- #Google chromecast 2018 review software#
- #Google chromecast 2018 review free#
- #Google chromecast 2018 review windows#
Clearly this is not done by Google which is a shame.
#Google chromecast 2018 review free#
But some measurements should be performed to make sure simple scenarios such as flat frequency response and distortion free (or close to it) is achieved with simple tones. Lossy codec testing is almost always done using listening tests. Even if there is lossy compression going on (which I suspect there is), a pure tone should be encoded perfectly since it is so easy to compress. Still, we don't want to see this level of degradation in such a simple tone. Assuming they amplitude of distortions is signal dependent, then they are not as audible as the graph indicates. Fortunately a lot of it is either at low amplitude or masked by the main tone.
Tons and tons of distortion spikes are added along with heavily modulated noise floor. Yuck! We have a massive transformation of our simple 12 kHz tone. Here is output comparing the Chromecast output (red) compared to APx555 playing the same file over its Toslink output (blue): I connected the Toslink output of the Chromecast Audio to the input of my APx555 Audio Precision analyzer Toslink input. At connection time it asked for the volume and I set that to max. That gave me a plain play/pause control which was fine for this purpose. Jitter's amplitude is proportional to frequency of source material and hence the high frequency of this tone (relative to common 1 kHz we use for other measurements).įor the test setup, I connected the Chrome browser to my Chromecast audio and dragged the above file to its window.
#Google chromecast 2018 review software#
Guessing that Google's CAST protocol or software is limited to 16 bits, I created a 12 kHz tone at that bit depth for test of jitter and noise. Let's get into measurements and answer these questions. How well was something I needed to figure out. all networked streaming/rendering DACs), I was very happy to read that Roon can now talk to Chromecast Audio.
#Google chromecast 2018 review windows#
Since I use Roon for my personal music enjoyment and for testing devices that don't act like a sound device in Windows (i.e. Previous tests used PLEX media server which I have also used in other testing but I still preferred to use something more known and better.Įnter Roon's support of Chromecast audio as a remote audio device. I have procrastinated testing the Chromecast Audio because I was not happy with using Google Cast software due to fear of it not being "bit exact." The protocol Google uses for streaming is proprietary so until recently, you were stuck with whatever opaque data path Google provided. After that, in my admittedly limited testing it has proven to be very reliable in being recognized and streaming audio. The device requires setup for its Wifi functionality which I won't dig into. Here, you see it connected with my switching USB power supply and the special Toslink to 3.5 mm cable: It has a USB jack for power and the aforementioned 3.5 mm jack. The Chromecast Audio is a tiny round dongle. In a future article I will measure its DAC and analog output performance. In this article, I will be digging into this aspect of the device. Concern however has been raised that the Toslink output has too much jitter to be a good interconnect. The appeal, and the scenario for testing in this article is that by addition of the Chromecast audio to your own DAC using Toslink you immediately turn your DAC into a networked streamer. The other, by use of a cable you need to buy, is Toslink digital optical output.
The retail cost is $35.Ĭhromecast Audio has dual outputs in the same 3.5 mm jack.
The audio version as the name implies, foregoes the video functionality and provides audio streaming. The Chromecast is a tiny dongle that allows one to "cast" (stream) audio and video to a remote device.
This is a review and detailed measurements of Google Chromecast Audio digital output.
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