud. It certainly helps battery life for your mobile device to step aside as soon as playback has started. When casting video it doesn't matter even if I turn the device off.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    Its possible to have things on your LAN other than mobile devices.
    - gtaylor 12y ago
      To be clear, you can cast from desktops, laptops, or anything that can run Chrome.
    - mikecb 12y ago
      And you can stream from a local device. See plex.
  - drdaeman 12y ago
    You know, UPnP has media renderers, servers and control software as three separate matters. This is already a solved problem. And, well, I had controlled mpd running on my desktop machine (that has the speakers connected) and streaming from my NAS from my N900, like, 5 years ago. Replace desktop with something like rPI and the tech is here.
hengheng 12y ago
Very nice. I'm right now sitting in front of a schematics of a nice modern modular stereo hi-fi amplifier that I'm building. I made sure to leave plenty of internal interconnects for BTO radio modules, so that I could accomodate for Bluetooth, DAB, UPnP rendering, TI CC8520 or whatever wireless standard would be coming my way later down the line. Seems that I can now plan to add a Google Cast radio module that can be integrated into the device. I don't even have to change my design it seems, I don't even have to put all my money on this horse, and I can still do without this gadget at first and get the basic device to market as quickly as possible. Neat.
- matthewmcg 12y ago
  This sounds really neat--any information on your product you can share?
  - hengheng 12y ago
    Will do! I'm finishing up the design right now, and I plan to go DIY first anyways in order to get some quick feedback, circumvent expensive EMI certification, and to sell some units before having to go into case manufacturing. As soon as the prototype shows it's working at the quality level I hope it will, we'll start marketing it, and I'll make sure to drop you a note right then!
    - Roritharr 12y ago
      This is really cool! I've looked far and wide for got a good stereo amplifier that is customizable, but such things don't seem to exist! Please let us know more!
- tacos 12y ago
  Probably want the RF transmitting components outside the shielded amplifier chassis...
  - hengheng 12y ago
    There usually are antenna output pins even on some of the cheapest Bluetooth modules, and I plan to go for an all metal case anyways. You've certainly got a point though ;-)
acgourley 12y ago
Note the lack of spotify support. It's turning into a bit of a showdown between players like google cast and spotify connect. There will definitely be a small market in building devices which can serve as bridges between the standards.
- ultrafez 12y ago
  It's disappointing that we are in the situation where we have several competing protocols for streaming audio - Google Cast, AirPlay, Spotify Connect, UPnP/DLNA. As a society we are capable of making software and hardware that interoperate among manufacturers - email and HTTP are good examples. We could be a far more technologically advanced world if capitalism didn't encourage companies to create competing closed-source protocols that only benefit the companies themselves, to the detriment of everyone else.
  - carsonreinke 12y ago
    This is how I feel every time there is an announcement like this.
  - acgourley 12y ago
    To be fair, the existing UPnP/DLNA standard really wasn't good enough. For example, AirPlay just added wifi direct connections between devices which is a requirement for good streaming video. On balance I believe it's a net positive to have some competing standards for a while as we figure out what works best. I do hope we can arrive at some interoperable standards, or we can at least mitigate the spread via low cost adapter devices.
  - nightski 12y ago
    Yes but if everyone agreed on a standard I could see us all complaining that "we could be far more technologically advanced world if we didn't force everyone to use the same standard and there was more room for innovation and competition".
  - nobodyshere 12y ago
    Spotify still works through AirPlay though.
shoggs 12y ago
I don't like the way Google Cast always needs to connect to a service before playing any media. This could be a little bit annoying with audio. Its okay for me to wait a couple seconds to connect for watching a movie. But let's say you wanna switch from Google Music to Spotify, it's always gonna take some time.
- _lce0 12y ago
  And have you tried to use it without internet access? It completely refuse to work. My ISP had some problem that let 200 families without service for a week. Although I have my local network fully working, the dongle refused to boot
  - dotunderscore 12y ago
    You are aware that the chromecast is really nothing more then a web browser in a stick? It has no storage for any thing other then the firmware to run the device.
    - ajanuary 12y ago
      A local network is more than capable of serving up the chromecast app. It's a restriction they've added to the device that it won't load it from a local network.
      - sangnoir 12y ago
        I think "restriction" is a poor choice: it's more like an architectural decision - that is exactly how they designed it. I could equally say your computer is more than capable of running a self-hosted version of GMail, but "it's a restriction [Google] added" for them to run it on their servers.
