Fascinating. Next thing you know, somebody will invent a picture phone.
A Tale of Two Streaming Protocols: The Coming Duopoly?
Remember when car manufacturers developed their own software for their touch screen head units? That was so 2015... Today, car touch screens have embraced the Apple/Google duopoly. I don’t want to use any car software other than CarPlay and Android Auto. Those two are the gold standards. No car manufacture is going to be able to put out better software than Apple and Google at this point. And I want to use the best consumer-grade software available.
High fidelity streamers have been slower to adopt the Apple and Google standards, however. We can come up with many reasons for this. (1) High fidelity audio reproduction is a niche hobby--not mass market. The DYI emphasis and money required make the hobby less accessible. (2) Many audiophiles own their digital music files, and local music storage requires an application that can access that local storage as well as a cloud streaming services.
Still, I don’t want to own my own music anymore. Owning means work--ripping CDs, buying HD tracks, indexing those files on my computer--that’s all work for librarians. I’ll pay someone else to do that for me. If it’s not obvious, I only want to stream (from the cloud). Thankfully, I have so many lossless streaming services to choose from now.
For lossless streaming to become more convenient, streaming manufacturers need to adopt the gold standards--AirPlay and Chromecast built-in. AirPlay and Chromecast built-in are consumer grade software at this point. I don’t want to download an app to replace the perfectly good streaming service apps I’m already paying for. I’ll just cast directly from the app I already have.
Interestingly, Apple’s streaming protocol sends the stream from the router to your phone, then from your phone (back to the router, then) to the streamer. I can see why Apple users don’t AirPlay their video content as often--doubling the bandwidth for 4k streams and video conferencing can overwhelm many affordable routers. Also, "AirPlay" is just a fancy name for screen mirroring, or audio mirroring in the case of music. One nagging question I have, wouldn’t the AirPlay signal path defeat the wired ethernet connection that so many audiophiles think they have?
On the other hand, Chromecast built-in sends the stream directly from the router to the streamer. The phone is merely a remote. Some of the benefits of Chromecast built-in over AirPlay include (1) using less of your phone’s battery since the phone is only a remote; (2) actually keeping the connection wired from the router to the streamer rather than mirroring from a phone. Most streaming services/streamers (e.g. Qobuz, Amazon Music, Roku) seem to default to the Chromecast protocol on both iOS and Android phones. But if you use an iPhone with iMusic, you can only AirPlay out from that walled garden. If you’re (Google) casting Netflix, you can still browse Netflix at the same time; you can’t do that while Airplay-ing.
Casting YouTube has the coolest feature: multiple people can link their phones with the streamer and queue up videos. Multiple remotes! This feature needs to exist with music streaming, but no services have built this feature into their Chromecast implementation.
Like Chromecast built-in, Spotify Connect uses the phone as a remote only. But Spotify allows you to control the stream from any of your devices. So, I could have my phone in my pocket at the coffee shop, and change the song or volume from my laptop. In a home situation, I can pass around a tablet for the guests to use to select songs but still make changes myself from my phone. I suspect that Spotify Connect is Spotify's version of Chromecast built-in... whatever gets people cast. For those Apple users too good for Chromecast built-in, Spotify Connect will be perfect for them.
Demand for local music file storage may be contributing to the slow(er) adoption of Chromecast built-in and AirPlay in HiFi streamers.
High fidelity streamers have been slower to adopt the Apple and Google standards, however. We can come up with many reasons for this. (1) High fidelity audio reproduction is a niche hobby--not mass market. The DYI emphasis and money required make the hobby less accessible. (2) Many audiophiles own their digital music files, and local music storage requires an application that can access that local storage as well as a cloud streaming services.
Still, I don’t want to own my own music anymore. Owning means work--ripping CDs, buying HD tracks, indexing those files on my computer--that’s all work for librarians. I’ll pay someone else to do that for me. If it’s not obvious, I only want to stream (from the cloud). Thankfully, I have so many lossless streaming services to choose from now.
For lossless streaming to become more convenient, streaming manufacturers need to adopt the gold standards--AirPlay and Chromecast built-in. AirPlay and Chromecast built-in are consumer grade software at this point. I don’t want to download an app to replace the perfectly good streaming service apps I’m already paying for. I’ll just cast directly from the app I already have.
From what I can tell, AirPlay is inferior to Chromecast built-in, and Spotify Connect and YouTube build on top of Chromecast with interesting features.
Interestingly, Apple’s streaming protocol sends the stream from the router to your phone, then from your phone (back to the router, then) to the streamer. I can see why Apple users don’t AirPlay their video content as often--doubling the bandwidth for 4k streams and video conferencing can overwhelm many affordable routers. Also, "AirPlay" is just a fancy name for screen mirroring, or audio mirroring in the case of music. One nagging question I have, wouldn’t the AirPlay signal path defeat the wired ethernet connection that so many audiophiles think they have?
On the other hand, Chromecast built-in sends the stream directly from the router to the streamer. The phone is merely a remote. Some of the benefits of Chromecast built-in over AirPlay include (1) using less of your phone’s battery since the phone is only a remote; (2) actually keeping the connection wired from the router to the streamer rather than mirroring from a phone. Most streaming services/streamers (e.g. Qobuz, Amazon Music, Roku) seem to default to the Chromecast protocol on both iOS and Android phones. But if you use an iPhone with iMusic, you can only AirPlay out from that walled garden. If you’re (Google) casting Netflix, you can still browse Netflix at the same time; you can’t do that while Airplay-ing.
Casting YouTube has the coolest feature: multiple people can link their phones with the streamer and queue up videos. Multiple remotes! This feature needs to exist with music streaming, but no services have built this feature into their Chromecast implementation.
Like Chromecast built-in, Spotify Connect uses the phone as a remote only. But Spotify allows you to control the stream from any of your devices. So, I could have my phone in my pocket at the coffee shop, and change the song or volume from my laptop. In a home situation, I can pass around a tablet for the guests to use to select songs but still make changes myself from my phone. I suspect that Spotify Connect is Spotify's version of Chromecast built-in... whatever gets people cast. For those Apple users too good for Chromecast built-in, Spotify Connect will be perfect for them.
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