> For example, I can't cast YouTube to it, because it doesn't support video. But what if want everyone in the room to hear what I'm playing and the video is irrelevant?

I'd imagine that's for the same reason why you can't "listen" to a video on mobile with the app in the background: it would qualify as a music stream, and YT doesn't have the rights to stream music in an ad-based model.

You actually can do that if you pay for YouTube Premium.

Exactly, they probably don't have a license for ad-based audio streaming, only subscription-based.

Could be, or they're just using it to differentiate the offerings.

You can cast YouTube to it via vlc or what I usually do is YouTube-dL and plex. But yeah. Not directly.

You can use mkchromecast for that: https://mkchromecast.com/#installation Also you can go further with it and cast from airplay devices: https://github.com/philippe44/AirConnect

I have airconnect on a raspberrypi so I don't have to keep my laptop on and I can play songs from my iphone that way, just stream to chromecast audio. It's also worth mentioning it works a bit better than mkchromecast but it depends on your wifi.

Someone else posted this tip earlier in this thread - might help you:

"By the way, it's easy to cast audio only from YouTube or any other app - just go to the Google Home app and cast your phone's audio to the device or group."

Not that it should matter too much most of the tine, but that does increase (naively triple) local wifi network traffic since you're streaming from source to your phone, from your phone to your router, and from your router back to the CC Audio instead of straigt source to CC Audio.

Makes sense. Others in the thread had said that Chromecast Audio was way better than standard bluetooth or wireless audio solutions because it had wifi capabilities and instead of requiring battery usage from your phone, it simply pulls the data stream itself from the internet.

Small things but they matter depending on use..

It works well with Spotify, for the record.

I haven't used mine in over a year due to audio stuttering issues, but you can get a browser extension to cast anything on a desktop.

I believe Firefox on Android may also support casting (along with ad blocking and an extension to play Youtube in the background by removing the page visibility api)

> I'm considering buying an HDMI->DVI/Audio adapter and just using a standard Chrome Cast.

I did exactly this about 6 years ago, worked fine. Shame to cast all those video bits through your wifi contention just to throw them away at the adapter, though.

In the cases where the video is static, there are relatively few video bits. An MP4 on YouTube that just displays the album art is about the same size as an M4A.

Not really

My problem is the Chromecast (plugged into AV amp) turns on the TV (via CEC), and if you turn off the TV, the Chromecast stops

I have a Chromecast Audio and I just choose "cast screen to device" from the Android system tray (the pull-down menu from the top of the screen) and it seems to work fine to stream any audio to the Chromecast