Mastodawn

I've used VLC for years on my laptop to play music. Now that #MusicAssistant that runs in my #HomeAssistant smart home supports synchronized multi-device and multi-room audio (via its #Sendspin protocol), I'm trying out Music Assistant as my main audio player. A nice advantage is I don't have to have my laptop on to play music, radio, podcasts, etc.; I have a Music Assistant server that is running on a headless smart home machine, and various clients with speakers throughout the house.

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Blort™ 🐀Ⓥ🥋☣️Dec 22

@mdimjasevic

How hard was it to set up synchronized, multi device audio? I like the idea, but I've always been put off trying by how tricky it seems it would likely be.

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Marko Dimjašević

@Blort with the built-in Sendspin protocol in Music Assistant 2.7, it cannot be easier. All the players are automatically detected. Via the UI you can create a player group, and you just select this group to play music to. Done!

It works rather well on my Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition (VPE) device (just upgrade it to ESPHome 2025.12).

On my PCs playback sometimes get paused for no obvious reason. On Android phones sometimes there is some noise and obvious lag compared to the VPE.

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Blort™ 🐀Ⓥ🥋☣️Dec 22

@mdimjasevic What software is it playing through on your PC / Android devices? A web browser? The HA companion app? I have VPE as well, so definitely curious!

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Marko Dimjašević Dec 22

@Blort on PCs I run Debian and Firefox, so it's a web client there. On Android I use the HA companion app, which is again detected as a web client to Music Assistant.

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Blort™ 🐀Ⓥ🥋☣️Dec 22

@mdimjasevic

Interesting. Thanks! I use the Android HA client all the time and had no idea it could stream audio!

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Marko Dimjašević Dec 22

@Blort I am sure in the next release the Music Assistant team will fix these issues. Note the team cautiously calls it alpha/tech preview release for the Sendspin protocol.

I am looking forward to see how this evolves.