ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
Chris Hassell:Very interested in the IR thing BeoVision Eclipse 55”, Beolab 18s, Beolab 19s, Beosound 1, Beoplay P2, H3, BeoRemote One IR, BeoRemote One BT, Beoplay S8, Beosound Essence MkII, BeoTime
Roger: On a side note: Hooked up a Google Home Mini (approx. $50) in the same room as the BeoSound 2, told the app that Spotify is my preferred music provider and that the Mini should play any music through the BS2 (and not the tiny Mini's speaker). Now the Mini will talk back when asked "smart speaker" questions regarding calendar, weather, news etc - and I can just say "Hey Google", as I enter the room, followed by "play some Bruce Springsteen" - and the BS2 comes to life and plays. No phone, no app. You can even use a single Mini to control all the wireless (chromecast) B&O speakers by saying "play Diana Krall on chromecast your-device-name". Super easy to say "Hey Google, wake me up with music at 7 am". Google will then ask for type of music, and you can use e.g. Spotify or TuneIn, given playlists etc. Suddenly my BS2 is more advanced than the HomePod Roger
On a side note:
Hooked up a Google Home Mini (approx. $50) in the same room as the BeoSound 2, told the app that Spotify is my preferred music provider and that the Mini should play any music through the BS2 (and not the tiny Mini's speaker). Now the Mini will talk back when asked "smart speaker" questions regarding calendar, weather, news etc - and I can just say "Hey Google", as I enter the room, followed by "play some Bruce Springsteen" - and the BS2 comes to life and plays. No phone, no app. You can even use a single Mini to control all the wireless (chromecast) B&O speakers by saying "play Diana Krall on chromecast your-device-name".
Super easy to say "Hey Google, wake me up with music at 7 am". Google will then ask for type of music, and you can use e.g. Spotify or TuneIn, given playlists etc.
Suddenly my BS2 is more advanced than the HomePod
Roger
I have the same setup working with BeoPlay A6 today after updating the SW to 1.16.20033.79151407 (manually; couldn't wait for the automatic SW update!) I have the Google Home Mini's default speaker set to BeoPlay A6, so sources like Spotify or TuneIn are always played on the A6.
Now that Google cast works properly on the A6, my next experiment will be to see if I can synchronize audio on the A6 with audio played on the Chromecast dongle that sits in the HDMI port on my Beovision 10, which serves audio to a number of B&O speakers elsewhere in the house both directly and via Masterlink. Just need the Google Home Mini to wake the BV10 up from standby... (hint: BLGW+IFTTT)
-bab
bab:I have the same setup working with BeoPlay A6 today after updating the SW to 1.16.20033.79151407 (manually; couldn't wait for the automatic SW update!) I have the Google Home Mini's default speaker set to BeoPlay A6, so sources like Spotify or TuneIn are always played on the A6.Now that Google cast works properly on the A6, my next experiment will be to see if I can synchronize audio on the A6 with audio played on the Chromecast dongle that sits in the HDMI port on my Beovision 10, which serves audio to a number of B&O speakers elsewhere in the house both directly and via Masterlink. Just need the Google Home Mini to wake the BV10 up from standby... (hint: BLGW+IFTTT)-bab
Thanks for this advice, Stuart!
Apparently Chromecast (the one that casts video and audio via HDMI) cannot be added to a multi-room cast group. Only Chromecast Audio has this ability at the moment (I double checked with Google support). I will therefore need to do what you suggest and buy yet another device... Looks like Chromecast Audio has a mini-TOSLINK output, while BV10 has an S/PDIF coax input (which I have never had to use before). I assume that's what you were referring to by "RCA inputs" above. I'd like to avoid an analog connection between the two if I can.
By the way, it looks like devices/speakers within a multi-room cast group can have individual audio delays configured. This should be a useful feature.
Am I the only one who find that the bass are again much more boomy since the last update (162640994 BS2)? Since this update, despite I didn't change anything on my BS2, I find the sound quite unpleasant. Loudness is off and it is set in corner mode...
It's been a few months and it's time for a couple of updates that are relevant to this thread:
1) After a recent SW update, Chromecast (the one that casts both video and audio via HDMI) can now be included in an audio group with other Google Home or Chromecast devices. Until recently, this was possible only with Chromecast Audio, so that's good news.
2) If you schedule events on Google Home such as "wake me up with music at 6am on weekdays", that music gets played on the Google Home itself, as opposed to its designated alternative speaker, which in my case is an A6. At least this is my experience. One-off requests such as "play Beatles" get routed correctly to the designated speaker (A6).
3) Casting audio to A6 from Google home takes 5-10 seconds to start up. Not the sharpest tool in the toolbox... likely due to an under-powered ARM processor in A6. Newer BeoPlay devices are apparently much more responsive in this respect.
4) I just got around to hooking up a Chromecast Audio via a $15 powered Toslink/coax converter to SP/DIF #1 input on my BV10 (as discussed higher up in this thread). That's where I ran into trouble... I have no prior experience configuring 'Connections' on the BV10 & Beo4. I found the BV10 User Guide confusing and am wondering if anybody can point me to a step-by-step tutorial that's easier to understand? Basically, I would like to turn on audio only on the BV10 (screen remains off) by pressing "LIST" then "AV" on the Beo4. I'm still curious to see if the digital input introduces excessive audio delay compared the analog approach suggested by Stuart above. Google Home allows you to increase its delay too some extent, but not enough to compensate for the delay introduced by the HDMI input on BV10.