HedleyLamarr

I tried to make it work every which way I could, but I just couldn't get it to work properly. I bought an Airport Express and hooked it up via Ethernet to my network, and as much as I don't like iTunes, the fact is that it works. It maxes out at 44.1, but I can't hear the difference between 44.1 and 96 - I never have been. What I can hear is a difference between ethernet -> Airport Express -> Vanatoos and Wi-Fi -> Chromecast -> Vanatoos. The Airport Express soultion sounds less compressed to my ear. I definitely noticed a difference between the AE hooked up via WiFi and ethernet too. I think it's a bandwidth issue. Anyway, I will put the Chromecasts elsewhere for casual listening. Apparently the guys at Rogue Amoeba are adding chromecast support to Airfoil (no idea how since there isn't a Windows or Mac SDK, but they say they are doing it) and the way Airfoil works I'm optimistic that using Airfoil will handle the gapless part, as in iTunes will handle the gapless before Airfoil casts it to the CA. We'll see. Bottom line is that the CA was a good experiment, but for now the Apple soultion is way better from a fidelity and gapless perspective. The downside is that I will probably need to buy an iPhone instead of a Nexus to have my tunes in the car.

I'm not sure what Spotify is doing from a technical perspective. All I know is that on whatever device I play Spotify on, CA, Mac, Phone, Tablet, that is is gapless. I found this: https://news.spotify.com/us/2012/02/23/spotify-now-with-gapless-playback-crossfade/ My test was to put two long live albums and two Pink Floyd albums (Rush R40, Exit... Stage Left, Pink Floyd DSoTM (2011 with live) and Wish You Were Here) into a playlist, start casting that from my iPad and then immediately kill the app. It played through perfectly, not a single gap. Unfortunately even though there are numerous articles on the Web suggesting that Google Music is "now gapless!" It has gaps on every device I've tried it on, even music I'm uploaded to my locker that I know is gapless. If Google Music would go gapless I would use that instead of Spotify and upload all my rare stuff to my locker. What I mean specifically is that you can start a cast on a device or web, kill the app or browser, and it continues to play, and that you can "reconnect" with a device and see what's currently playing and modify it if you want. Google Music and Spotify do this. Bubble UPnP does not (at least in my testing - I could be doing it wrong). Plex keeps casting after killing the app. Actually as a side note I really like Plex's UI, both their tablet apps and web based. If they could play gapless to GCA it would be the perfect solution with BubbleUPnP Server to transcode additional formats. Plex can act as a DLNA/UPnP server, but I'm not sure that when using the Plex app that it's using standard UPnP protocols. This is all frustrating to me. It really seems like gapless playback should be a basic requirement of any music playback system. iTunes has been doing it for 20 years. I'm not seeing what the technical challenge is other than the people that originally wrote these protocols are ignorant of how various types of music are consumed.

That's unfortunate. Interestingly I just discovered that Synology's DS Audio in the browser does play back gapless (or so it sounds to me) I've been testing with some Pink Floyd. What's puzzling is that casting from the browser is gapless, but from the DS Audio iOS apps is not. I can't see what's actually being sent to the CA so I don't know if it's down sampling or doing something else. If I close the browser tab it stops, so not sure it's even a proper cast - when I close Google Music or Spotify it keeps playing. Honestly if Google Music could make the stream gapless I'd probably be fine with that given their locker capabilities. In all my testing Google Music isn't gapless on the web or any device.

Spotify is actually casting. I tested that by starting a cast and shutting the tablet off. I started DSoTM 2011 edition (Has the live version as well as the studio version) - I started it and then shut off my Nexus and listened to the entire thing - no audible gaps. Doing the same test with Bubble, it finishes playing the current song and stops. Which actually makes it all the more frustrating, becasue the GCA is a very impressive piece of technology for $35, especially with the 24/96 and the multi-room capabilities (it even supports delay). If it could do gapless it would do everything the Sonos Connect does for 1/10th the price (except the low end DAC part maybe, which I don't care about). I could live with needing the device remaining active to stream local files, in fact part of my plan for Chromecasts was to get some Lenovo 8" Yoga tablets to control media selection and playback, as well as home automation stuff. Other solutions I could live with: Spotify having a locker ability like Google Music. Preferably without down sampling, but for this use case I can live with 320kbps. Google Music fixing their gapless playback. Ditto the above re: down sampling. Tidal introducing an upload ability like Google. I haven't tried Tidal, not sure if it's gapless. $20/month is pretty steep, but I could live with it if I could upload my own files, it's lossless and gapless. If Google would release Windows and OSX SDKs then local applications like Doubletwist could also be made to work. I'm hopeful but not optimistic that Google will add UPnP/DLNA capabilities to the thing.

