Random Questions for Amp and Pro - Whole-ish House

[myoung84]

I have a few questions before I pull the trigger on some equipment. I built my house a few years ago and ready to finally finish the audio. I have several echo devices (mainly dots) around the house that I use for Alexa stuff. The Kitchen has the bigger one that we use for music currently. Music streaming will be Amazon Music. 2 adults, 2 kids in the house, all have iPhones and Amazon music accounts.

1. My kitchen, master bath, and patio have wires ran for ceiling/outdoor speakers. These all run to my network rack with ethernet connection available. This would be the location for a the Wiim Amps. I might put speakers in the game room and garage with an amps installed nearby where I can run the speaker wires. I would also have ethernet available at these locations. Keeping it simple for wife and kids, how would I initiate playing of Amazon Music to these zones? Can I Ask Alexa to play music in a room or multiple rooms? AirPlay from a phone to a room or rooms? Would I have to use the app to add or remove rooms? One example would be the game room with an echo dot, which is currently the kids play room. Can I ask Alexa to play music there on just those speakers? Another example, is it possible to play music on Kitchen and Master Bath amps just by asking Alexa, or would I need to use the Amazon Music app or Wiim app? Trying to avoid needing to install the Wiim app on wife and kids phones if possible. Can you Airplay to multiple amps from a phone?

2. My master bedroom has a Sonos sound bar and my office has a Sonos One. I'm not opposed to replacing these with something else. The soundbar is only used for watching TV and the Sonos One has Alexa built in and it's only used in that one room. An Amp with some bookshelf speakers would be a nice upgrade. However, do these integrate into the Wiim/Airplay ecosystem?

3. My patio has a TV that I'm currently using the TV speakers only. I want to be able to use some wall mounted outdoor speakers for both music and the TV audio. It currently has a Roku ultra now but I have a 2nd Gen AppleTV device that I'm not using. Ethernet is available at this location as well. Wiim Amp would be in the network rack wired to speakers. How would I get audio from the TV/Roku/AppleTV to the Wiim Amp?

4. Another option rather than Wiim amps, is the Wiim Pro and low cost amp like the a Fosi. Long term, this might make it a bit more future proof and not lock me into Wiim if things change?

5. Lastly, I do run Home Assistant for automation if I could somehow tie into that?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Burnside]

Before we even get into any of your questions, how do you currently use Amazon Music on your existing echos, as the WiiM Amp/Pro can be seen as comparable to them? While you say you all have Amazon Music accounts, you’re likely aware that multi user use in a single Alexa environment can be challenging unless you have an Amazon Music family plan with all users under the one main “Alexa” music account. While an Amazon/alexa household account can give limited flexibility for two adults in that household and allow switching between adult accounts to access individual Amazon Music accounts on the echo you’re speaking to, that doesn’t work for kids’ or indeed any more than two accounts. Alexa voice profiles are meant to help with personalisation of music in a shared account so your personalised recommendations don’t get messed up by others’, but I’m not convinced of that. Also, I’m not sure that works for WiiM devices behaving as echos.

Airplaying amazon music from phones to WiiM devices might help there as you’re in effect taking accounts out of Alexa and WiiM’s purview, but that may limit the quality of the stream if that’s an issue for your wife and kids.

 

[myoung84]

Before we even get into any of your questions, how do you currently use Amazon Music on your existing echos, as the WiiM Amp/Pro can be seen as comparable to them? While you say you all have Amazon Music accounts, you’re likely aware that multi user use in a single Alexa environment can be challenging unless you have an Amazon Music family plan with all users under the one main “Alexa” music account. While an Amazon/alexa household account can give limited flexibility for two adults in that household and allow switching between adult accounts to access individual Amazon Music accounts on the echo you’re speaking to, that doesn’t work for kids’ or indeed any more than two accounts. Alexa voice profiles are meant to help with personalisation of music in a shared account so your personalised recommendations don’t get messed up by others’, but I’m not convinced of that. Also, I’m not sure that works for WiiM devices behaving as echos.

Airplaying amazon music from phones to WiiM devices might help there as you’re in effect taking accounts out of Alexa and WiiM’s purview, but that may limit the quality of the stream if that’s an issue for your wife and kids.

