Google Chromecast Audio

[lyapounov]

Hello everyone !!!

as I have moved for I don't know how long in San Francisco, I am looking for a nice simple DNLA Renderer which would read music on my Synology (thx Simon for minimserver :-) and connect to a Bose Soundlink HP, a very good HP BTW.

So far, I use DSAudio on a Itouch, but it is not DNLA, does not use minimserver etc...

I was envisaging the Chromecast Audio, very cheap.

However :

- it does not seem to be DNLA, but it seems it can talk to minimserver ???

- it does not seem to be gapless ???

Has someone here already tested the configuration ? Any other recommendation (qED uPlay or ???)

Thx for any answer !!!

Cheers

[likescookies]

I'm also running MinimServer on my Synology, and I also use a Chromecast Audio. I stream gaplessly to the Chromecast Audio by using an Android app called Hi-Fi Cast, which is excellent and under active development. It hands off the audio in such a way that the Chromecast can play FLAC, mp3, and AAC gaplessly. It works great.

On Android at least, you can also mirror audio on your phone to the Chromecast Audio and in theory use any DLNA renderer, but in practice this approach eats battery fast.

[Cebolla]

Just to be clear, the Chromecast Audio does not in itself support gapless playback. The Hi-Fi Cast Android app is actually performing the gapless playback of those FLAC, MP3 and AAC files, not the Chromecast. The Chromecast Audio is receiving the output of the Hi-Fi Cast app playing those files as a PCM stream, not the actual files themselves. If anything it is very similar to the Google Home app's function of the mirroring audio on the Android Device, so also resulting in similar battery drain.

The main difference between the output of the Hi-Fi Cast app playing the files that's being 'mirrored' and the mirroring that the official Google Home app performs, is that you are guranteed the ideal of a bit perfect transfer according to the Hi-Fi Cast app's developer and you are trusting to luck as to what the Google Home app is doing as far as the quality of the audio is concerned.

[likescookies]

Cebolla, are you sure? My experience running Hi-Fi Cast has been that the battery usage has been negligible, but when I was mirroring Hi-Fi Cast (to play Vorbis files, which are not gapless), the drain was noticeable, more than than I expected.

It's possible that I've been fooled by confirmation bias, but what you are describing doesn't match my experience.

[Cebolla]

I didn't mean that the battery drain would be the same compared to mirroring with the Google Home app, but Hi-Fi cast would certainly be running the battery down more in gapless mode, than in non-gapless mode, due to the extra work I mentioned it needing to do to provide the gapless support. The only real way to test by how much on your particular device is to cast a FLAC playlist using Hi-Fi Cast with gapless support switched on, over say a couple of hours and then compare the battery drain of the same, but with Hi-Fi Cast's gapless support switched off.

[likescookies]

Yep, thanks--that makes sense. I'd expect Hi-Fi Cast to use more battery to keep everything gapless than it would in non-gapless mode. Thankfully, in my experience the battery hit has not been dramatic, but it would definitely be something the poster would want to test before buying (fortunately, Hi-Fi Cast has a significant try-before-you-buy limit built in).

[lyapounov]

I can confirm that only a firmware change from Google can make the Chromecasr gapless.

Any app which does that means that the app is not a control point but acts as a renderer, which does drain the battery for sure !