Best multi room speakers

Hardware Home Automation
1

Hi,

I want to start a new project: Integration of multi room speakers in my OH instance.

I want to start playing music if someone goes into to the bath and such things. This is not a problem. Source of the music is internet radio, my one music database or youtube music. So my question is, what are the best speakers for that. In the future I also what to play music in more than one room. I read many articles about multi room speakers from Teufel and Sonos. Some articles from Teufel are three or four years old. So Iā€™m a little confused.

Maybe someone has a tip for me?

Greetings

2

Iā€˜m using sonos and love them. The grouping is managed by my sonos multiroom rule and the related openHAB3 widget.

Widget: Sonos Player widget for OH3 mainUI
Rule: Sonos Multiroom rule for openHAB 3

If you use an internet radio, spotify amazon music or any other online music service they are great. But if you want to speak e.g. Youtube there are some limitations. This is only possible via airplay or if you have sonos device with an line in like the Play5.

An alternative is to emulate a radio service on your computer and let the sonos group play this emulated radio. So you can play sound from your computer on any device without a line in

1 Like
3

just use any speaker you have with raspberry for fraction of price of sonos ā€¦ what you really need is Logitech Media Server on docker + squeezelite as clients all over the place ā€¦ i canā€™t really figure out better solution out there, it;s just superb

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4

There are many answers to this as it would depend on the route you wish to go.

Personally I built up a system using Raspberry Piā€™s with the Max2Play software ( Max2Play | Audiophile Music and Video Player, Headless Setup Raspberry Pi and Odroid). I chose this route as I would not be spending money on fully contained units that may get outdated, instead I was able to wire up good quality speakers to the Piā€™s and should technology change in the future I can update the Piā€™s without necessarily replacing the speakers.

Max2Play is compatible with Logitech Media Server, so you can play your local music database through that, or you can play Internet Radio easily - I donā€™t use youtube music but I believe there is a plugin for that.

5

Itā€™s a bit difficult to find Squeezeboxes nowadays, but a perfect replacment is a Raspberry Pi Zero WH and a Hifiberry Miniamp. The volume is enough for just listening to music. If you need more volume, just use a different hifiberry component and/or an amplifier.

Installation is easy, just install squeezelite on top of a current Raspbian.

6

I started down the path of setting up RPiā€™s to do this. In the end I just use the Google Home devices I already had deployed to various rooms. It works quite nicely and when I want better quality sound I have a Google Chromecast Audio attached to the good speakers.

7

How do you send Music to the Google home audio? By your smartphone? Or does a rule sends music? I tried to send Music via chromecast binding but it did not work

8

Most of the time I just say ā€œHey google, play Dirtware on Youtube Musicā€ or ā€œHey google, play some music on the main floor groupā€ or the like. If itā€™s not supported by the Hub natively, Iā€™ll start it on my phone and cast it to the CC group (e.g. PocketCasts).

The OH integration is mostly passive from that perspective. If I ever wanted more I would implement OrangeAssist - Google Assistant Integration. But thus far Iā€™ve not had a use case to actually launch a stream from openHAB.

But if you want to send audio using the CC binding, Iā€™ve had the playuri channel work for me in the past. Itā€™s just a pain to find the right URI for most of the streaming apps.