Apple Music Announced on Instagram

[stibone]

If I have Sonos speakers as my audio device, can I use the Apple Music integration? I have a Core and a 4Sight subscription. Right now, if I want to listen to music via C4 on my Sonos, the only option is to use favorites or previously created playists for a service (Sirius, Apple) in the Sonos app. I can't browse my personal library or any music on the service through C4. My goal would be to use the native Apple integration in C4 while outputting through my Sonos system. Any insight would be much appreciated! 

[chopedogg88]

yes you can do this if you make an audio connection from your CORE processor to a Sonos input, for example on a Sonos Port or Sonos AMP that is in the rack nearby.  If you only have wireless Sonos speakers, then you'll need to add a Port in order to accomplish this.  PM me if you'd like help with this, I can help program it if you need, also can supply any Sonos products you might need if any (have a Port in stock).

[stibone]

Quote

1 hour ago, chopedogg88 said:

yes you can do this if you make an audio connection from your CORE processor to a Sonos input, for example on a Sonos Port or Sonos AMP that is in the rack nearby.  If you only have wireless Sonos speakers, then you'll need to add a Port in order to accomplish this.  PM me if you'd like help with this, I can help program it if you need, also can supply any Sonos products you might need if any (have a Port in stock).

 

PMed you!

[yvr76]

On 7/11/2024 at 11:01 AM, chopedogg88 said:

yes you can do this if you make an audio connection from your CORE processor to a Sonos input, for example on a Sonos Port or Sonos AMP that is in the rack nearby.  If you only have wireless Sonos speakers, then you'll need to add a Port in order to accomplish this.  PM me if you'd like help with this, I can help program it if you need, also can supply any Sonos products you might need if any (have a Port in stock).

 

I have a Port (connected to an Integra amp) for my living room + kitchen via 2 zones, and then Sonos wireless speakers in the rest of the house (Beam, One, Move etc).

Will the other wireless speakers be able to use the native Apply Music integration, or just the ones connected through the Port?

[chopedogg88]

yes if setup properly (using the Sonos Global Input driver), the wireless speakers will also be able to play music from native Apple Music, so long as you make an audio connection from your Control4 controller to the Port audio input.

[htjunkie]

I guess the answer is no but I thought I would ask just in case - with Sonos Line-In driver, I guess a Beam with HDMI audio in would not work?

With Apple music integration, there's an extra EA1 sitting around, thinking of using that with a Sonos beam through HDMI audio (HDMI extractor), then I can play C4 music to Beam.  Just not sure if I can expand that to other Sonos speakers or I need a Port to do that.

Much appreciate your help,

[chopedogg88]

I believe that will work too but I haven't tried it personally.  I don't think you'd need an extractor though because the Beam has an HDMI input right?

[htjunkie]

1 hour ago, chopedogg88 said:

I believe that will work too but I haven't tried it personally.  I don't think you'd need an extractor though because the Beam has an HDMI input right?

We tried to plug the HDMI cable from EA1 to Sonos, no go as we don't get any sound!  I guess Sonos Beam is looking for ARC!  Had to get an HDMI extractor then in Sonos app, tell it we don't have ARC so it's switching to optical!

We have the Sonos Global Line In driver but in the dropdown, we don't see the Beam showing up as an option to select.

[tmj4]

18 minutes ago, htjunkie said:

We tried to plug the HDMI cable from EA1 to Sonos, no go as we don't get any sound!  I guess Sonos Beam is looking for ARC!

Product guide for Beam lays out instructions for TVs with and without eARC/ARC. It's not a conventional HDMI in port so an adapter is needed to take audio from the TV to the unit. It's an optical to HDMI adapter. If needing to go  from an HDMI-only feed and/or only want audio from HDMI, you'll need an audio extractor as you said since TVs rarely can passthrough audio via HDMI to optical when off. 

[htjunkie]

10 minutes ago, tmj4 said:

Product guide for Beam lays out instructions for TVs with and without eARC/ARC. It's not a conventional HDMI in port so an adapter is needed to take audio from the TV to the unit. It's an optical to HDMI adapter. If needing to go  from an HDMI-only feed and/or only want audio from HDMI, you'll need an audio extractor as you said since TVs rarely can passthrough audio via HDMI to optical when off. 

Yup, we needed the HDMI audio extractor, it works great and with delay that we can adjust in EA1 the audio stream is perfect.

[witt312]

With the continued native integration of Apple products/services, does anyone foresee a path to HomePods getting controlled similar to Sonos speakers?

[South Africa C4 user]

So I’ve spent a good couple of days cleaning up my Apple Music library so that I can use it in Control4.  While I now prefer Tidal to Apple Music, the rest of my family never migrated over to Tidal (despite my best efforts when I moved in order to get decent C4 integration) and thus it looks like I will be moving back to Apple Music (and probably dropping Tidal) even though the sound quality is not quite as good.  

