I need music in my house

So I have speakers I put throughout the house that are connected to our receiver.  

I have been using a Logitech squeezebox to run pandora through them. 

When it works, it’s pretty slick. It has two rca outputs on the back and a remote that we control it with. 

the problem is that Logitech doesn’t make or support it anymore and when it goes down it takes a lot of work and even just luck for it to start working again. 

What else can I use to get pandora that ideally can be controlled by our phones?

i feel like it should be easy but I’m just not able to figure out if roku, slingbox, firestick, appletv or ?? can plug into the receiver. 

The receiver is a pretty nice pioneer I got used. 

Easy button: just plug a phone or computer into your receiver (either via USB and a device called a "DAC" or old-school with headphone-to-RCA cable).

Fancy button: Network Music Player. I have an Oppo Sonica DAC that I enjoy, but you can get the same functionality out of something way cheaper. I'd check out the Yamaha WXC-50 as a starting point. Whatever you pick, make sure the phone app doesn't suck.

There are a bunch of cheap little Bluetooth receivers that have RCA jacks. Like $20 cheap. You just plug that straight into the back of the receiver. Voila, job done as long as your phone is in BT range. No app required, connecting to stuff like this is inherent to phones. You'll need Pandora or some other streaming service on your phone. This is pretty future-proof.

You'll get better sound quality if you jack the phone straight into the receiver if your phone has a headphone jack, but it's less convenient. 

A friend of mine took his old subwoofers from his car to the house and connected them to audio center, hah. Long story short - it was a great idea :) After that, he simply decided to visit [this canoe] to find some new subwoofers, [it was paddle-rific]

I bought an echo dot for this purpose. Works REALLY well. Connected via a 3.5mm headphone jack to rca cable at the reciever

We use a roku on our TV and output the tv audio to a standard stereo receiver over optical cable. We run the Sirius App on Roku and get music on the stereo. Pretty sure that Roku has a Pandora app. If you are already running the stereo as home theater sound, Roku is an easy button solution.

I don't think you need to plug the firestick into the receiver.  Plug it into the TV and use the Pandora app on the TV.  I have a smart TV with pandora and spotify already on it, and it is my music source for the reciever.

Both of those apps work just as well from my phone.  The App on the phone controls the app on the TV and vice versa.  I'll start a playlist and then pass my phone around at a party and have people pick the next tune.

If your receiver is from this decade, it likely has bluetooth. 

Phone + your desired service = music.

For us, we have an Amazon Cube in the living room, hooked up to the receiver and speakers, Pandora, Spotify, YouTube, etc. 

We have Amazon Echos throughout the house for music and lots of other uses. (and as our preferred method of being spied on by "them")  They are great because you can call up your playlist with your voice from anywhere in the house. They range from $19.99 for a simple one with a 3.5mm output, to the Echo Link for $199.99 with plenty of outputs for any stereophile. 

I use this and it works seamlessly: 

https://www.amazon.com/BluDento-Bluetooth-Receiver-Internal-Streaming/dp/B07BKXP326/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=blt-2&qid=1566222776&s=gateway&sr=8-2

It's plugged into my retro but refreshed stereo cabinet and I can go pretty much throughout the house with my phone and it keeps playing. It's a little pricy but it works so well I don't mind. 

I think you should make the system hardware-agnostic so that you're unlikely to face such a situation again. Set up a PC or Android TV box in place of the Logitech Squeezebox, put Kodi on it, and then you can control it from your phone through the Kodi remote control client.

But that's not hardware agnostic, that's just new hardware. A Bluetooth receiver is a lot more hardware agnostic, as Bluetooth is the wireless equivalent of a 3.5mm jack. If Kodi stops updating their app (it does happen, ask me about my Innovate OBD-II reader) then you're screwed.

The Squeezebox is a nice piece of kit. My mom has one. Well, I have it because it's developed a problem. But when it was working, it was the perfect internet radio for someone who just wants the equivalent of an FM radio and doesn't want to deal with "TV boxes" or having to use a phone to make the radio work.

I appreciate all of the ideas. 

I don’t want to use Bluetooth because the phone won’t always be within range (music playing for a party and I have to go get more ice for example) 

i prefer hardwired stuff when I can...  Ethernet for the net and cables for the sound. 

That being said, the echo dot or input might fit the bill. Not expensive and hardwired speakers.  

It sounds like controlling pandora through it via our phones would be pretty simple.  Can two phones control it simultaneously?  (Could i start it playing oingo boingo on my phone and Mrs.jfry turn it to atlas genius when I walk outside? 

The tv box with kodi sounds interesting but I’m wary of software issues.  Unfounded?  

I bought a $50 refurbished Lenovo tablet that is dedicated to music for the house and shop. It plugs into a amp with a 1/8 - RCA cable for the shop system. It is also Bluetooth paired to a 7 speaker Monster EZ-Play system for music throughout the house and yard. Since they are also battery powered and portable, they frequently are used for music in the pits at the track.

If you don't want to be in BT range, I know that an AppleTV will work well to either stream Pandora natively (and you can control it with multiple phones) or you can use Airplay to stream from the phone as long as they're both on the same WiFi network. It does require a TV to work properly. Not hardware agnostic but if you stick with Apple products you've got a pretty good chance that the software will remain viable for a while. I suspect there's a Roku equivalent but I'm not as familiar.

Kodi is open source/libre software so I don't think you have to worry about an end to software updates, it would be quickly forked. Remember that Kodi started out as Xbox Media Center...as in the original Xbox. It's been going a long time.

