Resonate is an open standard for the complete music listening experience.
Resonate is a work in progress. The name and spec are subject to change.
Resonate is an open standard for synchronized music experience across multiple devices and rooms. It enables speakers, lights, and screens to work together to create a rich and immersive audio environment:
- Play audio in sync across multiple speakers
- Visualize audio playback on connected lights
- Offer music control and metadata from tablets or screens
Try it out today
Resonate is actively being developed, and we have working implementations that we're using to test the specification and validate the experience we want to deliver.
You can try a development version of Resonate today using the following software:
- Stream music via Resonate using the beta version of Music Assistant
- Play a Resonate stream using the Home Assistant Voice Preview Edition running a special Resonate build
- Show album art and control your music from ESPHome using this example configuration
If you have any feedback, please stop by at the #resonate-beta-testing channel on the Music Assistant Discord.
Adopted by the following projects
Roles in a Resonate network
Resonate supports different device roles to create a complete listening experience:
- Speaker – Speaker, phone or anything else that plays the audio
- Visualizer – Devices that will visualize the played audio. This can be an LED strip, TouchDesigner plugin or a Winamp style visualization app on a computer
- Remote – Devices that can display the current metadata and allow the user to control the music
Why (yet another) new protocol?
All existing audio standards are closed or focus on getting audio to play on multiple speakers simultaneously.
In the end, existing protocols focus solely on moving bytes around – getting audio data from one device to another for synchronized playback.
Resonate takes a different approach by focusing on the music listening experience itself. It takes a comprehensive look at what listening to audio means and makes sure that all activities are covered – not just audio playback, but also metadata distribution, visualization, and control across all your devices.
More Reading
- Read the protocol specification to see how it works
- Learn about the SDKs and code samples