We write a lot about cooking. We guess that we’re foodies. We also post a lot, though less, about gadgets. We’re definitely techies. 100%. No doubt can be had about that.

When Sonos first came out, it made us very excited about wireless whole home audio. Our house was built in 1944, and since World War II was occurring and building materials were scarce, the house is constructed from poured concrete. It’s very sturdy. But new in-wall wiring poses problems.

We had two issues with Sonos. (Neither are performance related; our friends who have Sonos love it.) First, it was really expensive. Second, we preferred to use our pre-existing stereo equipment. Sonos sells its CONNECT, which attaches to external components, but it goes for $350. We needed at least six connections, so it would’ve cost $2,100. That seemed extreme.

Back in March 2014, we found a workaround. We brought six of these AirEnabler Adapter Kits on Amazon for $50 each—or $300 total. They helped rig our stereo equipment to receive Apple AirPlay signals. Then, we bought Airfoil software from Rogue Amoeba Software, Inc. for $25.00. That allowed us to send audio via AirPlay from our computer to multiple devices all over our house.

As far as workarounds go, it was a pretty good one. It saved us about $1,775—almost 650%. We never posted about it here, though, because it required some technical knowledge and some upkeep to program and reprogram the individual AirEnabler receivers. There was another critical flaw. Unlike Sonos, which ensures that the music playing on all of the speakers remains synchronized while playing, our workaround did not do that. Whenever the wireless stream to one of the speakers was momentarily interrupted, the music from that speaker became delayed, meaning that it fell behind the other speakers. That was annoying. It had to be remedied by restarting the stream to all of the speakers.

Last summer, we saw advertising for a big sale on Google products that coincided with Prime Day. Included in the sale was the Chromecast Audio device. We’d never heard of it. We assumed it was Google’s take on AirPlay. And, it is, but it is also much more. Why? Because it supports whole home audio—wireless, synchronized whole home audio. And, because it integrates with Google Home devices and plays well with Spotify. And, because it costs only $35 per device. And, because setup and maintenance are simple.

We’ve got a nice setup now: five Chromecast Audio devices, two Google Home devices and one Google Home Mini device. Using the Google Home app, we’ve created speaker groups, such as All Speakers, Main Floor Speakers, and Inside Speakers. We can simply say, “Hey, Google, Play Shakey Graves on all speakers”, and music by the artist Shakey Graves—who is awesome—from Spotify—which is also awesome—will play on all of the speakers throughout our home. Very cool. Very easy.

If a signal is interrupted to one of the speakers, when the music starts playing again on that speaker, it remains synchronized with the music playing on the other speakers. We can control what plays from our phone using Spotify. From our phone, we can also control the volume of the speaker group and the volume of each speaker individually.

We are gigantic fans of Chromecast Audio. We should’ve written this article long ago; we owed the world that favor. But, we’re writing it now, and we’re basing our review on a whole year of using Google’s solution for whole home audio. We’ve done tons of testing, and it passed the tests with flying colors.

Apple has recently released AirPlay 2, which now supports whole home audio. Great for Apple. We hope it works swimmingly. But, they are way late to the party, and we at G@H have converted. We’re Google people now. This autumn, we even plan to replace our iPhone with a Pixel XL.