        ajanuary 12y ago
        I run a Plex media server on my laptop, which is already serving up content to my local network over http. It would be very simple for them to host their Chromecast app on the same local server and for the cast button to send that URL. The Chromecast checks the URLs against a whitelist. Presumably as a security measure, which is a perfectly valid reason, but it's still a "restriction". To allow people to run a self-hosted GMail, huge changes would need to be made to the code. To allow me to serve my own Chromecast apps, it would need to remove a whitelist check.
quotemstr 12y ago
It'd be nice if I could turn my old Squeezebox Boom into a client for this thing.
dchuk 12y ago
I love my Chromecasts. I have two of them in our house, and we don't have a television subscription, we just use a mixture of Plex, Netflix, and streams for sports. We're saving a bunch of money every year now, and it works great. But damn, the lack of a desktop sdk/api for chromecast is just infuriating. I get it, Google believes in Mobile and Web only, but you'd think if they're shooting for market domination, they wouldn't ignore an entire market segment in terms of developer options.
- sanderjd 12y ago
  Pretty off-topic, but what sports streams do you use? I'd love to ditch cable, but can't seem to find good replacements for sports.
  - dchuk 12y ago
    Been using the links posted here for NFL: http://www.reddit.com/r/nflstreams http://www.reddit.com/r/nflstreams There are sidebar links for other sports too.
- jdboyd 12y ago
  This is why I'm hoping for the Matchstick project to work out. Some apps that work with ChromeCast already just work with Matchstick. They recently posted about trying to get supported for DRM requiring apps like NetFlix. There should be more news this week from CES. Of course, for my to consider this a success, I want to see the software running on more than just their HDMI dongle. People have already compiled it to run on some Chinese dongles with the same CPU, but I'd like to see it also run on some more open platforms like Freescale iMX.6, Allwinner A20, and most especially X86.
tek-cyb-org 12y ago
Ive been doing google cast audio. It's called, Chromecast+hdmi analog audio extractor=free youtube music to home audio system. :)
andreyf 12y ago
> Google Cast Ready speakers pull content directly from the cloud, so you'll get the best audio quality and can freely multi-task on your phone, tablet, or laptop, all without straining the battery Is it that much of a battery strain to connect to a radio in the house, and usually in the same room? The device that'll be doing it is designed to connect to cell towers up dozens of miles away [1], after all... 1. http://smallbusiness.chron.com/far-can-cell-tower-cellphone-pick-up-signal-32124.html http://smallbusiness.chron.com/far-can-cell-tower-cellphone-...
- andybak 12y ago
  It's about letting your mobile device sleep rather than to constantly be (semi)-awake to push audio.
cheshire137 12y ago
Might be nicer than wrestling with my Vizio soundbar to connect via Bluetooth. Takes multiple attempts to make it connect to any of my devices (laptop, phone, or tablet), then sound drops and gets flaky frequently when I stream music.
deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
sv3nss0n 12y ago
http://www.google.com/castaudio/ http://www.google.com/castaudio/ gives a 404...
- vpontis 12y ago
  I just checked and it's working fine for me.
  - sv3nss0n 12y ago
    yes, now it works for me too.
lowlevel 12y ago
A full 10 years after AirTunes. Yay.
vpontis 12y ago
Wow, it seems like this will take a while to come out and I didn't see any word on pricing. A good alternative to this is a Beep. Beep sells devices that plug into any speakers audio jack to let you stream music from your phone. What's better is that it also syncs up multiple units so you can have your music in sync across your house. We've used them in our office a few times and love them. https://www.thisisbeep.com https://www.thisisbeep.com
- ZeroGravitas 12y ago
  I don't think it's been officially announced yet, but at least one of the reports on the new Google Cast stuff, and a dev who claims to work on one of the partner apps commenting on reddit, suggest that the audio cast stuff will synced audio across multiple devices. This would be a killer feature if true.
Navarr 12y ago
And their minisite: http://www.google.com/castaudio/ http://www.google.com/castaudio/
mililani 12y ago
So, when will Chrome Cast finally support Bluetooth audio? That's what I want.
ludite313 12y ago
I created an iOS App that allows you to stream audio directly from one device to another. It works great if you have an old iPod touch available. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/music-stream-free/id914026908?ls=1&mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/music-stream-free/id91402690...
dtjones 12y ago
Here is a list of all music apps supported: https://www.google.com/intl/en_us/chrome/devices/chromecast/apps.html?utm_source=chromecast.com#?category=music https://www.google.com/intl/en_us/chrome/devices/chromecast/... I wish Spotify would integrate..
taternuts 12y ago
>"Google Cast streams your music directly from the cloud instead of from your phone, so you won’t lose any sound quality." Huh??? This is almost _never_ the case in my opinion, especially when using popular cloud services for music playback. Pretty sure I just had to nerf a high quality .WAV file to a .WMV 20 minutes ago before I could even upload it to google music.
