Testing Google Cast Headphones

Google’s Chromecast, introduced in 2013, represents one of the more brilliant home gadgets available now. Plug the HDMI end into a display, power it over a Micro-USB cable, and the “dumb” display turns into a pseudo-smart TV. Google followed this up with the Chromecast Audio in 2015, which promised to do the same thing to speakers. Users could spend over a thousand dollars on a Sonos setup, or a few hundred dollars on a Cast audio setup that works just as well and sounds even better.

The Cast protocol that powers these devices has also evolved over time, adding new services and functionality. While users could at first only stream Netflix and YouTube, every conceivable video service has added Cast functionality. Similarly, audio applications have steadily added Cast functionality as well, and major services such as Pandora, Spotify, Pocketcast (a popular podcast application) as well as Google’s own Play Music have long had Cast integration. Last year, Google released the Google Home: one-half assistant, one-half Cast-powered smart speaker. Third party speaker manufacturers such as Sony have also been integrating Cast into their products.

The way that Chromecast works is that the host device — a user’s smartphone, tablet, laptop or desktop — sends the link to whatever content the user wants to watch to the Chromecast or Chromecast Audio. The Chromecast must be connected to Wi-FI in order to stream this content from the provider, which isn’t an issue in most cases. This is much faster than the competing Miracast protocol, which sends whatever is on a display over the Wi-Fi network. That requires a lot more bandwidth to work well, and even on my gigabit Internet, I’ve found there’s still an annoying amount of lag. Meanwhile, streaming a show from Netflix to Chromecast doesn’t require any more bandwidth than streaming it to a phone or tablet, so playback is much smoother. Miracast also has the disadvantage of only sending whatever is on the display, while with Chromecast a user can Cast the video and work on other things on their device display.

With device manufacturers starting to have the courage (read: stupidity) to remove the 3.5 millimeter headphone jack from newer devices as well as the growth of the Cast protocol, I’ve seen some users in various forums interested in headphones with Google Cast built in. It makes sense on paper: streaming over Wi-Fi provides a ludicrous amount of bandwidth compared to Bluetooth, even better Bluetooth codecs like AptX. So, I decided to purchase a Chromecast Audio, plug it into my headphones and give it a try.

First off, plugging an external dongle into my headphones and powering said dongle with a portable battery is clunky, to say the least. That’s okay though since this is more a proof of concept rather than something I’ll actually use long term. Having the Chromecast Audio hang off the side of my headphones was actually much less annoying than I thought it’d be. Every user’s ears and tastes are different, and every phone and pair of headphones reproduces sound in different ways. So, the results I get from my phone and headphones may not match up with someone else’s experience. The gear I’m using for this test are:

Headphones: Sony MDR-1000X. These are a great high end pair of headphones that sound fantastic with the right source and (most importantly) feature both a 3.5 mm input and Bluetooth, so I can compare how my music sounds via casting vs. how it sounds streamed to the headphones over Bluetooth vs. how it sounds using a 3.5 mm cable straight from the phone to the headphones.

Phone: OnePlus 3T. This is my current daily driver after the Gruene River killed my Moto Z Play (RIP). The important thing to keep in mind is that the OnePlus 3T does not feature AptX support, so Bluetooth audio is streamed via the standard (crappy) codec. I did briefly use a ZTE Axon 7 which DOES feature AptX support (as well as a very high quality headphone port), but it kept dropping signal and I need a phone that can be a phone.

Music: For testing purposes I’m using the same four songs I did when Google Play Music added a high quality option:

• Blank Space — Taylor Swift
• Here You Come Again — Dolly Parton
• I Won’t Back Down — Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
• Delia’s Gone — Johnny Cash

The main genres I listen to are pop, country, rock and acoustic, and these songs represent their respective genres well. The Google Home application walks users through setting up a Chromecast device in an easy manner, so I won’t repeat any of that process in this article. One thing I did have to do is toggle the “Full dynamic range” option under device settings to get the device to output audio to both earcups.

I tested with the Chromecast Audio first, and I was impressed. I picked up on background detail that I couldn’t hear when listening to those same songs over Bluetooth, and everything just sounded more full overall. To confirm this, I listened to those same songs over Bluetooth immediately after. Within the first few seconds of “Blank Space,” I knew the Bluetooth streaming was going to be decisively worse than the Chromecast streaming. That remained true with the rest of the lineup as well. There’s a simple explanation for this: more bandwidth to carry the data means more detailed songs, which equates to better sounding music.

I listened to the songs over Chromecast one more time before switching over to the wire. This is where it got interesting: there was no perceivable difference between listening to music over Chromecast and listening to music over a wire. This is fantastic for users that want to make their speakers smart and add multi-room support. But for headphone users, there’s a big drawback: the Chromecast Audio setup is immediately useless outside of Wi-Fi range. The Cast protocol was not designed around offline usage, and I don’t see that changing anytime soon because of the focus on stationary devices such as speakers and TV’s.

I know a mildly vocal part of the Android and audiophile communities really want Google Cast headphones to be a thing, but it’s just not a great idea. I get the frustrations with streaming over Bluetooth because of the loss of quality, but just plugging in a wire is infinitely easier than jumping through hoops to use Google Cast. Having said that, I still love the idea of Google Cast speakers, and I’m going to use the Chromecast Audio I bought for this experiment in the near future to make a nice home audio setup.