Chromecast with Tidal on STR-DN1080

[tporter7171]

Having serious issues with the Chromecast built-in on this Amp. Often the wi-fi network fails to show the device as an option to cast to. I frequently have to reset the wireless connection for it to appear. Even then, the Tidal app just keeps failing to connect. Same problem with phone (Samsung S9) and Tablet. Tidal casts to other wireless devices (Sonos speakers) without any problems.

Spotify works ok from my son's phone.... 

Anyone got any advice?

[grolschie]

I would suggest a cheap Chromecast 3 (2018) or a Chromecast Ultra, plugged into one of the HDMI ports on the receiver. You'll get better visual feedback as to what's going playing, and also none of limitations that he inbuilt Chromecast Audio device has, such as being limited to only 2 soundfields: MultiCh Stereo and 2ch Stereo. 

(Interestingly, according to a Sony employee, under the hood this receiver's 'Spotify:Connect' uses the inbuilt Chromecast Audio device. Yet, it doesn't have this limitation.)

[mirrormurr]

This is truly interesting, if Spotify really uses the in-built Chromecast-device, then we are stuck with the inferior quality of the transcoding from Ogg Vorbis to AAC, which Chromecast does. Check the blog of Baron Schwarz:

https://www.xaprb.com/blog/spotify-audio-quality/

[grolschie]

It appears that there is some misinformation out there. Spotify does not transcode from Ogg/Vorbis (lossy) to AAC (lossy).

They transcode from Wav or FLAC (lossless) to both AAC and Ogg/Vorbis.

Ref: https://community.spotify.com/t5/Other-Partners-Web-Player-etc/Chromecast-bitrate-solution-verified/... 

Spotify:Connect on the STR-DN1080 sounds great. I have Spotify Premium.

[mirrormurr]

Thanks for sorting that out, I guess I was a bit prejudiced and tried  to confirm my beliefs through a search on the internet earlier.. My personal experience using an Chromecast-audio dongle with Spotify and an analogue chinch used to be pretty awful a time ago, maybe I should give it another go with the STR-DN1080.  Am using the in-built Chromecast a lot, but mainly for radio-streaming. I ll try to connect by spdif soon , and do a comparison with the two.