Uniti Atom - chromecast multiroom capabilities

Posted by: Daniel B on 18 January 2018

Can the Uniti Atom, with "Chromecast built-in", be used as a member in a Chromecast "audio group" together with other Chromecast Audio devices (CCA pucks) such that music can be cast simultaneously to all devices in the group as a multi-room system?

Has anyone tested such a setup, does this work well in practice?

Posted on: 18 January 2018 by RadebeR

Yes it can. I have a Chromecast audio group at home and the Atom shows up as one of the devices I can add to it. I haven't tried it yet though as it's on a different floor and I haven't needed multi-room between floors in my house. Will do so and revert.

Posted on: 18 January 2018 by RadebeR

Tested and it works a treat. Actually quite a lot less faff than using the Naim app, especially when combined with a google home for voice control ;-)

Posted on: 18 January 2018 by Daniel B

Great news, this brings me a big step closer to getting the Atom. Thanks for taking the time to test this!

Do you percieve the SQ to be the same regardless of streaming method (Chromecast, Tidal/Spotify integration, UPnP, Airplay etc) for the same source material resolution? I'm assuming so based on the theory that all methods are just variations of the protocols to manage asynchronous ethernet data frames, where in the end the Atom clock and DAC are used to manage timing and D/A conversion of the same data...

Posted on: 18 January 2018 by RadebeR

To be honest I haven't done a like-for-like test of all of them. My extremely modest local music collection is in high res FLAC. I perceive it to be slightly better when played from a USB stick in the back of the Atom than when streamed from my mac on the same network via UPnP... but it's marginal. With regards to the streaming services, I've only ever experienced Tidal lossless... it's better than Spotify for obvious reasons. When it comes to Spotify Connect vs Spotify via Chromecast, I can't detect a difference in sound quality. For what it's worth I tend to use Spotify Connect rather than the built-in Chromecast... it seems to connect and start playing just that little bit quicker but the sound is the same to my ears.