Hacker News Reader

Comment by semi-extrinsic | Hacker News Reader

We have a few around the house, connected to various speakers. Never had any trouble with them. I'll be buying a few more now before the price bumps, don't wanna be stuck in the Logitech Squeezebox misery again.

My only complaint is that they can't be grouped with a regular Chromecast, but AFAICT that's a hardware issue (regular Chromecast doesn't have the bits necessary for synchronising with low enough latency).

View on HN

Regular Chromecast (Gen 2 and above) can now be added to groups too!

https://chromeunboxed.com/news/chromecast-video-and-smart-di...

This just makes no sense. A feature the community has been shouting about for years and years (literally hundreds of posts on Google product forums), and then they actually launch it less than two months before discontinuing the product line??

The feature that Chromecast Audio had was added to Chromecast just before Chromecast Audio (but not Chromecast) was discontinued.

Be funny if they soon release a new Chromecast that has HDMI and AUX outs; the thing that always confused me about Chromecast Audio was why it needed to be a separate thing, especially after they went to the hockey-puck with a tail rather than stick format for the regular Chromecast.

Well if regular Chromecast would have a 3.5mm port then fine, but I wouldn't be holding my breath.

Exactly. Although I do see that you can buy a female HDMI to VGA converter with 3.5mm audio out for $4; hopefully that would work. I'm assuming the VGA end isn't detecting whether something is connected or not.

Edit: meh, no, these things are Energy Star compliant so they shut down if no VGA is connected. And they don't support HDCP.

In the olden days before the CC Audio I just crammed a wire between two pins in the vga port if the adapter and put some glue on it.

There's guides for this, works flawlessly.

More like, now that regular Chromecasts can do it, why even have Chromecast Audio as a separate product any more? It's all just Chromecast now.

Regular Chromecast outputs to HDMI, Chromecast Audio outputs to 3.5mm analog stereo audio. This (the 3.5mm analog stereo audio) is very much superior for hooking up to speakers around the house.

The Chromecast Audio also supports Optical Out via TOSLINK, allowing you to bypass the built-in DAC and use your own, if you so desire.

Well, regular Chromecast only has HDMI, so there still is a gap without CC Audio.

Chromecast Audio is discontinued, not regular Chromecast

Ironically this actually affects some Squeezebox users too (there's a great plugin to use Chromecasts as SB players: https://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?104614-Announc...)

Still, testament to the Squeezebox community how it can outlive both the original hardware's shelf life, and a replacement's...

You're going to buy more just so that the next version of Chromecast/Cast/Home/whatever drops support for them?

At that price point just getting 1-2 years more use out of them would be worth it to me.

1-2 years is an eternity. I'm thinking 6 months till a breaking update. Google is not Microsoft.

See this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16509834

The linked comment doesn't seem to have any bearing on how long Chromecast Audio is likely to be supported?

Regardless of whether kuschku's accusations are true (there doesn't seem to be much evidence, and even if it were so I'm not sure why Google should be expected to assist Amazon in reverse engineering Chromecast), unlike an Amazon clone the Chromecast Audio is a first-party product. Google may have stopped producing the standalone dongle, but the tech is still used by Google Home and other speakers with integrated Google Cast support, so it's not disappearing anytime soon.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com