Contributor I

Chromecast - Hardware of Software Update Needed

Forum|Forum|8 years ago
April 5, 2018
5 replies
3816 views

I am new to the Sonos world and am currently testing out a Sonos Play:1 before deciding whether to fully jump in with their system.

If Sonos adds Chromecast support to its speakers such that various Sonos rooms become castable destinations natively from Android apps that are compatible with Chromecast, would this require a hardware or a software update? If it is a software update, I would have hope that this could be added to existing Sonos speakers and then I can go ahead and expand my system. If a hardware update is needed, I may hold off on purchasing speakers until this feature is added.

I recognize that Chromecast compatibility has been discussed at length in these forums, but I have not seen an answer to this question yet.

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ratty

Sonos don't announce their development intentions. You'd need to add a Sonos device which supports analog Line-In, such as PLAY:5 or CONNECT, and use a Chromecast Audio dongle.

E

EasyListenerAuthor

Contributor I

Hi Ratty,

I understand all of that. What I am asking is if or when Sonos ever does add Chromecast compatibility, would such an update be hardware based or software based. This impacts whether or not it can be pushed out to old speakers or would only be available for speakers purchased after the update. I believe that without getting into Sonos' development intentions, someone with understanding of the engineering behind this potential update would know the answer.

ratty

I'm afraid you're highly unlikely to get any official answer from Sonos. That wouldn't stop speculation by the uninformed of course.

The later Sonos players have more memory and CPU cycles, but that's the only data point.

UKMedia

As per Ratty's comments, I would expect some form of Chromecast support to be available when Google Assistant is released on the Sonos One (Due 2018) - which we are led to believe will be a purely software update. However and as per the comments from Ratty, the exact scope of the GA functionality has not and probably won't be released before the launch by Sonos. I currently use a Connect with Chromecast Audio connected to the Line-In but the Audio quality compared to the Sonos App is substandard at this moment in time----in my opinion. 🙂

Remember: Sometimes Red Wine helps :)

K

Kumar

I have been able to stream Google Music from an Android device to any Sonos wirelessly from the GPM app for some years now and it works fine.

More extended casting needs a Chromecast dongle wired to a line in jack on a Sonos unit - unfortunately, the play 1 has hobbled itself from day 1 by not offering a line in jack.

I have a dongle lying around, bought as a toy to play around with when it was launched. Sound quality into Sonos line in jacks was never a problem. I dumped it only because it is nowhere as usable as Connect because lack of any buttons on it required searching for the phone for every little intervention.

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