Who here uses WiiM Amp as device in Amazon Alexa multi room music?

[Woody]

My amp is setup as a device so it will play as part of multi-room music along with my other Echos and receiver setups.
My problem has been that the Amp won't play music until I skip a song in amazon music, then it begins to play as it should.
WiiM Home app thinks it's playing but nothing out of the Amp. I have to skip in AM. Trying to skip in Home app doesn't do anything.
It's been like this for the last year since I first set it up, but I can't figure out why. After it gets going it does fine, or at least until Amazon Music balls up and decides to pause on its own, but I think that's a different story.
Anyone else run into this or ideas how to resolve?

 

[Burnside]

I think this perhaps been mentioned by @Wiimer in the past. Definitely sounds like a case to be submitted as a ticket to WiiM who should be able to identify the root case.

 

[Woody]

I think this perhaps been mentioned by @Wiimer in the past. Definitely sounds like a case to be submitted as a ticket to WiiM who should be able to identify the root case.

I've brought it up before and did a ticket with WiiM but didn't get much traction. Hoping someone else ran across a fix, but not a huge deal. I'm sure it's far down the list of important fixes for more common issues, plus I wouldn't be the least bit surprised it's an Amazon problem too.

 

[Wiimer]

I think this perhaps been mentioned by @Wiimer in the past. Definitely sounds like a case to be submitted as a ticket to WiiM who should be able to identify the root case.

That may have happened, but I've been posting too many Alexa threads and my memory is so confused.

@Woody,
How many Echos are in a group?
If a group is created with one echo and one WiiM, there is no such problem.

 

[Woody]

That may have happened, but I've been posting too many Alexa threads and my memory is so confused.

@Woody,
How many Echos are in a group?
If a group is created with one echo and one WiiM, there is no such problem.

Two devices sound like a pair to me. lol
My groups are several echo devices, 4 to 6 usually setup as multi-room music.
I'm fairly sure that I have cast to the Amp only and had the 1st song playback issue. I need to check that out again.
No problem at all if I use WiiM Home from the start.

 

[Wiimer]

Two devices sound like a pair to me. lol
My groups are several echo devices, 4 to 6 usually setup as multi-room music.
I'm fairly sure that I have cast to the Amp only and had the 1st song playback issue. I need to check that out again.
No problem at all if I use WiiM Home from the start.

No, 2 devices MRM group.

Before I crawled into bed, remembered this thread and did a little test.

I put 5 echoes and a WiiM amp in an Alexa group and cast from the AMU, maybe because I had just created the group, but the first time I did it, no sound came out of the amp. So far you are correct.

I then tested several times after shutting down amp, no problem. The current AMU app still has the connected device card after disconnecting the AlexaCast and seems to reconnect when the play button is pressed.

I also tried the voice control, which was also fine, and the music played from the amp at the same time as the echo.

 

[Woody]

No, 2 devices MRM group.

Before I crawled into bed, remembered this thread and did a little test.

I put 5 echoes and a WiiM amp in an Alexa group and cast from the AMU, maybe because I had just created the group, but the first time I did it, no sound came out of the amp. So far you are correct.

I then tested several times after shutting down amp, no problem. The current AMU app still has the connected device card after disconnecting the AlexaCast and seems to reconnect when the play button is pressed.

I also tried the voice control, which was also fine, and the music played from the amp at the same time as the echo.

Once the Amp starts playing in the Group, then it continues to work for me. I'm not sure what triggers the non-play back, but it is usually the next day or so before I will use it again.
Yesterday, I started AMU streaming from the AMU app and the Amp didn't play, as usual for me, but it didn't even play subsequent songs either. It only started playing when I used AMU app on my phone to skip a song.
I'm pretty sure the Amp would start to play on its own when the 2nd song began previously, but I may be misremembering that.

So, on the 1st song your Amp playback in an MRM group is consistent with the way mine is performing. FWIW my Amp is part of the Everywhere group along with some subset groups too. I can take the Amp out of the group and add an Echo device in its place and playback is normal.
There is (or at least used to be) a maximum number of playback devices that could be in a group. Nine as I recall. If I tried to add more, I would get a network error from the AM app. I don't know if that has any bearing on the issue or not but just throwing that out there.
There must be some sort of trigger in the MRM music scheme that talks to the Amp to start music playback. There are times when the lights are on, on the Amp and looks like a song is playing on the WiiM Amp but no sound.

 

[Burnside]

Definitely sounds like a bug in the Amp that I would expect WiiM to fix after inspecting your device logs.

There's no stated limit on the number of devices in an Alexa MRM group - it's entirely down to the ability of your router. When playing in a MRM group, one device takes on the role as receiver (Alexa decides this, there's no user control) and then redistributes that audio around your local network to the other devices in the group. If this is happening with a lossless stream (even though I believe it's capped at 24/48), that's a lot of data and streams for the router to manage, so it's not surprising that it hits a limit at some point which in your case happens to be around nine.

 

[Woody]

Definitely sounds like a bug in the Amp that I would expect WiiM to fix after inspecting your device logs.

There's no stated limit on the number of devices in an Alexa MRM group - it's entirely down to the ability of your router. When playing in a MRM group, one device takes on the role as receiver (Alexa decides this, there's no user control) and then redistributes that audio around your local network to the other devices in the group. If this is happening with a lossless stream (even though I believe it's capped at 24/48), that's a lot of data and streams for the router to manage, so it's not surprising that it hits a limit at some point which in your case happens to be around nine.

Good information and that's the way I understood MRM to work too. I ran across the number of nine in some docs when trying to sort out the AM network error when adding the whole house full of devices.
Next time I do MRM with the Amp, I'll send another ticket to WiiM. I did it once before, but I think my issue is too obscure to warrant a lot of effort. After all, hitting the skip button is not the end of the world. lol

 

[Burnside]

Good information and that's the way I understood MRM to work too. I ran across the number of nine in some docs when trying to sort out the AM network error when adding the whole house full of devices.
Next time I do MRM with the Amp, I'll send another ticket to WiiM. I did it once before, but I think my issue is too obscure to warrant a lot of effort. After all, hitting the skip button is not the end of the world. lol

Yeah, I recall discussions on Reddit around this from a while back, and I believe a max of ten was supposedly quoted by Amazon support who i’d seldom trust to tell me the time