- Sargos 12y ago
  .wav is not a music format. It's meant for pure sound clips and doesn't even have the capability of adding metadata like artist and song name. If you care about sound quality then just use FLAC. The streaming quality from Google Music is top notch, it just seems that you had a problem getting the music into the service due to an antiquated format.
  - mattmcknight 12y ago
    The problem is with this part of the statement: "Google Cast Ready speakers pull content directly from the cloud, so you’ll get the best audio quality" Pulling content from the cloud doesn't not mean you'll get "the best" audio quality.
    - Sargos 12y ago
      Streaming over the internet will yield better quality than a Bluetooth stream which compresses the music. The bits that hit the speaker are as high quality as the source material.
      - mattmcknight 12y ago
        Right, that would then be "better than bluetooth", not "the best technology". In particular, the network induces latency and buffering problems.
  - taternuts 12y ago
    FLAC get's compressed to 320 by google music anyways
spdustin 12y ago
I use an Airport Express as an AirPlay receiver, which is connected to a line input on my Sonos setup. Nice thing is that Sonos can switch to that input automatically when it senses a signal. I've also used Shairport[0] on a Raspberry Pi as an AirPlay receiver - it worked great, I just wanted to keep tinkering with the Pi so I switched to the Airport Express, which I already owned. [0]: https://github.com/hendrikw82/shairport https://github.com/hendrikw82/shairport Edit: I see someone else already said that, whoops. FWIW, I didn't have any major audio quality issues in the brief time the Pi was used for AirPlay.
- thrownaway2424 12y ago
  Thing is if you have a Sonos already, then you have had music casting from Google for a while. It's not the same protocol, but the Google Play Music app has been able to "cast" to Sonos for at least some months, maybe a year or more.
guiomie 12y ago
I was going to by one out of excitement, but then I realised it is only available this spring. I might not buy it anymore, since the hype I had at this exact moment will be gone...
StringyBob 12y ago
Any support for multi-room audio? (or multiple remote speakers?) Sonos seem to be the only ones with a handle on this, and even then it's not particularly low latency...
- jonah 12y ago
  If you use SonosNet rather than your standard wifi network, it has much better latency.
- nobodyshere 12y ago
  iTunes does that with AirPorts
mauricesvay 12y ago
Is the protocol documented somewhere? Would be great to see a software implementation of that.
jonah 12y ago
Darn, I just bought a bunch of Sonos gear...
therealmarv 12y ago
Bluetooth speakers: Unbelievable but they also stream sound which is only locally on mobile phone. Why do all Googlers think that everybody in the whole world has good wifi everywhere?
- com2kid 12y ago
  BT Speakers typically use A2DP, which sounds horrid. Recompressing already compressed audio is not a path towards goodness. That said, reading up on A2DP, it seems that A2DP supports higher quality audio streams, but I have yet to see anyone advertise such in their products.
thechut 12y ago
Why is there not a dongle for this. This should have been the first step and part of the announcement.
dtx 12y ago
No Spotify? Wow. I don't even recognize half the music services it supports. As someone else said on this thread, I am happy with 320kbps music streaming on Spotify + it's remote control features + the recent hardware support for Spotify Connect.
Cub3 12y ago
Is it just me or has anyone else been waiting for multi-room audio, I don't understand why I can't 'cast' to two locations at once? Seems like they'd take the Sonos market pretty easily if/when implemented
- krrrh 12y ago
  As a recent Sonos convert, I really think that they are going to be hard to catch in terms of nailing so many aspects of the user experience. Not least of which is how good the hardware (esp the Play:1 speakers) sound and look. I Have to admit how surprised I was to learn that the same company that made those janky wall controller systems a decade ago is now the second largest speaker company in the world.
  - Cub3 12y ago
    My only issue is the price, the only thing it gives over any other implementation is the multi room aspect, as soon as a company like Google bakes it in to their already established platform I don't see them selling many units
bgruber 12y ago
well, i guess that means miracast is done for.
- com2kid 12y ago
  Miracast is such a POS, I am saddened by exactly how horrible it is. I have a Miracast setup with over a second latency for video. When it works at all.
shekhar101 12y ago
Totally unrelated but I have to know this! Somebody posted an article many months back that talked about DIY audio system that gives run for money to Bose, Beats and likes. It was open source design by an anon electrical engineer. Anyone knows what was it?
dannyrosen 12y ago
Surprised no one mentioned Mopidy[0] in the thread. From their github: Mopidy is an extensible music server that plays music from local disk, Spotify, SoundCloud, Google Play Music, and more. You edit the playlist from any phone, tablet, or computer using a range of MPD and web clients. [0]:https://github.com/mopidy/mopidy https://github.com/mopidy/mopidy