Your three options (from least to most complex) are:

Bluetooth input

Dedicated media streaming device

Dedicated hacked-together solution

The bluetooth option you don't like because then you have a phone (or other device) that's always tied to being the media source, and you and your spouse can't conveniently control it.

The dedicated media streaming device (your Squeezebox, Sonos Connect, Echo Dot/Echo Input, high end streamers from Naim or Moon or Cambridge, etc) are built to be user-friendly but suffer from occasionally being discontinued. The cheap end here is an Echo input which is fantastic except it doesn't like to be controlled by clicking buttons -- it prefers your voice. The middle ground is the Sonos Connect which is expensive for what you get but has the best overall support at this point.

The hacked-together solution is something like a raspberry pi running Kodi or some other PC-with-software solution. These are generally going to be the most flexible but require the most tinkering. If you want huge home-automation integration, don't mind tinkering and such, you'll be good here.

Personally, I have a Sonos Connect and a variety of other SONOS gear, and I've been really happy with it. Easy interface, great whole-house support, is the current dominant player in this pocket so the hardware is likely to remain relevant for a while. I don't like paying $350 for a connect, but if you only need one it's a REALLY nice solution.

jfryjfry said:

I appreciate all of the ideas. 

I don’t want to use Bluetooth because the phone won’t always be within range (music playing for a party and I have to go get more ice for example) 

i prefer hardwired stuff when I can...  Ethernet for the net and cables for the sound. 

That being said, the echo dot or input might fit the bill. Not expensive and hardwired speakers.  

It sounds like controlling pandora through it via our phones would be pretty simple.  Can two phones control it simultaneously?  (Could i start it playing oingo boingo on my phone and Mrs.jfry turn it to atlas genius when I walk outside? 

 

You are wise to avoid BT.  From an audiophile standpoint, it is awful.  It is also very short range.

I'm not sure what kind of equipment you have, but if any of it does wifi or has an ethernet jack, that opens you up to nearly anything.

I'm not sure about two devices.  The way mine works is that I open the TV app (for instance spotify) and it streams audio through the TV (which is HDMI'd to my receiver).  My phone simply "knows" that I'm streaming spotify and the phone app works sorta like a remote... but I'm not casting from my phone.  I can go to the beach 200 miles away, and my TV would still be playing spotify.  If my dog texts me and says "I don't like the Eagles," I can just hit next on my phone and it will make my TV skip the song from 200 miles away.  I think to interrupt (like if someone wanted to play Pandora) they would have to cast to the TV with their phone app, or physically change the TV app to Pandora.

I would think that if two phones are logged into the same account, either one could control the TV app, but changing apps with my setup would require changing the TV itself... which I could do with the Roku App on my phone as well.  Not seamless by any means, but it could be done.

As far as the other stuff, I'm going to watch intently as I have a media conundrum myself.  Don't worry, it's not similar enough to your question that I'll hijack.

Yes, BT sounds terrible. 

In my shop, I have a dedicated media player. Sounds fancy, but it's really just my old first-gen iPod Touch that's plugged into the receiver with a 3.5 to RCA adapter cable. Gets power from a switched outlet on the back of the receiver, although I could leave it plugged into the wall. Plays Pandora all day long. Sure, you have to go over to it if you want to interact, but it's easy, rock-solid and cheap and when I'm working I'm not obsessing about tweaking a playlist. An obsolete phone would do the same because it just has to speak WiFi.

I got one of these open box from Monoprice:

Monoprice 25 Watt Stereo Hybrid Tube Amplifier with Bluetooth.  With an old set of bookshelf speakers it sounds way better than I thought it would and it is not cheap feeling at all.

Keith Tanner said:

Yes, BT sounds terrible. 

In my shop, I have a dedicated media player. Sounds fancy, but it's really just my old first-gen iPod Touch that's plugged into the receiver with a 3.5 to RCA adapter cable. Gets power from a switched outlet on the back of the receiver, although I could leave it plugged into the wall. Plays Pandora all day long. Sure, you have to go over to it if you want to interact, but it's easy, rock-solid and cheap and when I'm working I'm not obsessing about tweaking a playlist. An obsolete phone would do the same because it just has to speak WiFi.

Is this like the guys that claim they need $100/ft speaker wire, but then couldn't tell the difference between it and coat hangers?

From what I understand, it depends on the codec used by the BT transmitter and the BT receiver, whether it's streaming (Spotify uses a different codec) or native MP3 or AAC. IE "BT is trash for audio" isn't necessarily the case. Like basically everything else in life, the answer isn't black/white, "it depends."

z31maniac said:

Is this like the guys that claim they need $100/ft speaker wire, but then couldn't tell the difference between it and coat hangers?

From what I understand, it depends on the codec used by the BT transmitter and the BT receiver, whether it's streaming (Spotify uses a different codec) or native MP3 or AAC. IE "BT is trash for audio" isn't necessarily the case. Like basically everything else in life, the answer isn't black/white, "it depends."

This, Bluetooth doesn't have to sound terrible, it depends on the codecs involved. In my experience it ranges from "good enough that most people wouldn't notice the loss of quality" to "good enough to trick even the most discerning audiophile."

I would put the lower end of your range a bit lower based on my experience. It can be done reasonably well - car audio is crap enough in the first place that you may not notice - but if you're going to notice the loss of quality, it'll be through a half-decent sound system. For background noise at parties it'll work fine.