For the money, using a smart speaker is probably the best solution for multiroom audio. I have tons of first gen google minis around my house, and they work well for me. The Google devices are kind of limiting to their ecosystem though since they don't have an audio out port like the alexa devices.
this post was submitted on 13 Nov 2023
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Home Automation
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That’s what we have, one in nearly every room. We use them as a whole house music system while cleaning, and intercom system when we don’t want to yell across the house, we can control the smart home devices, in a pinch we can use them to call anyone from our contacts. I like them, but seems most everyone did not.
i’ve got five homepods as my house audio, they work well for that. got sonos arc/sub/surrounds in the lounge but more often than not i’ll just play music on all the homepods instead because they sound fine and fill the house.
They're kinda shitty? I think the Maxs are better - but its usual consumer audio 'ooh what a great bass' kinda crap.
Soon^tm you'll probably be in a situation where off-the-shelf flexible smart speakers for local hass are more common.
It will link to the chromecast in as much as you can add the TV to a group and play something to a whole group of speakers.
Audio quality is obviously an issue, certainly in your "main" room at least I'd at least get a MAX.
The other issue with the Google speakers right now is that you can only have one "group" due to some patent thing they lost to Sonos.
I've also had some issues with robustness of having 7 of the speakers playing at once -- they tend to drop out often for small intervals. But that could just be a me thing.
Audio quality is the primary issue, as they have pretty much zero bass. No spotify cross fade support, so you'll have that super awkward gab between songs. They do not support playing music on spotify from the TV AFAIK.
The Google home assistant will have you swearing at it at least once a day… same with Siri
Alexa’s wake word is too common so it gets triggered constantly, but actually realizes it was a false negative and doesn’t say anything, google will trigger then start doing whatever was said even though it’s obviously not directed at it.
The screens tend to be better than the minis at this stuff. I’d avoid it if you can. I use one mini in the bathroom, and honestly it was only because it was sitting in a drawer not being used, so if it dies due to steam, oh well!
Zero bass on the minis. Second hand HomePods would sound best. More cost effective would be 2nd hand Chromecast’s or Airport expresses with external speakers.
I have 3 mini's, and a couple nest hub max's plus a nicer Sony speaker with assistant... and it's totally workable. The mini's are totally fine for playing music in the kitchen or streaming news. They're tiny, stay out of the way, and handle HA activations. Will they provide great audio that will blow my guests minds? nah, but ok for a bit of noise and distraction while making dinner or unloading the dishwasher. The hubs are good photoframes that provide better sound, perfectly good in my office when I just want something other than the whir of PC fans and keyboard clacking. The sony speaker is great because it's got a giant battery, sounds pretty decent, and super portable. I take it on vacation or camping where I have a cell signal, and just use my phone's hotspot to allow it to stream.
I don't use spotify, I use YT Music (RIP Google Music) but it should work pretty much the same if you select it as your default provider.
Setup is dead simple, and once any of the devices is streaming you can go into the queue, and add and remove items, rearrange or whatever.
I have a pair of them. For the price you can't beat them. Sure there are better ones. You should get one and try it out. If you don't use if for streaming you can use it to know what your home automations are doing. It's easy to cast text to voice to them.
Depends on how deep your into the google ecosystem. They used to work for audio from video, now it’s just audio sources. -For me they no longer show up when casting a video source, just pure audio sources. This might sound trivial, until you try listen to music from Youtube instead of YouTubeMusic. ..or try casting audio from most tv’s.
If you use same network for IoT as regular wifi stuff, google’s multicast might mess with ESP32’s or similar. My powermeter-to-homeserver device gets interupted when used on same network as 6 minis and 3 chromecasts. I don’t even have to have an active cast going.