28-Nov-2015, 22:20
(28-Nov-2015, 08:44)Bownose Wrote: AirPlay is easy enough with an airport express (costing $79 or so) and using the optical feed into any of the phantoms or dialog, phantom auto switches when you send music to it. I personally don't use Spotify but the optical in and Bluetooth means I never have to use the Spark app when using Raspberry Pi, AppleTV 4 via Aex and AirPlay also via Aex.
I don't really subscribe to the Sonos approach which is to shoehorn everything through a unifying app which places the onus of software development on Devialet to keep up with changes,
This isn't just brown nosing, this is the way to go. With so many great music playing apps and library apps out there, why would you wait for Devialet to re-create the wheel with Spark? I pride myself on using Spark for the absolute MINIMUM possible (basically, I only use it to confirm that my phantoms are "on line," get them re-connected again if need be, and setting a baseline volume level.
For everything else, there is AirPlay. Then you have access to all manner of streaming options! Plus, if you have your own music library, you can also play it from a laptop through any library or music app you please just by setting the Mac's audio output appropriately.
This is the way I've been using my Phantoms, and it's been 99% stable and otherwise great. Stability-wise, beats Bluetooth to death. All you need is an Airport Express and a toslink-to-mini Toslink cable.
Forget Spark. Spark will never be anything you want to spend time interacting with.
