Whole home streaming (audio)

Ok, I’ve tried Yamaha devices, and wiim devices now too. Wiim are great when they work, but ultimately I now have 4 that work when they want to and disconnect when they feel like it (some wireless some hard-wired, they just drop connection to the network for no obvious reason). Sonos I don’t really like as I have speakers and amps already, also, they’ve lost the plot app-wise recently and it was already bad.

My wants – stream BBC radio sync’d around the house/4 rooms/devices plus 2 outdoors, one for the garden, one for the garage. Idelaly reliable enough that it plays for the dog if she’s home alone too, as at the moment it just drops and goes silent after 2 minutes.

Has anyone got a solution like this that actually works consistently?

If utlimate sound quality isn’t the aim then we just use Amazon Echo Dots. Work fine – just tell the one in each room what you want to play.

Sound is decent for radio and they don’t drop connection. At the weekend ours in the kitchen is often on all day.

Surprised about the Wiim’s? I have had 2 and both have performed perfectly. Although not in multi room mode.

Before you spend any money, I would submit a ticket to Wiim, their support is very good.

Also, have a look on here https://forum.wiimhome.com/ very helpful.

We’ve got one of those small Google speakers, an Onkyo smart speaker with Google & a couple of Chromecast audios around the house (one hooked up to an Audiopro speaker & the other plugged into my old NAD amp). I’ve got them all added to a group called ‘Entire House’ in the Google Home app and can send music/radio etc. to all of them at the same time.

I’ve also got an ‘upstairs’ and ‘downstairs’ group. It works well.
Every now & again it won’t connect, but I think that is more to do with Spotify than anything else, as I never seem to have the same issue when using BBC Sounds.

Not an issue I’ve heard about with Wiim. I also have a mini and an amp. Zero issues. Even when linking both together and syncing them. I love it. House wide drum and bass!!!

Not even seen this as a large scale issue on the Wiim forums either. I’d suspect the issue is within your network, rather than all 4 devices being dodgy.

Do you have a mesh network at home? There’s an option (toggle) in settings for this, in the Wiim app.

Do the cable connected devices also drop out? Or is it just the wifi ones? and all running the latest firmwares?

I’ve never had any issues with Sonos  – they messed the app up but it’s slowly getting back to what is was.

We use Google speakers. Obviously not super high quality audio (although Tidal > Chromecast Audio > big stereo is pretty decent).

They’re great when they work. Which is most of the time, but for a couple of months speaker groups just stopped working, and for a week or so they started popping and farting to the point I was planning out replacements. At which point they started working again.

I quite like them, but I’m not sure I’d recommend them, especially not full price (we got them pretty cheap a few years ago).

I use google. It goes a bit awry sometimes (like when speaker groups stopped working due to sonos lawsuit) but on the whole works.

Thanks for replies folks.

https://forum.wiimhome.com/threads/wiim-pro-losing-network-connection.744/page-7#pos) ts mentions it and repeat tickets with support have lead little other than ‘Next time a problem occurs, don’t reboot. Instead, try unplugging the network cable and then plugging it back in, or connect to WiFi after unplugging the cable and send us feedback.’ None of which really seems to solve the root cause.

I have a mesh (using Fritzbox stuff, mostly to try and sort out the flaky performance, my house isn’t even that big!) I have 2 of 4 plugged into mesh nodes (1 of these is very flaky) 1 other on a cable from a switch which is wired to the router and 1 on wifi. 2 out of the 4 are regular droppers, the other less so. I switched one from the office to the bedroom unit yesterday and it was the same performance.

It’s been pretty good for a while with the exception of 1 unit, but as of the latest firmware (04/09) it’s just constant disconnects, some temporary, but usually it drops from the wiim home app completely which takes the google home group out too. It’s just become really hard to keep using as it’s so frustrating.

I might see if I can find some more chromecasts on ebay!

Ah, I’ve just remembered why I went off Chromecasts originally, loads of spikes in the sounds and cracking as mentioned above, that’s what sent me off to the Yamaha MusicCast stuff, which was also unreliable as anything.

Phones, TV streamers all work fine, so it could be my network/interference, but I’m not sure as I get lost after a certain level of diagnoses!

9/10 Chance it is your network.

Get rid of mesh and ethernet up your house you use Uqiquiti with AP’s.

Chatting to a poor Hi-end hi-fi shop owner in Kensington the other day. Said just Dont bother trying over wifi with my solid walls, causes him infinite hassle.

I have block built walls rather than cavity walls which makes the cabling a challenge! Does seem like the right way to go though.

I have Sonos, amps with seperate speakers in most rooms, I use the Lutron wall remotes more than the app.

You haven’t specified a budget?

Chromecast doesn’t (or…rather didn’t – might have changed?) do gapless playback. That counts it out for me.