No, I really don't like their stuff from what I've heard. I do like their app, which seems to be the best that I've seen. The Spotify app is actually pretty good as well, but no local files from a NAS. I was doing iTunes with Airport Express, but that isn't a good solution for multi-room unless you have ethernet, and they have timing issues if you have multiple Airport Expresses. I've been looking at the Denon stuff - their HEOS Link looks way better than the Sonos Connect, but the Heos App isn't great. BlueSiubnd endpoints can be had for $350 periodically from Crutchfield, but I've not heard good things about their app. I get the impression that Google is only really interested in web based services, and they want to sell Google Music. Adding features to GCA that lets it be used as an endpoint for non-web services doesn't help them sell their services. This also helps explain why there is no desktop (Windows, OS X) SDK for Chromecast, and why Google doesn't seem to respond to inquiries about that. All I really want is multi-room audio with my own speakers and amps, with my NAS and Spotify as the source. It has to be wireless for the most part - wiring my house for audio, I might as well rip all the drywall down - no attic. Edited to add that if Google could make Google Music gapless like Spotify, I would be OK uploading the music that they don't have to my locker. I can always hit my NAS directly from my main receiver if I want to do some serious listening.

Thanks for the detailed reply. I suspect that a $35 endpoint is too good to be true, which is really a shame, because with BubbleUPnP server transcoding, the ability to stream 24/96 is basically all I need. The only thing keeping me from Chromecast is the lack of gapless. I don't know how Spotify may be different from Google Music, but Google Music has small gaps as well. I've been listening to Spotify 320kbps files for the last couple of days and to my (admittedly poor) ear, the gaps, if there, are inaudible.

I have the following stuff currently: Chromecast Audio (CA) Synology NAS 1515+ Macs Various iOS devices Android tablet For the most part I'm very impressed by the CA device. As far as I can tell when casting if using the optical connection on the CA the stream is sent from source to endpoint untouched. This is a good thing. (as a side note I know that I can't really hear the difference between 320kbps AAC and 24/96 FLAC, and I can't hear anything over 14kHz) There are a couple of issues with it that I have discovered, the first being that there isn't a native OS X or Windows SDK. I'm not a fan of browser based apps (primarily becasue I'm a web application developer and I'm always crashing my browser) I could live with that one becasue I have a bunch of iOS devices, and I can get Android tables if needed, but the one that is a complete deal breaker is that when streaming ANY files from my NAS there is no gapless support. Imagine listening to "Dark Side Of The Moon" with a 3 second (or longer) gap between "On The Run" and "Time". Ugh. Might as well not bother. I have tried a number of servers and apps to no avail. I have tried Plex, with web, iOS and Android clients. Gaps. I've tried adding BubbleUPnP Server. No help. I've tried DS Audio. Same. I've tried MinimServer with and without BubbleUPnP Server. Same. If I use BubbleUPnP on my Android device with a local renderer, as in not casting, the playback is gapless. So I know the client software is capable of gapless playback. If I cast Spotify from iOS or Android, that is also gapless, so I know that the CA device should handle it. I feel like I'm tantalizingly close here, and that I'm just being stupid and missing something obvious. I'm perfectly willing to buy software if needed, set up a linux or windows box, etc. My fallback position, and one that I really would rather avoid, is Sonos. Sonos is hugely expensive for what you get, and a friend of mine has them all over his house, and frankly not impressed with the sound. The Sonos Connect does basically the exact same thing as the CA for 10 times the price. My thinking here is that if CA will pass through the digital data from the source that I would spend my money on decent amps and speakers instead of proprietary Sonos stuff. Anyway, hopefully someone here has figured this out and is willing to share.