232 points by Navarr 12y ago

So Google has decided to compete with Airplay. Although I guess this is better, because I'm assuming it will work with any router, and not just special ones sold by Apple.

jamesbrownuhh 12y ago
Is that what you meant to say? AirPlay isn't restricted to special Apple routers either.
- ubercore 12y ago
  That is true, but I also believe there are some lower level "nice to haves" they enable on their routers to make sure Bonjour/mDNS works properly for airplay. If not intentionally, I do know that some routers (Actiontec / FiOS comes to mind) that have particular difficulty with providing reliable Airplay connections.
  - ubercore 12y ago
    I'll bite, can someone help me understand the downvotes? Actiontec routers (among others I'm sure) may not work well with Bonjour out of the box: https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#q=actiontec%20bonjour https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&e... Airports generally don't need attention for airplay, and that probably leads a lot of people to the impression that you need an Apple router.
JoelSutherland 12y ago
It's actually more like Sonos. Airplay streams from the device to the receiver. With this (and Sonos) a command is sent to the device which does the streaming on its own.
- matthewmacleod 12y ago
  I'm not sure that's totally accurate – I think AirPlay has multiple modes of operation, including the ability to stream directly from a third device. I don't remember the details of this off the top of my head.
pat2man 12y ago
Even better I bet speaker manufacturers will ship both and basically your speaker will "just work" regardless of what platform you are using.
- mikecb 12y ago
  This is the best news yet coming from the auto manufacturers and Android Auto/Apple Carplay. I personally would never choose one of the two, but the option will make both ecosystems more successful.

mankyd 12y ago

> Google Cast Ready speakers come with Cast technology built-in, so you don’t have to buy any additional equipment. Except for, you know, the entirely new speaker(s). I love this idea, but I want a simple, small dongle, like the chromecast, that outputs audio only rather than HDMI. I already have a speaker/amp in my living room that has a mini-stereo in. I simply want a way to connect a chromecast to it.

jluxenberg 12y ago
I use this HDMI audio extractor to turn a Chromecast into what you describe: http://www.amazon.com/J-Tech-Digital-Premium-Extractor-Converter/dp/B00BIQER0E/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1420478005&sr=8-1&keywords=hdmi+audio+extractor http://www.amazon.com/J-Tech-Digital-Premium-Extractor-Conve...
- brerlapn 12y ago
  That is pretty slick. I've had a Squeezebox for years, but it's not too helpful for Youtube benders. For now, I've just got audio out from the TV to the stereo which works fine for casting. The audio's not hi-def but usually the quality of the source audio is the bottleneck in my experience, not the RCA audio connection.
- andybak 12y ago
  Here's a slightly cheaper way to do the same thing: http://liliputing.com/2014/02/10-adapter-turns-chromecast-into-cheap-sonos-competitor.html http://liliputing.com/2014/02/10-adapter-turns-chromecast-in...
  - rcraft 12y ago
    I can confirm that that little device no longer works. The old models worked without the VGA portion needing to be plugged in, however the new models shipping from China don't work unless the VGA unit is plugged into something, which basically defeats the purpose. I am now using this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DMZOUVK/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00DMZOUVK/ref=oh_aui_detai... which is working great.

