Universal Group Player doesn't play announcements or music with 2.8.2

[peetipablo]

Hello, having the same issue as mentioned in Closed Issue - Universal Group Player #5214 however upgrading to 2.8.2 doesn't resolve the issue for me as described. I am creating a Q&A as instructed.

I've tried several troubleshooting steps, including:

• Delete & recreate the universal group with the same players
• Delete & recreate the universal group with a single player
• Confirmed that playing directly to all single players in the group works
• Tried both announce, and playing music in the above scenarios
• Restoring a backup of 2.7.11 restores group player functionality

MA is installed as a HAOS addon. HAOS is running on a proxmox VM. Please let me know what other information I can provide.

[OzGav]

What players are you using in this group. We need to try and create your problem exactly

[peetipablo]

Then what are these squeezelite players. How are you sending the announcement.

The announcement is being sent via music_assistant.play_announcement service in Home Assistant.

If you dont care about the lack of sync with a universal group then why not add the squeezelite players to a sync group, Group the cast players separately and then send the announcement to both groups?

Yeah you're right, I guess I could do separate groups for the announcement. I was having some trouble in the past with this approach though: when playing music on one of the squeezelite players, in the announcement sync group and then an announcement was done via HA automation, the players would remain in sync group and music playback would resume on all members of the group rather than the single original player.

[OzGav]

Yes you would need to unjoin them as powering on the group will join them.

edit: But I dont know how making them a universal group solves that...?

[peetipablo]

In version 2.7, my experience was that using a universal group rather than a sync group removed the need to join/unjoin the players as you mentioned, and overall the experience from music playing --> music pause --> announcement --> music resume was more streamlined.

Regardless, I'll re-configure my announcement automation to use sync groups rather than a universal group if that's what is recommended. I truly appreciate your help and all the work that has been done on MA as a whole, it's an amazing app and I'm very excited to see what you all cook up in the future!

[OzGav]

It shouldn't as that aspect of the two group s should be the same. Perhaps you had dynamic members checked on one and not the other? Regardless, I would plan on having to unjoin them. Pulling them away without doing that would not be ideal.

[peetipablo]

Sounds good to me, thanks again for your help.