That link to the Wiim forum is just about the Pro though isn’t it?

FWIW I’ve got my Mini on wifi and my amp on ethernet. Both play just as quickly (Wifi 6 Mesh and 1gb connection) no drops, stutters or freezes.

Maybe have a go at factory reset your mesh satelites

Mines mostly chromecasts (x3) and nest speakers (x6), which i can get the whole lot going at the same time. Same track. Sounds bloody awful due to the excessive number of speakers. Being a bit smarter about it and running selected speakers (living room/office/hall) sounds much better. Just running the chromecasts is really rather good.

I also have two headless Volumios running as well. They can apparently be synchronised, but i’ve never looked into it. So i play them in isolation (one is in the workshop, one outside).

Chromecast has been ‘ok’ for me. Cheap enough that the odd hassle is tolerable. BBC sounds I think always pauses for about 10-15s after playing for about a minute or so. Just long enough to make you think it’s stopped playing when it first does it. Volumes seem to get cocked up if I’m playing from my phone or if my partner plays from hers. But generally it’s ok. You’re relying on 3 or 4 different systems all playing nicely together, and like a lot of home automation stuff it mostly works until it doesn’t.

House full of various Sonos stuff here – but as you’ve correctly pointed out, they’ve gone off the deep end with their app so I wouldn’t recommend to anyone

if I was starting from scratch I’d go for WiiM all day long. I’d also get rid of your mesh and get a ubiquiti setup – money well spent

Echo user here.  I have… ten of the things now I think.  Voice control and device grouping FTW, “Alexa, play [music choice] downstairs.”

The living spaces have two Echos set up as a (Bluetooth) stereo pair, because I’m not a teenager.  This works well so long as your source isn’t BT because it can only cope with one connection at a time.  It grips my shit that I cannot use the two Dots either side of the TV as TV speakers, it’s like they’re sitting there taunting me.

I use Bluesound speakers (Pulse Flex 2i) and streamers (Node 2i), all run by the BluOS app. Works perfectly.

BluOS is excellent. My daughters use Spotify directly, and I’m on Tidal. One of the speakers is on wifi and the rest are connected directly via ethernet to TP Link Deco discs on a mesh network. It’s reliable, stable and easy to apply upgrades to.

It’s not super cheap but I’m not in a race to the bottom… I like good quality sound so happy to spend for it.

Not an issue I’ve heard about with Wiim. I also have a mini and an amp. Zero issues. Even when linking both together and syncing them. I love it. House wide drum and bass!!!

If you want to listen to mighty jungle, I suggest you put the wiim away.

If you want to listen to mighty jungle, I suggest you put the wiim away.

Oh. My. God.

You win the Internet for today, go home.

Just got an Echo Show for the kitchen (already have one in the garden office)

Does a decent enough job, have Amazon Unlimited music. Have the added bonus that it shows the Ring doorbell and Blink cameras etc

If you want to listen to mighty jungle, I suggest you put the wiim away.

Nice.

Funny this resurfaced today, I’m about to try a new mesh system tp-link deco. Last ditch before hard working the whole house!

If you want to listen to mighty jungle, I suggest you put the wiim away.

This cannot get enough credit.

For the OP… Not exactly what you were asking (think you’re looking for a slick, whole system solution) but when I needed to steam music from one room to about for a party in the summer, I ended up using an app called Soundwire that actually works really well, and crucially, restarts if it drops. Paid for version is cheap and even better.

I use Airplay – but no actual Apple products – I have a PC running Tuneblade which acts as the music player, then I can connect up any Airplay receiver to listen over WiFi – I have a mixture of Raspberry Pi Zero’s into HiFi amps, a speaker with Airplay built in, and I use the AirReceiver Android app with my phone connected to a speaker via Bluetooth.  Tuneblade connects to the devices when they switch on, and I can tweak the delay settings etc to get devices playing in synch.

Works well for me.

As an update, having messed around with things a bit over the last few days I discovered the cause of my most recent woes. A wiim hardwired to a mesh node, however, the mesh node had a shonky power supply which delivered inconsistent current, as a result the mesh node was constantly dropping and restarting. I’ve changed the power supply and along with the downgrade of firmware that the wiim support team carried out I had stable streaming again finally this morning.

So after looking at all the most obvious causes of the problem I’ve realised I hadn’t started with the basics, oops!

Further update: wiim has been great for the past week.

Then there was today, Wifi up and working for some things, but Android apps were just spinning and not updating (not getting data back), so couldn’t search in Spotify, access Hive heating, use BBC sounds on 2 different handsets.

Restarted router, same problem

Restarted phones, same problem.

Teams calls also failing and reports of connected to router but no internet, speedtest all ok too.

Unplugged all Wiims – everything works again. I’ll do some more testing at home later – but FFS this is never ending.