WI-FI NETWORK.

SONOS HAS HAD the Wi-Fi multiroom speaker setup locked down for the past few years, but the arrival of the Amazon Echo and the Google Home has made the multiroom audio setup much more affordable. While it’s simple to ask a digital assistant to play on a specific speaker, the process and capabilities of multiroom audio varies widely from system to system. Thanks to a few recent updates, Google Home actually works exceptionally well as a multiroom streaming system that can be easily controlled by your voice. While there are a number of speakers that can be controlled by Alexa (like the new Sonos One speaker), it only offers multiroom audio using its own Echo range of devices. Apple on the other hand doesn’t seem to licence Siri to any other speaker vendors and although it has plans to use its existing AirPlay system to allow stereo and multiroom AirPod connectivity, it didn’t offer these features when it launched at the start of the year. The Cupertino company has promised multiroom and stereo audio compatibility in 2018 and Sonos have also touted AirPlay integration for release at some point this year. So stay tuned for updated capabilities on this front.

GOOGLE

Weather you’ve got one Google Home and a slew of Wi-Fi speakers spread around the house, or you have a number of Google

Assistant devices at your beck and call, syncing them to play the same music allows you to spread sound evenly throughout your entire home and dramatically boost the volume of individual small speaker points.

While Google only released its Home smart speaker around the middle of 2017, the company actually already had a reasonably well established ecosystem of Chromecast built-in speakers and the Chromecast Audio. Today this ecosystem includes a considerable range of speakers from big audio hardware vendors like Sony, LG, Philips, Bang & Olufsen, JBL, Polk, Onkyo, Harman Kardon and Pioneer, with planned compatibility for Sonos on the way. So if you bought a new Wi-Fi speaker in the last couple of years there’s a good chance it’ll have Chromecast built-in, and if not, you can always bring an existing speaker to the Wi-Fi era by attaching a Chromecast dongle.

Once you’ve established all the speakers you want to include in the multiroom setup and have connected each of these to your Wi-Fi (speakers must be on the same router or mesh network), you’ll need to head over to the Home app and add each of these devices to your Google Assistant profile. To do this simply go to Settings at the top left corner of the Home app, then select ‘More Settings’. Head to the ‘TVs and Speakers’ tab, then hit the plus symbol at the bottom right corner of the app. Once all the speakers you want to connect are added to your Assistant profile, tap the Devices tab at the top right of the Home app’s homescreen, followed by the ‘...’ icon of one of the speakers. Select ‘Create Group’ and add the devices you want, naming the group something logical so you can remember and distinguish it from other speaker groups (ie. ‘Downstairs Speakers’, ‘All Speakers’). Each speaker group is treated by Google as an individual device to allow you to control it using a single command, so you’ll need to create individual groups for each physical configuration you’d like you’re speakers to be in. Then all you have to do is ask the Assistant to play music on the multiroom grouping you’ve created.

ALEXA

While big Wi-Fi speaker partners like Bose and Ultimate Ears can be configured for playback using the Alexa digital assistant, the Amazon-based network will only allow multiroom playback on proprietary devices. As far as we know, even the new Sonos One and Anker speakers that have Alexa baked in can’t tap into the multiroom functionality yet. That said, in a similar fashion to the Chromecast Audio, you could connect an Echo Dot to any existing speaker via a 3.5mm audio jack and use multiroom functionality that way.

You can pair multiple Echo devices together by going to the ‘Audio Groups’ tab in the settings menu of the Amazon Alexa app. The ‘Multiroom Music’ setting gets you to give the group a descriptive name (ie. ‘living room’ or ‘everywhere’) and asks you to identify the speakers you’d like to add to the group. Once you’ve set up your groups, multiroom music is a matter of asking Alexa to play a song in the particular area you want.

SONOS ONE HAS ALEXA BUILT IN, SO YOU CAN USE IT LIKE AN ECHO, BUT IT DOESN’T YET SUPPORT AMAZON’S MULTIROOM SPEAKER NETWORK YET.

While you can send audio to the Bose Soundtouch system using Alexa, it doesn’t pair with Echos for multi room audio.

To play music in multiple rooms using Alexa, you’ll have to group your Echo speakers together first.

Once you have created a speaker group, it’ll appear in your devices tab of the Home app.

To group speakers in the Home app, click the three dots at the top right of one of the speakers in the devices tab.

Once you have named your Home speaker group, add the devices you want to be synced.