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Friday Fun Thread for January 6, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Anyone have any recommendations for good Wifi enabled speakers? I have a couple Sonos units but they are glitchy as hell. Would like something less frustrating.

I've never heard of such things, any idea how they work? Does your audio driver sink in some kind of UDP stream directed at the speakers? If so the problem could be along the network. Does it get worse if either the speakers or the sound source (laptop?) get nearly out of range of the access point/router, or if there are a lot of devices connected to the same (causing a lot of collisions)?

Mostly they work by having an app on your phone direct the speaker to some internet feed by tying into services like Spotify or podcasts. They also tend to support using them more like a normal speaker via AirPlay (requires Apple phone/laptop)... and they probably have a similar way to do RTSP from other devices? Probably some support Bluetooth as well, although then you're using it as a Bluetooth speaker, not a Wi-Fi one.

Not sure what jeroboam is actually using them for or what aspect they find glitchy.

You're suggesting the wifi speakers are given a request to start downloading and playing a stream, as opposed to directly playing the audio stream off some computer in the network. That makes them much higher level than I thought, more of a network controlled media player, not what I would think of as a speaker.

The Bluetooth speakers I'm familiar with just play back the audio data they're given, and a bad connection will make them stutter. So that's why I figured a wifi equivalent will encapsulate the audio data in a udp stream.

I am curious how device discovery works in the network for the kind of device you're desceibing. If you have more than one set in the same network, is there a mode where a specific device will flash so you can confirm on the computer "yeah that's the one I want you to control"?