Jack5500 12y ago

I own a Chromecast and like all about it except it's ability to play oyur own content. I understand why they forbid it, but for the same reasons I'm using it much mroe rarely than I would otherwise. Additionally this could have easily been an addition to the original Chromecast via a simple extractor.

Scaevolus 12y ago
Plex works well with Chromecast to play your own media.
Reebles 12y ago
There are actually many apps that allow you to play local content now. It was pretty bad for a while before they released the SDK though. The two I use are Videostream for Google Chrome, and BubbleUPnP for Android.
- _lce0 12y ago
  Have you seen which permissions those kind of apps require? I don't want to allow these apps to read my history, share my contacts, or expose the current running apps just to cast some media ..
  - parfe 12y ago
    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bubblesoft.android.bubbleupnp&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bubblesoft... https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.videostream.Mobile&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.videostrea... Which permissions do you take issue with? I don't see anything like what you claim.
  - Shog9 12y ago
    https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.findsdk.apppermission&hl=en https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.findsdk.ap... I won't even run the Facebook or LinkedIn apps without locking them down first. Frankly, it's somewhat negligent that this isn't built into the Play Store installation UI.

Reebles 12y ago

Will we finally get gapless playback in the Chromecast's native music player? I've tried to use my Chromecast for music, but the gaps between tracks are just complete deal breakers for many albums. I had just assumed audio was not a priority for google.

Navarr 12y ago
Chromecast is just a web browser - so I imagine that's due to the client (which each service has their own, I think). Not sure what exactly they're doing for audio casting, but I imagine it's dependent on the service to implement properly
rikkus 12y ago
It's a deal breaker for me, yes. It took years to persuade Spotify to fix this problem.
radley 12y ago
The sdk offers gapless playback but the OS still can't actually do it. Poweramp is one of the few apps that can do gapless, but it uses ffmpg instead of native.

drdaeman 12y ago

"Google Cast is designed to give you more freedom while listening to music." I sense some irony in this statement.

makomk 12y ago
It almost makes AirPlay open by comparison. At least that lets you stream your local music collection rather than restricting you to approved cloud music services.
- bitskits 12y ago
  Google Play Music supports this. Upload your audio files; stream from anywhere. No subscription needed.
  - ubercow 12y ago
    emphasis here being on local music collection. I don't want to have to upload a huge library of music just to stream it to my local network, where I already have the music on my hard drive.
    - 9point6 12y ago
      There are other apps that allow you to stream your local music if that's what you want to do (AllCast, BubbleUPnP, etc). But I've always wondered about this argument - Why wouldn't you put your local music library on Google music? It's free and means you've got access to your library everywhere. I could understand before they had matching that uploading 100+GB of music is probably not desirable, but it now even big libraries are fully uploaded in a day or so.
- BHSPitMonkey 12y ago
  If you expose your local media over HTTP (doesn't even need to be world-accessible), a Chromecast on the same network can play it.
- djur 12y ago

_lce0 12y ago

I don't want to cast from the cloud. Just make the device able to receive any media from my LAN!! it's nice that the dongle can stream from the web, but it's way more useful to make the device aware of upnp/dlna devices over my local network. Because of this I've moved to raspberry which - exposes itself over the network as a upnp device - plays remote media in the main TV - acts as a nas, it can stream to kids' room - downloads media via torrents (that I can remotely control) Plus it's a fully Linux environment that I can fine tune as desired

andybak 12y ago
> I don't want to cast from the cloud. It certainly helps battery life for your mobile device to step aside as soon as playback has started. When casting video it doesn't matter even if I turn the device off.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  Its possible to have things on your LAN other than mobile devices.
  - gtaylor 12y ago
    To be clear, you can cast from desktops, laptops, or anything that can run Chrome.
  - mikecb 12y ago
    And you can stream from a local device. See plex.
- drdaeman 12y ago
  You know, UPnP has media renderers, servers and control software as three separate matters. This is already a solved problem. And, well, I had controlled mpd running on my desktop machine (that has the speakers connected) and streaming from my NAS from my N900, like, 5 years ago. Replace desktop with something like rPI and the tech is here.