Comparing the Tidal and Apple Music drivers.  Both have some advantages and disadvantages but nothing majorly different.

However, there are a few bugs / shortcomings in the Control4 Apple Music integration which one hopes will get sorted out in due course.  The 4 most annoying issues that I have found are:

1. Uploaded music (that is not native to Apple Music) does not play in Control4.  It plays fine in the Music App.  I originally assumed that it would not play in the Apple Music web player as that is what C4 links into (as far as I know).  However, uploaded music plays just fine in the web player… Hopefully Control4 will overcome this as about 10% of my cleaned up library is uploaded music.

2. The Apple Music web player limits things to 25 albums per artist.  This is hugely annoying as there are plenty of good artists with more than 25 albums.  To make this worse, the Control4 driver handles albums 26+ in different ways under different circumstances.  For instance, on a T4 in one’s own library, it shows albums 26 to 50 (or less if the album count stops before 50) as blank entries and then album 51 will be a repeat of album 1.  When searching for an artist in Apple Music, it simply neatly stops the list at the 25th album on the T4.  In comparison, the iOS app duplicates the albums from 26 to 50 rather than showing blank entries as the T4 does.  First prize is for Apple Music to sort this out or Control4 to find a workaround.  Second prize is for control4 to neaten up the presentation and maybe even warn that more albums are available but not accessible / viewable within the artist menus.

3. There are various reasons why a track won’t play on Control4 (track has an error, track is no longer available, uploaded track - see point 1 above and 2 or 3 other reasons that I am still trying to figure out).  Control4 tends to give a warning message on the screen when this happens but does not deal with the problem consistently.  Sometimes it smoothly moves on to the next playable track.  Other times playback stops altogether. I have not quite figured out why there is different behaviour.

4. The Apple Music web player has some artefacts in it (or at least mine does) which then surface in Control4.  Not a Control4 bug but a bit annoying nonetheless.  I am guessing the reason that I have the issue is that I have been using Apple Music / iTunes since the very beginning (over 20 years) and a lot has changed in that time.  I have 4 or 5 artists that appear in my library in the web player (and thus in Control4) that do not appear in the Apple Music App (on my PC or iPad) and I can’t find a way to delete these…

@Darin, PM C4 CX Platform - some of the above may be of interest to the development team.

 

[South Africa C4 user]

With Apple Music (currently) allowing a family account to log in via one email address multiple times via multiple drivers and not kicking one out, I wonder if the Domosapiens ( @pbir ) pool source driver would work with it.  If so, that could be really powerful.

[msgreenf]

6 minutes ago, South Africa C4 user said:

With Apple Music (currently) allowing a family account to log in via one email address multiple times via multiple drivers and not kicking one out, I wonder if the Domosapiens ( @pbir ) pool source driver would work with it.  If so, that could be really powerful.

You can log in multiple times to multiple drivers of one email address, but you can only play one stream at a time

[South Africa C4 user]

43 minutes ago, msgreenf said:

You can log in multiple times to multiple drivers of one email address, but you can only play one stream at a time

While this aligns with what the Control4 documentation says, it is not technically correct (at this point in time and as long as you have a family account) as Darin pointed out previously in this thread.

Apple Music has “always” as far as I can tell allowed multiple playing logins on one account when there is a family account active (and that has nothing to do with Control4).  It appears that they limit the number of active streams per family rather than the number of active streams per family member.  Personally, I think this is a much better approach than that of, say, Tidal.

I have been playing 2 streams in 2 rooms using 2 drivers BUT one email address (Apple music login) for the half hour since your post above (noting that I do have a family account) and both (unique) streams continue to play happily as I type this.  If this was Tidal, one of the streams would have died within a couple of minutes…

Of course, there is always the risk that Apple Music changes their practice although I don’t see this as likely.  I must also admit that I have not personally tested more than 2 simultaneous streams using the same email address.

[macosr]

On 8/9/2024 at 4:08 PM, South Africa C4 user said:

So I’ve spent a good couple of days cleaning up my Apple Music library so that I can use it in Control4.  While I now prefer Tidal to Apple Music, the rest of my family never migrated over to Tidal (despite my best efforts when I moved in order to get decent C4 integration) and thus it looks like I will be moving back to Apple Music (and probably dropping Tidal) even though the sound quality is not quite as good.  

Comparing the Tidal and Apple Music drivers.  Both have some advantages and disadvantages but nothing majorly different.

However, there are a few bugs / shortcomings in the Control4 Apple Music integration which one hopes will get sorted out in due course.  The 4 most annoying issues that I have found are:

1. Uploaded music (that is not native to Apple Music) does not play in Control4.  It plays fine in the Music App.  I originally assumed that it would not play in the Apple Music web player as that is what C4 links into (as far as I know).  However, uploaded music plays just fine in the web player… Hopefully Control4 will overcome this as about 10% of my cleaned up library is uploaded music.

