Google Is Reportedly Working On Linking Up Nest Audio Speakers With Chromecast Streaming Devices

In a Wall Street Journal article comparing Apple's HomePod Mini against the competition, a Google spokesperson hinted that the company is working on integrating its Chromecast streaming devices and Nest Audio speakers. The Verge reports: Being able to combine a streaming platform with a smart phone speaker makes a lot of sense for these companies. After all, customers already have all the hardware in their living room -- why not repurpose those speakers to improve the sound of your Netflix movies? Plus, there's the added bonus of inciting customers to stay within a company's ecosystem. You're more likely to buy a HomePod mini if it works with the Apple TV you already have. The ability to link smart speakers to streaming boxes is also something that both Apple and Amazon already offer.

Google's plans are extremely vague for now -- The Wall Street Journal makes no mention of which devices the company is looking to link together, when the feature will arrive, or what sort of use cases it's looking to achieve. But with Google increasingly looking to push users toward its smart home devices, making them all work better together just makes good sense.

Here's my plan

[Rosco P. Coltrane]

Dumb speakers and copper wire. No Google cloudiness and privacy-raping going on with that.

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[geekmux]

Dumb speakers and copper wire. No Google cloudiness and privacy-raping going on with that.

Exactly what I was thinking. Plug the damn thing in. That's all I want to do. And my speakers are older than I am.

Let's just how there are enough smart people to justify the manufacture, of dumb devices. Unfortunately, it seems that most are too smart for their own good. Orwellian smart.

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[puddingebola]

I hear you. Maybe even use obsolete plastic discs with physical wave forms pressed into plastic so the bastards can't use their digital technology to listen in. They'll have to do it the old fashioned way: through the wall with microphones. When the gestapo comes to the door and demands to know why you have not connected to the Party's main observation and communal congregation server, slam the door shut and destroy your record collection with sulphuric acid. Then move to the woods and take up arms with the

Re:

[samcurren333]

My plan includes catching up on stuff on apps like Netflix, Roku, and Onebox HD [oneboxhdapk.com], or many others.

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[marcle]

What, no whips and chains? Pfft! Amateurs.

Lip sync battle

[DrXym]

I can't imagine it would be easy for the Nest and Chromecast to coordinate their content over the web so that if one trickplays, buffers or stalls, that the other knows to as well.

As such, the best solution is probably for the Nest speakers to become slaves of the Chromecast, and receive audio & control commands multicasted from it. That would work whether the Chromecast is streaming Netflix or a game. But even with that there is a latency of sending the audio data and with each speaker being independ

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[Gwala]

They have a microphone - they should be able to synchronise based off that. Only major problem would be calculating distance - but even then I'm not sure the speed of sound level differences would be perceptible.

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[gbjbaanb]

Oh it would, you'd be surprised how sensitive you are to sound delays.

By that I don't mean "speed of sound" in absolute terms but the delay between the speakers if theyr'e positioned non-equidistantly.

My hifi amp has a microphone on a long cable for this - you put it where you sit, and it broadcasts a tone to decide how much of a delay to add to each of the speakers so you get the sound at the same time. I guess its more for the audiophile than the general listener, but even then, a tiny delay in sound can

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[drinkypoo]

By that I don't mean "speed of sound" in absolute terms but the delay between the speakers if theyr'e positioned non-equidistantly.

Yeah, that's due to the "speed of sound".

I guess its more for the audiophile than the general listener, but even then, a tiny delay in sound can give you a "something's wrong but I'm not sure what it is" feeling.

I'd guess it's more for the person who's got a large home theater than the general listener, who doesn't have enough space to get that kind of separation. It's worthless in any other context, like multi-room audio, since it will improve the experience in one location while making it worse in others. Also, it has to increase latency by however much it's delaying the signal to the furthest speaker, which overall is not what you want.

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[DrXym]

The law of diminishing returns and added complexity. i.e. if speaker 3 hears the echo of speaker 1 & 2 both of which are outputting different sound due to their spatial arrangement and then tries to adjust. Meanwhile speaker 1 hears the sound of speaker 2 & 3 and speaker 2 hears the sound of speaker 1 & 3 and does likewise... More likely Google will bodge a "better than nothing" solution and leave it at that. The proper solution for anyone actually interested in proper sound output is to buy a s

Irrelevant

[Plugh]

A headline like this is relevant to me the way new Camel Hardpacks are relevant to a nonsmoker

Don't be evil

[Tough Love]

Don't be evil has left the building. Accordingly Google is just as banned from my media apparatus as China is banned from Google's datacenters.

I assumed...

[encrypted]

I just assumed all these Nest/Chrome, Alexa/AmazonTV, Apple/Homepod things did this already, and that's why they sold the different size speaks to put everywhere.