hengheng 12y ago

Very nice. I'm right now sitting in front of a schematics of a nice modern modular stereo hi-fi amplifier that I'm building. I made sure to leave plenty of internal interconnects for BTO radio modules, so that I could accomodate for Bluetooth, DAB, UPnP rendering, TI CC8520 or whatever wireless standard would be coming my way later down the line. Seems that I can now plan to add a Google Cast radio module that can be integrated into the device. I don't even have to change my design it seems, I don't even have to put all my money on this horse, and I can still do without this gadget at first and get the basic device to market as quickly as possible. Neat.

matthewmcg 12y ago
This sounds really neat--any information on your product you can share?
- hengheng 12y ago
  Will do! I'm finishing up the design right now, and I plan to go DIY first anyways in order to get some quick feedback, circumvent expensive EMI certification, and to sell some units before having to go into case manufacturing. As soon as the prototype shows it's working at the quality level I hope it will, we'll start marketing it, and I'll make sure to drop you a note right then!
  - Roritharr 12y ago
    This is really cool! I've looked far and wide for got a good stereo amplifier that is customizable, but such things don't seem to exist! Please let us know more!
tacos 12y ago
Probably want the RF transmitting components outside the shielded amplifier chassis...
- hengheng 12y ago
  There usually are antenna output pins even on some of the cheapest Bluetooth modules, and I plan to go for an all metal case anyways. You've certainly got a point though ;-)

acgourley 12y ago

Note the lack of spotify support. It's turning into a bit of a showdown between players like google cast and spotify connect. There will definitely be a small market in building devices which can serve as bridges between the standards.

ultrafez 12y ago
It's disappointing that we are in the situation where we have several competing protocols for streaming audio - Google Cast, AirPlay, Spotify Connect, UPnP/DLNA. As a society we are capable of making software and hardware that interoperate among manufacturers - email and HTTP are good examples. We could be a far more technologically advanced world if capitalism didn't encourage companies to create competing closed-source protocols that only benefit the companies themselves, to the detriment of everyone else.
- carsonreinke 12y ago
  This is how I feel every time there is an announcement like this.
- acgourley 12y ago
  To be fair, the existing UPnP/DLNA standard really wasn't good enough. For example, AirPlay just added wifi direct connections between devices which is a requirement for good streaming video. On balance I believe it's a net positive to have some competing standards for a while as we figure out what works best. I do hope we can arrive at some interoperable standards, or we can at least mitigate the spread via low cost adapter devices.
- nightski 12y ago
  Yes but if everyone agreed on a standard I could see us all complaining that "we could be far more technologically advanced world if we didn't force everyone to use the same standard and there was more room for innovation and competition".
- nobodyshere 12y ago
  Spotify still works through AirPlay though.

shoggs 12y ago

I don't like the way Google Cast always needs to connect to a service before playing any media. This could be a little bit annoying with audio. Its okay for me to wait a couple seconds to connect for watching a movie. But let's say you wanna switch from Google Music to Spotify, it's always gonna take some time.

_lce0 12y ago
And have you tried to use it without internet access? It completely refuse to work. My ISP had some problem that let 200 families without service for a week. Although I have my local network fully working, the dongle refused to boot
- dotunderscore 12y ago
  You are aware that the chromecast is really nothing more then a web browser in a stick? It has no storage for any thing other then the firmware to run the device.
  - ajanuary 12y ago
    A local network is more than capable of serving up the chromecast app. It's a restriction they've added to the device that it won't load it from a local network.
    - sangnoir 12y ago
      I think "restriction" is a poor choice: it's more like an architectural decision - that is exactly how they designed it. I could equally say your computer is more than capable of running a self-hosted version of GMail, but "it's a restriction [Google] added" for them to run it on their servers.
      - ajanuary 12y ago
        I run a Plex media server on my laptop, which is already serving up content to my local network over http. It would be very simple for them to host their Chromecast app on the same local server and for the cast button to send that URL. The Chromecast checks the URLs against a whitelist. Presumably as a security measure, which is a perfectly valid reason, but it's still a "restriction". To allow people to run a self-hosted GMail, huge changes would need to be made to the code. To allow me to serve my own Chromecast apps, it would need to remove a whitelist check.

quotemstr 12y ago

It'd be nice if I could turn my old Squeezebox Boom into a client for this thing.

dchuk 12y ago

I love my Chromecasts. I have two of them in our house, and we don't have a television subscription, we just use a mixture of Plex, Netflix, and streams for sports. We're saving a bunch of money every year now, and it works great. But damn, the lack of a desktop sdk/api for chromecast is just infuriating. I get it, Google believes in Mobile and Web only, but you'd think if they're shooting for market domination, they wouldn't ignore an entire market segment in terms of developer options.

