Designing a Multi-Room Solution (replacing 20+ year old set up)

[LateStart]

I have a WiiM pro that I have used stand-alone for over a year and it works great. I have a friend with a house with its original multi-room audio system from the mid-1990’s. It consists of a long-discontinued amp/controller for 8 zones that used proprietary hardware panels for control. The speakers for the entire house run to a single room and are accessible. The desired solution would have the following:

The key use cases are:

1) Stream music into the three zones on the ground floor separately AND as a group
2) Play music into each of the other zones separately and as part of a whole house group

I understand I need a multi-zone amp and a possibly some WiiM device per zone, which is all fine. Here are my questions:

1) I want to name each WiiM for its zone and have visitors interact ONLY through their music app of choice, selecting the room where music is desired. I have seen this work and think it’s no problem for non-grouped situations.

2) I want to create 2 groups - (a) “ground floor” and (b) “whole house”. I would like the groups to be permanent and accessible as options when picking where to play music from ANY music app and without using the WiiM app. So in this case, you would see listed: zones 1, 2, 3 and ‘entire ground floor’ for the main floor, and 4, 5 and 6 for the bedrooms, and ‘whole house’.

My question is can you create permanent groups that are visible in music apps outside the WiiM App. I don’t want visitors to use the WiiM app at all.

Next question is in this scenario, can I use a single PRO and then mini’s for each channel connected to the amp?

Hope this makes sense. THANKS in advance for your helpful feedback.

John

 

[Mr Ee]

One way (the only way?) to have persistent groups that I know of is chromecast groups.
The mini does not support chromecast.
That might limit the choice of apps a little, for example tidal seems to show 'tidal connect' connections in preference to any chromecast devices / groups. i.e. I cannot see my whole house CC group at all in the tidal app, and I very occasionally (and don't know why) sometimes see an individual pro as a chromecast target rather than a tidal connect target.
Spotify, however, shows each wiim as a separate spotify connect target, and also shows my CC groups.

 

[LateStart]

One way (the only way?) to have persistent groups that I know of is chromecast groups.
The mini does not support chromecast.
That might limit the choice of apps a little, for example tidal seems to show 'tidal connect' connections in preference to any chromecast devices / groups. i.e. I cannot see my whole house CC group at all in the tidal app, and I very occasionally (and don't know why) sometimes see an individual pro as a chromecast target rather than a tidal connect target.
Spotify, however, shows each wiim as a separate spotify connect target, and also shows my CC groups.

Thank you will investigate…

 

[Brantome]

One way (the only way?) to have persistent groups that I know of is chromecast groups.
The mini does not support chromecast.
That might limit the choice of apps a little, for example tidal seems to show 'tidal connect' connections in preference to any chromecast devices / groups. i.e. I cannot see my whole house CC group at all in the tidal app, and I very occasionally (and don't know why) sometimes see an individual pro as a chromecast target rather than a tidal connect target.
Spotify, however, shows each wiim as a separate spotify connect target, and also shows my CC groups.

Yeah, think you’re on the right track for those apps that support ChromeCast. Unfortunately there’s no universal casting or grouping protocol across all music apps, so the hoped for solution is perhaps unattainable.

 

[cooky560]

It seems your best bet is a few wiims dotted about the house and spotify....

 

[rjw]

You can use one wiim to drive multiple amps, just split the RCA cable. Get cheap fosi v3's

You could then have one wiim for upstairs and a different wiim for downstairs.

You could link and unlink them in the wiim app as you wished but that's not quite the group feature you wanted