WIIM Pro Plus + Amazon Echo

[BlindFish]

Hi there,
so far, i am using a bunch of Amazon Echo devices around the house for a multiroom setup with lots of limitations. For example. calling for personal playlists on Spotify is not supported, local music libraries are not supported either and most of the time, one or two devices won't start playback, although they all belong to the same multiroom speaker group.
When researching this topic, i was pointed to the WIIM streaming devices + app + remote and the Amazon Alexa integration which made me think of pushing a button on the remote and having music play on a WIIM + Hi-Fi speakers and the Echo devices. But after getting a WIIM Pro Plus and setting it up, it looks like it can also only be part of a multiroom speaker group available through the Amazon Alexa app but not the other way around, where the WIIM Pro Plus would cast music to the Echo devices, eliminating the limitations i wanted to get rid of. Is this correct, or am i just missing something here?

 

[Burnside]

Hi there,
so far, i am using a bunch of Amazon Echo devices around the house for a multiroom setup with lots of limitations. For example. calling for personal playlists on Spotify is not supported, local music libraries are not supported either and most of the time, one or two devices won't start playback, although they all belong to the same multiroom speaker group.

Although more of an Alexa than WiiM question, you shouldn’t have any issue playing personal Spotify playlists with Alexa - the key is often including the phrase “my playlist” e.g. “Alexa, play my good stuff playlist (from Spotify)”. Also, as a cloud function, Alexa knows nothing about your local files so can’t play them. As to some devices playing and others not, that sounds like a local network issue as multi room playback can place a lot of demand on your router and network.

When researching this topic, i was pointed to the WIIM streaming devices + app + remote and the Amazon Alexa integration which made me think of pushing a button on the remote and having music play on a WIIM + Hi-Fi speakers and the Echo devices. But after getting a WIIM Pro Plus and setting it up, it looks like it can also only be part of a multiroom speaker group available through the Amazon Alexa app but not the other way around, where the WIIM Pro Plus would cast music to the Echo devices, eliminating the limitations i wanted to get rid of. Is this correct, or am i just missing something here?

As you say, WiiM devices can be part of an Alexa multi room music group, but local audio from a WiiM device can’t be sent to a group of echos as Amazon don’t make that functionality available in the Alexa MRM API that WiiM use. If you want that sort of functionality, you’d need something like an Echo Link or Link Amp (if you can get your hands on one) which are the only devices which can send audio to an Alexa MRM via what is termed “line in distribution”.