Some questions concerning balenaSound

Hi!
Im soon moving in a shared flat with some friends and i stumbled upon balena sound. As im not really a fan of the generic Sonos systems, i liked the idea of being able to use old speakers in a multiroom speaker system. Before i start buying the parts I’ve got some question which I haven’t seen answered anywhere though:

  1. Is it possible to use the speakers both individually and as a multiroom system? Because I was thinking of a Party, where it would be super cool if the same music would play in all the rooms. But I dont want everybody to listen to my music all the time. Is it possible that i listen to Artist A in my room and my friend to Artist B in their room? Or would i have to change the whole configurations all the time?
  2. How difficult is this for a person who’s not really into tech? I need to make sure that my friends who are not really interested into this stuff can use the setup properly. Because they all have iPhones i think they will use Airplay to connect.

Thank you for your help!

Thanks for the questions here! Glad you’re checking this out.

  1. You’ll have to change configurations unfortunately, or run the standalone speakers on their own device in their own fleet. Please see: Customization - Home

  2. It’s very easy to set up. The hardest part might be learning how to navigate balenaCloud and learning how to edit environment variables to configure things (beyond the stock use case).

Hi!

Thanks for your interest in balenaSound!
To answer your questions, it is compatible with Airplay, so your friends who have iPhones should be able to use it.

As for being able to stream different music in different rooms, balenaSound plays synchronized audio across each device. The same audio will be automatically sent to all other devices in the application. I’ve reached out to our dev team to see if they have any advice on how you can play different music in different rooms.

In the meantime, try checking out this getting started guide and seeing if balenaSound could be of use to you.

Kind regards,

Julia