2. The Apple Music web player limits things to 25 albums per artist.  This is hugely annoying as there are plenty of good artists with more than 25 albums.  To make this worse, the Control4 driver handles albums 26+ in different ways under different circumstances.  For instance, on a T4 in one’s own library, it shows albums 26 to 50 (or less if the album count stops before 50) as blank entries and then album 51 will be a repeat of album 1.  When searching for an artist in Apple Music, it simply neatly stops the list at the 25th album on the T4.  In comparison, the iOS app duplicates the albums from 26 to 50 rather than showing blank entries as the T4 does.  First prize is for Apple Music to sort this out or Control4 to find a workaround.  Second prize is for control4 to neaten up the presentation and maybe even warn that more albums are available but not accessible / viewable within the artist menus.

3. There are various reasons why a track won’t play on Control4 (track has an error, track is no longer available, uploaded track - see point 1 above and 2 or 3 other reasons that I am still trying to figure out).  Control4 tends to give a warning message on the screen when this happens but does not deal with the problem consistently.  Sometimes it smoothly moves on to the next playable track.  Other times playback stops altogether. I have not quite figured out why there is different behaviour.

4. The Apple Music web player has some artefacts in it (or at least mine does) which then surface in Control4.  Not a Control4 bug but a bit annoying nonetheless.  I am guessing the reason that I have the issue is that I have been using Apple Music / iTunes since the very beginning (over 20 years) and a lot has changed in that time.  I have 4 or 5 artists that appear in my library in the web player (and thus in Control4) that do not appear in the Apple Music App (on my PC or iPad) and I can’t find a way to delete these…

@Darin, PM C4 CX Platform - some of the above may be of interest to the development team.

 

Speaking as a software developer this is great feedback that the C4 team should take and do something with. I also appreciate this write up because I am updating one of my controllers to a Core controller so I can use the Apple Music driver so thank you!

[nxr]

does anyone know what this message means? 

"Some required components for Apple Music are still being installed.
Playback is currently not available.
Installation may take up to 10 minutes"

I keep getting it repeatedly. I have a system with an EA5, EA3 and CoreLite

Thanks

[Topfox]

2 hours ago, nxr said:

does anyone know what this message means? 

"Some required components for Apple Music are still being installed.
Playback is currently not available.
Installation may take up to 10 minutes"

I keep getting it repeatedly. I have a system with an EA5, EA3 and CoreLite

Thanks

Did you just install?  Mine was doing this on initial install. I just went to bed and woke up in the morning and it was finally all done and worked. 

[South Africa C4 user]

3 hours ago, nxr said:

does anyone know what this message means? 

"Some required components for Apple Music are still being installed.
Playback is currently not available.
Installation may take up to 10 minutes"

I keep getting it repeatedly. I have a system with an EA5, EA3 and CoreLite

Thanks

I’ve had this once or twice.  Always wait an hour (in case it fixes itself).  I’ve found rebooting the core fixes the problem.

[Cjwal]

Quick Question,  Has anyone noticed Apple Music stopping on control4 after a couple of hours.  Running Apple Music Natively for a couple months.  During the day we like to have a streaming service running through control4 all day as background music.  Used SiriusXM and Amazon Music - choose a streaming station and it can run all day.   With Apple Music when I select a station, it runs for exactly 2 hours and then shuts off control4.    Anyone else seeing this behavior? 

[South Africa C4 user]

22 hours ago, Cjwal said:

Quick Question,  Has anyone noticed Apple Music stopping on control4 after a couple of hours.  Running Apple Music Natively for a couple months.  During the day we like to have a streaming service running through control4 all day as background music.  Used SiriusXM and Amazon Music - choose a streaming station and it can run all day.   With Apple Music when I select a station, it runs for exactly 2 hours and then shuts off control4.    Anyone else seeing this behavior? 

Not exactly after 2 hours.  There are a few reasons that I am seeing it turn off (listed a few posts back) but not after a specific period of time.  

[Cjwal]

On 8/28/2024 at 2:20 PM, South Africa C4 user said:

Not exactly after 2 hours.  There are a few reasons that I am seeing it turn off (listed a few posts back) but not after a specific period of time.  

I think I figured it out.  It appears they are not allowing live stations.  All the stations are playlists.  Thus when the playlist ends Apple Music stops.  
 

Just going to have to find an all day playlist. 
 

[South Africa C4 user]

1 hour ago, Cjwal said:

I think I figured it out.  It appears they are not allowing live stations.  All the stations are playlists.  Thus when the playlist ends Apple Music stops.  
 

Just going to have to find an all day playlist. 
 

Or set the music to repeat?