Sort-of.

Neither a Sonos Port nor something like an Alexa Echo Dot nor the long-discontinued Chromecast Audio can awaken my stereo (whether from 1955 or 2025), select the appropriate input, and allow me to start playing music from my phone.

A Sonos speaker does allow that, though.

And so might a modern sound bar when combined with things like CEC and a regular-ass $25 HDMI Chromecast.

The Sonos Port claims to be able to trigger your amp to turn on, though I don't know how it works. It's called a "12v trigger." Quick searching mostly found people asking on Reddit how the heck they could use it and mostly getting "most hardware doesn't support it."

I did find this interesting comment, though:

> You can get a secondhand Sonos Connect (Gen 2) for about $100 these days; they are the predecessor of the Port and are functionally the same for your purposes.

Also if I wanted to make a product like the Connect/Port I think I would spend another $3 in materials to add both an IR blaster (like the Harmony hub has -- it's so powerful it bounces off the walls perfectly well even to devices on different shelves) for amps with remotes, and to also offer as a separate purchase, a simple relay switch module for old stereos that don't have remotes -- they could be left on and have their power controlled by the Sonos.

As far as I know that's not a thing with any Sonos or competing product, though.

> though I don't know how it works. It's called a "12v trigger."

THX introduced the trigger port to allow one amp to start other amps. Before that amps would have a 110V passthrough socket.

THX trigger is a mono 1/8th inch / 3.5mm TS plug. Each device usually has one 12V in and a 12V out. While it's on, it'll output 12V at up to 30mA[1]. Due to current fluctuation and the low max amp it's recommended to use an opto-electronic isolator at the input.

THX originally introduced it to allow for home cinema surround. At the time commercially available amps only supported 2 channels, so the first THX systems had one receiver decoding the dolby signal, providing a line level output that you'd connect to multiple stereo amps. Due to the currents required the 110V passthrough wasn't an option, so 12V trigger was born.

Before 12V trigger existed the IR/Remote port, which allowed you to connect an external IR receiver to TVs, VHS recorders and Amps. This used the same plug, but would modulate the IR remote signal directly.

You could also use this to connect multiple devices and allow them to send remote control codes to one another. But that feature disappeared quickly due to limited compatibility.

In computers 12V trigger and remote ports inspired the I²C based DDC standard for VGA monitors, which allowed turning them on or off or changing settings. DVI and DisplayPort kept DDC as is, while HDMI expanded DDC into the CEC standard, which also allows controlling volume or sending media controls in a standardized way. Nowadays 12V trigger is mostly being replaced by HDMI CEC.

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1. Some devices support up to 80mA, Sonos even provides 100mA

Such a 12v trigger would be useful for a plain stereo amplifier, which are relatively simple things -- so simple that they may not even have a volume control.

This would allow a Sonos Port to have a dedicated amplifier connected (for driving one big stereo pair of speakers, or maybe an array of 70v distributed audio speakers, or who knows what) and control when it is powered on.

But it won't turn on my AV receiver (it has 12v triggers, but they're all outputs), nor switch its input mode appropriately.

(Yeah, sure. I can hack something up with an ESP32 with IR or RS-232 or even Lego Mindstorms or something from Switchbot, but Sonos buyers and hardware hackers are naturally somewhat diametrically opposed: A person who buys Sonos gear wants stuff that just works, not a new hobby.)

Chromecast Audios are still easy to pick up on eBay (or if you're in the UK, CeX, that's where I got one).

Any old cheap plug tied to Home Assistant (or plain old Google Home in my case) for auto powering on my Cambridge Audio amp. (I'm not fancy enough to care about automated input switching between TV and music, I just get up and turn the knob, but turning off the hifi remotely I like)

Music Assistant supports streaming to Chromecast from TIDAL at the native (24 bit, 96khz, flac/m4a?) format. And TIDAL mobile app itself supports casting to Chromecast devices as you'd expect.

Those 3 things combined got me an old school hifi set up which I can include in my Chromecast groups of shitty sounding second-hand nest minis, so I get multi room audio where one room has the most audio :-) but I could swap out the shitty pucks for some more CC audios if I wanted to fork out for more amps and bookshelf speakers.

I trust Google to at least not intentionally brick their old devices and chromecast is built on mDNS and documented http endpoints enough that you can automate your own stuff in your LAN that you should be able to keep that stuff working in home assistant + music assistant should Google ever decide randomly they wanna sunset Google home (so, 50% chance of them announcing that in 2025).

Homebrew you can roll your own DIY multi room hifi audio using stuff like Hifiberry, too. Pipewire/PulseAudio/JACK on raspberry pi / NUCs should be able to get you surround sound over the network with minimal latency (although you probably want decent ethernet), since you can make a virtual sink that bridges the audio servers together.

You have one of those fancy hifis that has hdmi inputs and digital input selection and whatnot? Okay yeah you'd have to roll your own HDMI CEC automation again with a raspberry pi or whatever. Eminently doable.

There's definitely ways to get multi room audio of equivalent or better quality and at-least-equal user experience as long as you're willing to invest the time in doing loads of DIY shenanigans, but honestly it's pretty easy these days. For me, I think the "this is too complicated for me to implement" bar is not high enough to warrant buying Sonos

Yes, this is annoying. I settled for the cheap variant: Let any hdmi device grab focus. The tv has spdif to the amp. Amp is always on the spdif input. I can change sources on the tv and the sound will follow, if I want youtube or spotify to play, I have to use chromecast on the tv or airplay to apple tv. It works ok for only a single cable. If the tv is off, the sound is off.

An amp will wake on hdmi (arc) input, but it won't wake on spdif. Unless you figured out something clever you still have to mess with multiple remotes and turn devices on/off individually.

I have a 40-year old amp and speakers at home. My dad’s old stereo. Works fine, but it has so much static buzz.

Sounds great though. I’m just a bit hesitant to leave it powered on all the time which means I don’t use it much compared to my Bluetooth speakers. Old power supplies are not very efficient. They can get hot. There is also a decent amount of dust. And then there is the risk of some old cap blowing.

Buzz is not normal. Either it was really low quality, (unlikely since it has lasted this long), or it is not properly grounded.

It's not properly grounded. I think I need to change out the power cable for one with ground, since the power cable that comes with the stereo only has two wires. There is a grounding point on the back of the chassis, but I don't have anything to ground it to except for the wall socket and at that point I should just use a proper power cable instead.

I would be surprised if that device can power cycle or control the volume of a stereo from 1970.