Whole House Audio with Chromecast

My son turned one last week. At the same time, Google dropped the price of Chromecast audio by $10. Given the large layout and need to spread music around, it made sense to give Chromecast audio a shot. Between that and a Google Play pre-made playlist, it worked exceptionally well.

Now I have a few of these hockey pucks sitting around. What to do now?

I've head the benefits of a Sonos system. It always seemed appealing, but not at these prices. I could do better.

While contemplating this, I plugged one into a small Bluetooth speaker I had sitting around. This got me thinking about plugging them all into these small speakers. A quick check on Amazon and BestBuy shows that each sites' brands (Amazon Basics and Insignia respectively) have sound bars for relatively cheap. They even have optical inputs! So I bought two, one from each. It would be nice if they had USB ports to power the Chromecast, but I'm yet to find one. Also it would be nice to have it built in, but those are way more expensive.

So after this setup, I must admit, it sounds great. The drop down list in most apps is pretty long, but I can easily cast to a single one, or create groups (like I have for whole-house and upstairs). Audio quality is great. Given the streaming service limitations on quality, I couldn't ask for more.

Next improvement is the kitchen, the final frontier. I was thinking of getting a Google Home since it has Chromecast built in and is on sale for $129. However most of my stuff is not on Google. So I figure I will wait for the Cortana Cube and plug another Chromecast into it.