Has Chromecast Audio been bettered?

[gradus]

I use a Chromecast audio quite happily but wondered if any of our tech-minded boarders know of a better cheap streaming device before I buy another Chromecast for a system in an outbuilding.

[gradus]

My apologies I meant to post this on the Tech board and now I'm stuck. Help!

[Dave2002]

For the price the Chromecast audio is hard to beat - and of course for audio. If you want to do TV, then there's a choice of the basic model, and a more expensive 4k model. The standard price is still £30 for the audio device, though all of these have been cheaper during sales. It also depends exactly what you want to use these things for. For some applications, good as they are, they are just the wrong gadget. If you're trying to get a link to an outside shed or workshop, the distances involved may present problems - though as I have just written - it depends what you're trying to do.

[richardfinegold]

competing products would be Apple TV and Roku, and I believe chromecast is the cheapest of them. You go up a bit in price with Sonos, Bluesound, but I believe they cnhandle high res and chromecast I don't think does but I could be wrong. It would be irrelevant if you don't have any high res content

[Dave2002]

Essentially the regular Chromecast handles video, photos, web and some gaming features through an HDMI connection. ... Regular Chromecast can handle audio well, but the Chromecast Audio has an on board AKM AK4430 DAC that supports Hi-Res Audio up to 24-bit/96KHz so it's much better for streaming hi-res music.23 Mar 2018

From https://www.cambridgeaudio.com/gbr/e...hat-chromecast

See also https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/...-audio-2934031

[richardfinegold]

From https://www.cambridgeaudio.com/gbr/e...hat-chromecast

See also https://www.trustedreviews.com/news/...-audio-2934031

Wow I am impressed

[gurnemanz]

I use it fairly often for streaming BBC iPlayer radio. Playing the TV sound via an optical lead to my amp produces very good results. Strangely, the new BBC Sounds app, which seems to have gone off half cock, doesn't incorporate Chromecast.

Last Saturday afternoon I wanted to watch a live football stream from the reddit site but couldn't seemed to do this via Chromecast. It was quite easy via Amazon Fire which has an internet browser. I suppose a newer TV than mine would have a built-in browser anyway so this wouldn't be an issue.

[Dave2002]

If you still want one, MyMemory have them today for £24.99. https://www.mymemory.co.uk/google-chromecast-audio.html

[gradus]

Many thanks for the comments/links.

[Beresford]

The Yamaha WXAD-10 at about £110 is supposed to do a similar job to Chromecast Audio.
It has a better dac than Chromecast, but no digital optical output. And you need to check if it does exactly what you want. You could ask at Richer Sounds, as they sell them at the same price as Amazon (UK).

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Yamaha-WXAD10-Wireless-Streaming-Adapter/dp/B072BHJ8WF?tag=georiot-trd-21&ascsubtag=t3-8048344766600947304-21

http://www.audioaffair.co.uk/yamaha-wxad-10-add-musiccast-wireless-adapter

[gradus]

The Yamaha WXAD-10 at about £110 is supposed to do a similar job to Chromecast Audio.
It has a better dac than Chromecast, but no digital optical output. And you need to check if it does exactly what you want. You could ask at Richer Sounds, as they sell them at the same price as Amazon (UK).

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Yamaha-WXAD10-Wireless-Streaming-Adapter/dp/B072BHJ8WF?tag=georiot-trd-21&ascsubtag=t3-8048344766600947304-21

http://www.audioaffair.co.uk/yamaha-...reless-adapter

Thanks for the Yamaha links. At nearly 4X the cost of Chromecast I stuck with the latter as I only stream Spotify and R3. Having no router in the building and too far from the wireless router in the house I thought I'd try it out with the BT hotspot network only to find that the signal - adequate for Internet access - is apparently too weak for music streaming, it is also disconcertingly expensive and I didn't in any case like the idea of sending card details over the mobile. I'm now back to a long Ethernet cable from the house and secondary router.

[Dave2002]

Thanks for the Yamaha links. At nearly 4X the cost of Chromecast I stuck with the latter as I only stream Spotify and R3. Having no router in the building and too far from the wireless router in the house I thought I'd try it out with the BT hotspot network only to find that the signal - adequate for Internet access - is apparently too weak for music streaming, it is also disconcertingly expensive and I didn't in any case like the idea of sending card details over the mobile. I'm now back to a long Ethernet cable from the house and secondary router.

You presumably have a computer of some sort in your building/home. You do realise that it's not too difficult to turn that into a local hotstpot, so if you can stream to your computer you can then send to your Chromecast and hence to your audio system, don't you? You might need an additional piece of kit (but you may not) - but even so, that wouldn't cost much. I'm making an assumption that your audio system is closeish to your computer, or maybe your computer is a laptop and hence portable. You should also be able to send audio files stored on your computer into your audio system.

[gradus]

You presumably have a computer of some sort in your building/home. You do realise that it's not too difficult to turn that into a local hotstpot, so if you can stream to your computer you can then send to your Chromecast and hence to your audio system, don't you? You might need an additional piece of kit (but you may not) - but even so, that wouldn't cost much. I'm making an assumption that your audio system is closeish to your computer, or maybe your computer is a laptop and hence portable. You should also be able to send audio files stored on your computer into your audio system.

Thanks for the suggestions Dave, as is probably painfully obvious I am out of my depth with this stuff.
For some reason I cant get the Windows 7 system on my pc in the house to find the Chromecast so I have to use the android phone via the router to access Spotify and R3 for the audio system in the same room. Unfortunately this method seems to preclude casting local music files stored on the PC. The audio system I am trying to get working is with another Chromecast in an outbuilding.

[Dave2002]

Do you have the Chrome browser running on your Windows 7 system? If so, then I think you should be able to link to the Chromecast device from within that. There may be limitations, and there might also be audio quality constraints, depending on which software you use.

Maybe you've done this already - https://support.google.com/chromecas.../6375070?hl=en