Home Assistant

I've been chasing this dream for a while. My final solution would be wired speakers and a smart amp or some such setup but we're still renting so that's a no go. In the meantime we're using Logitech Media Server and a mix of devices.

LMS isn't the most beautiful solution but after years and years it's still the most feature rich and flexible solution to multi room audio you're going to find for zero dollars. It allows me to sync playback across almost any device, such as desktop computers, laptops, phones, raspberry pis, my Nvidia shield and most recently a couple refurbished Sonos OneSL speakers. It also integrates really smoothly with Spotify which is our primary music source.

The Sonos speakers were a decent price refurbished and work really well for us. LMS can control them flawlessly with the AirPlay bridge plugin and we can cast directly to them with Spotify whenever we want. I'll also note that the Spotify plugin for LMS supports turning any of its clients into a Spotify connect receiver as well. I did have to setup some automation to improve the handling between LMS and the speakers. If you cast Spotify while LMS is controlling the speaker it will cutover perfectly but resuming the LMS stream afterwards seems to require turning off and on the virtual LMS device but I was able to handle that with an automation.

Both the Sonos speakers themselves and LMS have robust integrations in homeassistant. It took me a bit to find the proper format for sending media_play requests but once I did, automation has been solid. I'm not a fan of proprietary setups like Sonos but I have to admit it's been a good fit so far.

Best of luck, hope you find a solution that works well for you. Let me know if you have any questions about my setup.