sanderjd 12y ago
Pretty off-topic, but what sports streams do you use? I'd love to ditch cable, but can't seem to find good replacements for sports.
- dchuk 12y ago
  Been using the links posted here for NFL: http://www.reddit.com/r/nflstreams http://www.reddit.com/r/nflstreams There are sidebar links for other sports too.
jdboyd 12y ago
This is why I'm hoping for the Matchstick project to work out. Some apps that work with ChromeCast already just work with Matchstick. They recently posted about trying to get supported for DRM requiring apps like NetFlix. There should be more news this week from CES. Of course, for my to consider this a success, I want to see the software running on more than just their HDMI dongle. People have already compiled it to run on some Chinese dongles with the same CPU, but I'd like to see it also run on some more open platforms like Freescale iMX.6, Allwinner A20, and most especially X86.

tek-cyb-org 12y ago

Ive been doing google cast audio. It's called, Chromecast+hdmi analog audio extractor=free youtube music to home audio system. :)

andreyf 12y ago

> Google Cast Ready speakers pull content directly from the cloud, so you'll get the best audio quality and can freely multi-task on your phone, tablet, or laptop, all without straining the battery Is it that much of a battery strain to connect to a radio in the house, and usually in the same room? The device that'll be doing it is designed to connect to cell towers up dozens of miles away [1], after all... 1. http://smallbusiness.chron.com/far-can-cell-tower-cellphone-pick-up-signal-32124.html http://smallbusiness.chron.com/far-can-cell-tower-cellphone-...

andybak 12y ago
It's about letting your mobile device sleep rather than to constantly be (semi)-awake to push audio.

cheshire137 12y ago

Might be nicer than wrestling with my Vizio soundbar to connect via Bluetooth. Takes multiple attempts to make it connect to any of my devices (laptop, phone, or tablet), then sound drops and gets flaky frequently when I stream music.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

sv3nss0n 12y ago

http://www.google.com/castaudio/ http://www.google.com/castaudio/ gives a 404...

vpontis 12y ago
I just checked and it's working fine for me.
- sv3nss0n 12y ago
  yes, now it works for me too.

lowlevel 12y ago

A full 10 years after AirTunes. Yay.

vpontis 12y ago

Wow, it seems like this will take a while to come out and I didn't see any word on pricing. A good alternative to this is a Beep. Beep sells devices that plug into any speakers audio jack to let you stream music from your phone. What's better is that it also syncs up multiple units so you can have your music in sync across your house. We've used them in our office a few times and love them. https://www.thisisbeep.com https://www.thisisbeep.com

ZeroGravitas 12y ago
I don't think it's been officially announced yet, but at least one of the reports on the new Google Cast stuff, and a dev who claims to work on one of the partner apps commenting on reddit, suggest that the audio cast stuff will synced audio across multiple devices. This would be a killer feature if true.

Navarr 12y ago

And their minisite: http://www.google.com/castaudio/ http://www.google.com/castaudio/

mililani 12y ago

So, when will Chrome Cast finally support Bluetooth audio? That's what I want.

ludite313 12y ago

I created an iOS App that allows you to stream audio directly from one device to another. It works great if you have an old iPod touch available. https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/music-stream-free/id914026908?ls=1&mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/music-stream-free/id91402690...

dtjones 12y ago

Here is a list of all music apps supported: https://www.google.com/intl/en_us/chrome/devices/chromecast/apps.html?utm_source=chromecast.com#?category=music https://www.google.com/intl/en_us/chrome/devices/chromecast/... I wish Spotify would integrate..

taternuts 12y ago

>"Google Cast streams your music directly from the cloud instead of from your phone, so you won’t lose any sound quality." Huh??? This is almost _never_ the case in my opinion, especially when using popular cloud services for music playback. Pretty sure I just had to nerf a high quality .WAV file to a .WMV 20 minutes ago before I could even upload it to google music.