Yes, we have Amazon Music family plan. It works pretty well and each echo device can use it's own account "slot" so we can have multiple streams at the same time, even though only the main account is linked. Not sure how it all works behind the scenes, but it works none the less. We tried Spotify family plan as well, but I never could get it to behave in this way because only one account was linked. Since I don't have speakers installed, we have never tried to play in more than one location. It's normally just asking Alexa to play music in the Kitchen or the kids using it upstairs (Alexa, play Taylor Swift lol). I don't actually want the Wiim device to fully replace the Echo's speaker, I want Alexa dialog to remain on the Echos. In all honesty, getting away from asking her to play music and initiating it from the phones might be a better approach long term.

I haven't tried Airplay much but just did a test from the Amazon Music app and was able to connect to three Rokus at the same time, so that might be my approach and completely answers question 1. Question 2 is somewhat answered as well as I can Airplay to the Roku that's connected the TV and Sonos soundbar. That's sufficient for my needs. It would be rare that I need to group my office Sonos speaker to any other rooms, so that's irrelevant to what equipment goes in my office. I still might replace it with an amp and bookshelf speakers, but it wouldn't change much for the rest of the house.

So really, question 3 is the big one right now. TV audio from a Roku or AppleTV back to the Wiim amp.

 

[Burnside]

Yes, we have Amazon Music family plan. It works pretty well and each echo device can use it's own account "slot" so we can have multiple streams at the same time, even though only the main account is linked. Not sure how it all works behind the scenes, but it works none the less. We tried Spotify family plan as well, but I never could get it to behave in this way because only one account was linked. Since I don't have speakers installed, we have never tried to play in more than one location. It's normally just asking Alexa to play music in the Kitchen or the kids using it upstairs (Alexa, play Taylor Swift lol). I don't actually want the Wiim device to fully replace the Echo's speaker, I want Alexa dialog to remain on the Echos. In all honesty, getting away from asking her to play music and initiating it from the phones might be a better approach long term.

If you have the family plan and in effect just one music account that everyone uses rather than each having their own separate account under that family plan umbrella, then you won’t have any issues integrating WiiM devices as they will just behave like echos and play whatever Alexa asks them to play from Amazon Music. You can direct requests to a device, or the room that device is in, or to a pre-defined group e.g. “Alexa, play music in the kids room” or simply “Alexa, play music” if the echo you’re speaking to is already in the kids room, or “Alexa, play music in the garage”, or “Alexa, play music on the Amps” (if you have created an Alexa group called amps), or “Alexa, play music everywhere”. It can be very flexible and very easy to use.

I haven't tried Airplay much but just did a test from the Amazon Music app and was able to connect to three Rokus at the same time, so that might be my approach and completely answers question 1. Question 2 is somewhat answered as well as I can Airplay to the Roku that's connected the TV and Sonos soundbar. That's sufficient for my needs. It would be rare that I need to group my office Sonos speaker to any other rooms, so that's irrelevant to what equipment goes in my office. I still might replace it with an amp and bookshelf speakers, but it wouldn't change much for the rest of the house.

For adhoc casting of music from your phone , airplay can be useful but it needs your phone to be on while the music is playing. At least with Alexa, you can ask and leave it at that independent of your phone.

 

[Burnside]

Re 3. I’ve just read the Apple TV gen 2 lost airplay with iOS 16 - I don’t know if that’s true, otherwise I might have suggested airplay out from that to the WiiM. Do you have the option/proximity to use optical out from either that or the Roku into the Amp?

 

[myoung84]

Re 3. I’ve just read the Apple TV gen 2 lost airplay with iOS 16 - I don’t know if that’s true, otherwise I might have suggested airplay out from that to the WiiM. Do you have the option/proximity to use optical out from either that or the Roku into the Amp?

I’ll plug it up and check on airplay. It’s been in a box for a year or so. I prefer the functionality of rolu so went back to that.

Only option I have is doing something over cat6. I ran two cables out there and I can reuse one of them for an audio signal with some baluns on both ends maybe?

 

[Burnside]

I’ll plug it up and check on airplay. It’s been in a box for a year or so. I prefer the functionality of rolu so went back to that.

Only option I have is doing something over cat6. I ran two cables out there and I can reuse one of them for an audio signal with some baluns on both ends maybe?

Outside my expertise now I’m afraid - hopefully someone else can jump in and respond