This is a highly experimental Volumio 3 feature, meant as a teaser because of popular demand.
“Experimental” also means you should not have too high expectations: Chromecast Audio will not be in the first Volumio 3 release.
The team is concentrating on the Volumio 3 release, therefore there is no support for it at the moment!
But please feel free to try it at your own risk.
Feedback is welcome.
How to start it:
Go to (replace the IP address with your own Volumio IP address)
I get the same. It almost seems like the plugin is not really there. I’ve looked around the /volumio plugins location and honestly cant find anything that looks likes its a chromecast plugin.
I just upgraded now to a trial on virtuoso but still no luck. Even tried a reboot. So when calling that URL to enabled (http://<ip>/plugin/audio_interface-multiroom) it results in the same no configuration available message as reported by @gorgias
Actually, I just tried it and updated my trial subscription to Superstar. It charged me 66.99 then as a result. My loss I suppose
So your chromecast feature works but its laggy. I realise you’re tying it into the alsa stream and that will let you integrate it with any audio source you can stream in from external streaming services as well as audio inputs that the device could support. But when you pause or change a track, the stream reaction to this is delayed and noticeable. You might get gapless playback but after that it will feel unresponsive to many.
My recommendation for playback of specifically local/LAN/NAS audio files would be be to try and host the file from its mount point in Volumio and cast a URL directly to the chromecasts and do what I did in mpd2chromecast. Then by matching local playback, play/pause/skip etc to near instant controller actions on the chromecasts. You could then mute local playback totally. People using Chromecasts for Volumio playback will get this… you play locally via your DAC or you play via a single selected chromecast or cast group.
You should also remind yourself that any streaming service worth its money will make a direct integration with Google Cast from their own apps. So who really needs to use Volumio to play Tidal back via Chromecast?
So the gain IMO with Volumio and other streamers should be to target external streaming sources (Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify etc) for local playback via HDMI or attached DACs. Then things like Google cast support is best reserved for playback of attached/network storage only.
Your suggestion is very sensible, if the scenario would be file playback only… But here we want to play any kind of content + apply any DSP user like to the stream, before sending it to chromecast.
I saw what you did with mpd2chromecast, really impressed.
Would you mind getting in touch with me at michelangelo at volumio dot org ?
First, want to refund your superstar subscription since you are helping us, then I would love to involve you in some deeper testing\coding if you like
Given your focus is on a DSP pipeline, you should then consider recasting the stream to the selected cast device anytime local playback is changed by user intervention. So it would mean a recast every-time a user changes track or streaming source, skip fwd/rev and play/pause, etc. Normal playlist transitions should be left as-is to allow for possible gapless support with an uninterrupted stream.
That might give you a more instant return on the user intervention rather than having to wait several seconds for it to propagate through the stream buffers. And try to get that cast device selector onto the main screen. Buried as deep as it is now, it’s too cumbersome for daily use. The cast devices should have equal representation with other output devices.
With moOde, there is an option to enable http streaming output on mpd. I did basic prototyping on this in the past casting that fixed output stream URL instead of the file URL and it worked. I have plans to revisit that over the xmas holidays to produce an alternative mode for mpd2chromecast that offers gapless playback versus direct streaming of the files. But it indirectly falls into the same kind of DSP pipeline model you are using.
But for now I can see that my endeavour of making Volumio/moOde work with Chromecast fundamentally clash with your objective of charging 70 Euro/year for that same privilege. So I’m not looking to contribute testing/coding to your effort going forward. This is just a hobby for me.
@volumio I was waiting for the chromecast feauture and got exited to see it in this beta!
So i just subscrided to the only option i saw. (Premium).
But when i go to the /plugin/audio_interface-multiroom page i can see some settings (latency,buffer)
but no chromecast enable button/option.
If this is because its only available for superstar? can this be fixed? Otherwise i need to cancel my subscription
Hope u can help me out!
