SB Touch + speaker to replace SB Boom?

[chopinhauer]

I’ve had squeezeboxes for 10 years but technically I’m still a noob. So this is a real noob question.

I need another SB boom but don’t want to pay a fortune for one and feel I can do better nowadays with one of my spare SB touches or SB Receivers attached to something. The question is what can I attach it to?
It’s for the bedroom so I want a minimal set up. For example, I have a spare smallish Denon amp and Mission bookshelf speakers lying around to which I could attach the Touch. These sound great but I want something smaller.

Ideally I’d like a decent small speaker to which I can directly attach the SBT via RCA cables or Toslink. Obviously, this would entail a wifi-type speaker attached to my network.

I guess what I’m asking is whether a SBT attached to a Google Home Max, Sonos One or something else (please suggest) do the job? I’m looking for a solution with just two power cables (one for the SBT and one for the speaker). Or better even just one; if something like the Logitech UE Boom existed in wifi, vis a vis Bluetooth mode. I don’t need all the smart-speaker talking commands/interaction stuff, but if the speaker has it I could learn to utilize it. But I really just want the speaker to play music streamed from my computer/NAS via the SBT.

Is this doable? Does anything along these lines exist?

[bernt]

Audio Pro C5 and the AirPlay bridge plugin is a perfect replacement for the Boom.

[chopinhauer]

Thanks. I hear a lot about 'airplay' but am a total non-Mac person. Not even itunes on my PC/android devices. Is that an issue? And I need it to sync to other SBs in the apartment and be controllable via squeezecontrol on my android phone.
In short, I want the Touch to do the work and the speaker to, well, just project the sound.

[bernt]

Thanks. I hear a lot about 'airplay' but am a total non-Mac person. Not even itunes on my PC/android devices. Is that an issue? And I need it to sync to other SBs in the apartment and be controllable via squeezecontrol on my android phone.

AirPlay bridge works fine without apple stuff. Control the player with android and Material skin.



https://forums.slimdevices.com/showt...-Material-Skin

https://forums.slimdevices.com/showt...(squeeze2raop)

[Paul Webster]

How much do you want to spend?

[chopinhauer]

I don't want to spend much. The audio pro C5 is as high as I'd go and as much as I need for such a bedroom. All the audiophile level stuff is in the living areas (Marantz receiver/amp, big Jamo speakers etc).

I've been looking around and see that the UE Blast and Megablast exist. I have the older bluetooth UE Boom and currently use this in the bedroom via Bluetooth. It is fine for that purpose so was thinking that the Blast/Megablast with its wifi capacity might do the trick. And this runs on rechargeable batteries, which is great because it means one less power chord.

Will all these solutions require the airplay bridge and be operable via my android Squeezcontrol ap. I must say I have never installed any of bridges developed by the tech savvy members on here. Is it hard? I certainly hope it's not command line stuff, not my forte. If it is are there clear instructions for tech super-noobs?

[bernt]

I don't want to spend much. The audio pro C5 is as high as I'd go and as much as I need for such a bedroom. All the audiophile level stuff is in the living areas (Marantz receiver/amp, big Jamo speakers etc).

I've been looking around and see that the UE Blast and Megablast exist. I have the older bluetooth UE Boom and currently use this in the bedroom via Bluetooth. It is fine for that purpose so was thinking that the Blast/Megablast with its wifi capacity might do the trick. And this runs on rechargeable batteries, which is great because it means one less power chord.

Will all these solutions require the airplay bridge and be operable via my android Squeezcontrol ap. I must say I have never installed any of bridges developed by the tech savvy members on here. Is it hard? I certainly hope it's not command line stuff, not my forte. If it is are there clear instructions for tech super-noobs?

Looks like UE Blast and Megablast don't have AirPlay. If they have AUX you can use your spare SB.

AirPlay bridge is click and play (in most cases).

[chill]

With a Raspberry Pi running piCorePlayer you can use a Bluetooth speaker quite successfully as an LMS device. You'd need to set up the Squeezelite player on the Pi to output to the Bluetooth device, but the pCP interface provides all the controls you'd need to pair and select the speaker. As a standalone player I think this would work fairy reliably. Synchronisation with other players can be achieved, but in my experience the Bluetooth delay seems to vary between power cycles. So I can connect and set the player delay to, say, 150ms, to get perfect sync, but the next time I power on the speaker I may need to adjust that to 250ms, say.

AirPlay bridge is click and play (in most cases).

What's the lag like on an Airplay device using the AirPlay bridge? A delay is to be expected, but is it any more consistent than Bluetooth? If it's consistent it can be 'fine tuned' away.

[chopinhauer]

Looks like UE Blast and Megablast don't have AirPlay. If they have AUX you can use your spare SB.

AirPlay bridge is click and play (in most cases).

I'm in no real hurry but at the moment the Audio Pro looks like the best bet, but if the Megablast adds airplay soon then I might go in that direction since it runs on batteries.

[bernt]

With a Raspberry Pi running piCorePlayer you can use a Bluetooth speaker quite successfully as an LMS device. You'd need to set up the Squeezelite player on the Pi to output to the Bluetooth device, but the pCP interface provides all the controls you'd need to pair and select the speaker. As a standalone player I think this would work fairy reliably. Synchronisation with other players can be achieved, but in my experience the Bluetooth delay seems to vary between power cycles. So I can connect and set the player delay to, say, 150ms, to get perfect sync, but the next time I power on the speaker I may need to adjust that to 250ms, say.



What's the lag like on an Airplay device using the AirPlay bridge? A delay is to be expected, but is it any more consistent than Bluetooth? If it's consistent it can be 'fine tuned' away.

I haven't noticed any difference using AirPlay bridge compared to my SBT. Don't use syncing but I have tried it and it worked fine.