How to connect two Samsung Multiroom speakers directly to PC in Stereo mode

Forums › Home Theatre (including HTPC and EPG Collector) › How to connect two Samsung Multiroom speakers directly to PC in Stereo mode

wodzuu

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#230297 17-Feb-2018 10:44

Hello!

I was wondering if anyone tried (and maybe succeeded) connecting two Samsung Multiroom speakers to PC so that they can play system sound in stereo. Using Samsung Multiroom application for desktop PC I am able to connect to both speakers and make them play stereo sound but only with Spotify (which uses Spotify connect) and by playing individual mp3/wav files from my disk (I have figured out they are uploaded to the speakers with HTTP protocol before being played). What I would like to achieve is to basically play all my system sounds through those speakers. Like anything: Youtube, games, movies etc.

I have not tried this solution because of lack of required equipment but probably sending the sound over HDMI cable to some modern Samsung TV that is linked with the speakers would work. I am wondering how does such TV connect to the speakers? Any why couldn't my PC connect directly to them?

If you have any ideas, please let me know.

Maciej

Goosey

2342 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

#1959559 17-Feb-2018 12:03

Without knowing the spec of your speakers (can you give us the model).

I'm assuming your speakers operate on wifi or bluetooth?

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wodzuu

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1959771 18-Feb-2018 08:01

These are Samsung M7 speakers. I can connect to them via bluetooth or wifi.

Spyware

3261 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1959777 18-Feb-2018 08:18

They also have wired Ethernet interface. TV connects to M7s via the wired or wireless network.

wodzuu

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1959792 18-Feb-2018 09:09

Do you know what network protocol is used to send sound from TV to the speakers?

Spyware

3261 posts

Uber Geek

Lifetime subscriber

#1959822 18-Feb-2018 09:56

I haven't studied it. Look at some of he github code maybe. Also a NodeJS homebridge plugin available.

https://github.com/cosminlupu/samsung-multiroom

https://github.com/cosminlupu/homebridge-samsung-multiroom

wodzuu

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1959844 18-Feb-2018 12:01

Thanks Spyware. Those pages were already known to me. Unfortunately they do not explain how to stream the sound to the speakers :(

wodzuu

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1959845 18-Feb-2018 12:01

Thanks Spyware. Those pages were already known to me. Unfortunately they do not explain how to stream the sound to the speakers :(

tieke

617 posts

Ultimate Geek

ID Verified

#1959849 18-Feb-2018 12:25

I have probably four of these speakers in my to-do cupboard: good hardware but the extremely poor software lets it down, especially with a PC.

Had good multiroom speaker results with Spotify and phone app, but the difficulty in making it work with a PC (let alone a non-Spotify service) has resulted in me replacing all of them with Google Home/GH Minis and Chromecasts. Samsung's decision to not have an audio input means that I can't even use them as non-smart powered speakers, although I was going to rip them open and check on the possibility at some stage.

tieke

617 posts

Ultimate Geek

ID Verified

#1959852 18-Feb-2018 12:39

Looks like I probably have the M5s rather than the M7 - the M7 may have aux-in. This page seems to have a bit of a round-up of people looking into the speakers, but as with the github links above it's mostly to do with controlling music playing on the speakers (pause, volume etc) and not sending music to them.

wodzuu

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1960091 18-Feb-2018 23:53

Thanks tieke. Yes m7 has aux in but having wireless speakers wired defeats the purpose. I have used wireshark to discover how my pc is able to play music files there. It is simple http get request from the speaker to http server that samsung app starts. Once the file is sent to the speaker it plays it immediately. I was able to write simple java application to play music files from my disk without samsung app. But this can't work this way with audio from TV. TV must be streaming audio to the speaker without any file upload stuff. But this protocol is unknown to me and since I don't have samsung tv, I am not able to investigate it.

Dunnersfella

4063 posts

Uber Geek

#1960177 19-Feb-2018 09:58

The next complication with sending wireless audio from a TV... is how do you get the audio and video to sync?

tieke

617 posts

Ultimate Geek

ID Verified

#1960191 19-Feb-2018 10:10

The lack of an aux-in was simply an annoyance for me as it meant I couldn't even repurpose them using one of my audio chromecasts :)

You're right in that it must be streaming from the TVs but I couldn't find much more info - some people used Samsung's Soundconnect, but that just appears to be a simple bluetooth protocol. It looks like the connection uses their "Smartview" protocol, but most of the Samsung TV protocol analysis I could find was only around emulating the network remote software.

Would you be able to share your java application? The Samsung PC app was just so useless that I stopped bothering.

wodzuu

7 posts

Wannabe Geek

#1960845 20-Feb-2018 11:45

The Java code I use to play an audio file can be found here: https://github.com/wodzuu/SamsungMultiroomAudioPlayer It is very simple but works. I have just discovered that the speaker can play ogg-vorbis stream so if I am able to encode my system sound to ogg then I should be able to make it work. Any changes to the code will be posted to github.

tieke

617 posts

Ultimate Geek

ID Verified

#1960999 20-Feb-2018 14:51

Great - thanks. I will unearth the speakers and have a play with it tomorrow.