Sargos 12y ago
.wav is not a music format. It's meant for pure sound clips and doesn't even have the capability of adding metadata like artist and song name. If you care about sound quality then just use FLAC. The streaming quality from Google Music is top notch, it just seems that you had a problem getting the music into the service due to an antiquated format.
- mattmcknight 12y ago
  The problem is with this part of the statement: "Google Cast Ready speakers pull content directly from the cloud, so you’ll get the best audio quality" Pulling content from the cloud doesn't not mean you'll get "the best" audio quality.
  - Sargos 12y ago
    Streaming over the internet will yield better quality than a Bluetooth stream which compresses the music. The bits that hit the speaker are as high quality as the source material.
    - mattmcknight 12y ago
      Right, that would then be "better than bluetooth", not "the best technology". In particular, the network induces latency and buffering problems.
- taternuts 12y ago
  FLAC get's compressed to 320 by google music anyways

spdustin 12y ago

I use an Airport Express as an AirPlay receiver, which is connected to a line input on my Sonos setup. Nice thing is that Sonos can switch to that input automatically when it senses a signal. I've also used Shairport[0] on a Raspberry Pi as an AirPlay receiver - it worked great, I just wanted to keep tinkering with the Pi so I switched to the Airport Express, which I already owned. [0]: https://github.com/hendrikw82/shairport https://github.com/hendrikw82/shairport Edit: I see someone else already said that, whoops. FWIW, I didn't have any major audio quality issues in the brief time the Pi was used for AirPlay.

thrownaway2424 12y ago
Thing is if you have a Sonos already, then you have had music casting from Google for a while. It's not the same protocol, but the Google Play Music app has been able to "cast" to Sonos for at least some months, maybe a year or more.

guiomie 12y ago

I was going to by one out of excitement, but then I realised it is only available this spring. I might not buy it anymore, since the hype I had at this exact moment will be gone...

StringyBob 12y ago

Any support for multi-room audio? (or multiple remote speakers?) Sonos seem to be the only ones with a handle on this, and even then it's not particularly low latency...

jonah 12y ago
If you use SonosNet rather than your standard wifi network, it has much better latency.
nobodyshere 12y ago
iTunes does that with AirPorts

mauricesvay 12y ago

Is the protocol documented somewhere? Would be great to see a software implementation of that.

jonah 12y ago

Darn, I just bought a bunch of Sonos gear...

therealmarv 12y ago

Bluetooth speakers: Unbelievable but they also stream sound which is only locally on mobile phone. Why do all Googlers think that everybody in the whole world has good wifi everywhere?

com2kid 12y ago
BT Speakers typically use A2DP, which sounds horrid. Recompressing already compressed audio is not a path towards goodness. That said, reading up on A2DP, it seems that A2DP supports higher quality audio streams, but I have yet to see anyone advertise such in their products.

thechut 12y ago

Why is there not a dongle for this. This should have been the first step and part of the announcement.

dtx 12y ago

No Spotify? Wow. I don't even recognize half the music services it supports. As someone else said on this thread, I am happy with 320kbps music streaming on Spotify + it's remote control features + the recent hardware support for Spotify Connect.

Cub3 12y ago

Is it just me or has anyone else been waiting for multi-room audio, I don't understand why I can't 'cast' to two locations at once? Seems like they'd take the Sonos market pretty easily if/when implemented

krrrh 12y ago
As a recent Sonos convert, I really think that they are going to be hard to catch in terms of nailing so many aspects of the user experience. Not least of which is how good the hardware (esp the Play:1 speakers) sound and look. I Have to admit how surprised I was to learn that the same company that made those janky wall controller systems a decade ago is now the second largest speaker company in the world.
- Cub3 12y ago
  My only issue is the price, the only thing it gives over any other implementation is the multi room aspect, as soon as a company like Google bakes it in to their already established platform I don't see them selling many units

bgruber 12y ago

well, i guess that means miracast is done for.

com2kid 12y ago
Miracast is such a POS, I am saddened by exactly how horrible it is. I have a Miracast setup with over a second latency for video. When it works at all.

shekhar101 12y ago

Totally unrelated but I have to know this! Somebody posted an article many months back that talked about DIY audio system that gives run for money to Bose, Beats and likes. It was open source design by an anon electrical engineer. Anyone knows what was it?

dannyrosen 12y ago

Surprised no one mentioned Mopidy[0] in the thread. From their github: Mopidy is an extensible music server that plays music from local disk, Spotify, SoundCloud, Google Play Music, and more. You edit the playlist from any phone, tablet, or computer using a range of MPD and web clients. [0]:https://github.com/mopidy/mopidy https://github.com/mopidy/mopidy