Online information shops have just lately lamented the passing of Google’s Chromecast Audio device. The machine obtained favorable reviews within the audio press, so I had already been eager about buying one. Given the information of Chromecast’s demise, I made a decision to search for one at an inexpensive worth—earlier than they had been all snapped up or thrown within the dumpster.
I discovered one at MobileFun and put in my order. The machine finally arrived, packaged within the common serviceable however minimal Google wrapping, with a really transient Get Started information printed on the surface.
I cabled it to my residence stereo by way of my digital-analog converter’s optical S/PDIF connection, hoping that would supply the most effective sound high quality.
The setup ran flawlessly, and in about 5 minutes I used to be able to play some tunes. I knew that quite a few Android purposes assist Chromecast, so I made a decision to try it out with Google Play Music; positive sufficient, it labored simply positive and sounded fairly good. However, being an open supply form of individual, I made a decision to see what I may discover in the best way of open supply gamers that work with Chromecast.
RadioDroid to the rescue
The RadioDroid Android application match the invoice. It is open supply and out there on GitHub, Google Play, and F-Droid. According to the documentation, RadioDroid seems to be up and performs streams from the Community Radio Browser web site. So I made a decision to put in it on my handset and provides it a shot.
The set up was fast and clean, and RadioDroid opened quickly to show native stations. You can see the Chromecast button (the icon that appears like a rectangle with wavefronts) close to the top-right facet of this screenshot.
I performed round with a couple of of the native stations. The software reliably performed music on my handset’s speaker, however I needed to futz round with the Chromecast button to get the music to stream over the Chromecast. But stream it did!
I made a decision to hunt out my favourite web radio station, Radio Grenouille in Marseille, France. There are varied methods to seek out stations in RadioDroid. One is to make use of the tabs—Local, Topclick, and so forth.—positioned above the checklist of stations. One of the tabs is Countries; I discovered France, with some 1,500 stations, on the checklist and scrolled—and scrolled, and scrolled—down by way of the checklist to seek out Radio Grenouille. Another method is to make use of the Search button on the prime of the display screen; the search was speedy and returned that fantastic radio station. I attempted a couple of different searches, they usually all returned affordable data.
Going again to the Local tab, I scrolled by way of the listings and discovered that “local” appears to be outlined as “in the same country.” So, although Seattle, Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Juneau are nearer to my residence than Toronto, I did not see any of them in Local. However, through the use of Search, I may discover all stations with “Seattle” of their title.
The Languages tab let me discover all stations broadcasting in Portugues, Portuguese, Português, Português Brasil, Português do Brasil, Portuguẽs, and Portugês. I shortly discovered one other favourite station, 91 Rock Curitiba.
Then inspiration struck—it is springtime, however who cares? Let’s take heed to some Christmas music. And positive sufficient, looking for Christmas led me to 181.FM – Christmas Blender. Well, a minute or two of that was sufficient for me…
So, all in all, I like to recommend the RadioDroid and Chromecast combo as a pleasant approach to play web radio on a house stereo at an inexpensive price.
As for the music…
Recently I picked up an attention-grabbing album of very ambient (even beatless) music referred to as Continuum One by Qua Continuum from the Blue Coast Music retailer. Blue Coast has rather a lot to supply the open supply music fanatic: music is out there by obtain (and typically bodily format) with out resorting to these grotesque platform-specific obtain managers; it usually supplies a number of codecs, together with WAV, FLAC, and DSD; totally different phrase lengths and bitrates are supplied for WAV and FLAC, together with 16/44.1, 24/96, and 24/192, and for DSD, 2.eight, 5.6, and 11.2 MHz; and the music is recorded with nice care utilizing fantastic services. Unfortunately, I do not discover quite a lot of music there to my style, although I like a couple of of the artists out there on Blue Coast, together with Qua Continuum, Art Lande, and Alex De Grassi.
Over on Bandcamp, I picked up Emancipator’s Baralku and Framework’s Tides, each of which I get pleasure from. The music created by these two artists hits my candy spot—it is digital however not (usually) dance, it is melodic, and it tends to have some nice hooks. There are many issues for open supply aficionados to love about Bandcamp, akin to the power to take heed to the work in its entirety earlier than shopping for; the shortage of bloatware downloaders; the quantities shared with the musicians; and its assist for Creative Commons music.