Okay. After many weeks of frustration I may have figured out the issue (sort of), but I'd still love to try and figure out what's happening, so let me start from the beginning...
The Background:
I have a Vizio sound bar 3651 and a Vizio Crave 360 wireless speaker. I connect them together through the Google Home app as a speaker group, and then use Chrome casting to play music from Spotify to the speaker group so I can play both speakers throughout my house. It worked great for years. I love it, that's why I've spent so much time trying to figure this out.
The Problem:
About a month or so ago it just stopped working. No more casting. No casting to either of the speakers individually and no casting to the group of both speakers together. Bluetooth still worked fine for either device, but I want to cast to both. The sound bar acted like it was about to connect, but it just kept "connecting" and then eventually just stopped. No error message. However, other apps, like YouTube music casted just fine through the speaker group. Only Spotify wouldn't work, this is why I thought Spotify was the issue.
Troubleshooting:
I did everything. I'm not kidding, everything. I'm a tenacious person and I loved the multi speaker set up. I tried from a different device, I logged out of everything, I restarted everything, including router, I cleared the Spotify cache, I reinstalled all apps, I factory reset all devices, I made sure everything was up to date and had latest firmware. I deleted the speaker group in Google Home and re created and added both speakers. Let me tell you. I did it all. Finally I cancelled my Spotify account and surrendered.
The Breakthrough:
Last night I was troubleshooting again (its my part time job now) and I was in the middle of factory resetting my Crave 360 speaker (again). I tried to cast to the speaker group and it started casting! It started casting when the Crave 360 was removed from the group. Once I added the Crave 360 to the group again, the casting stopped again; however, this time I was now able to cast to the sound bar alone, just not the Crave 360 or the speaker group it is contained in. I was not able to cast to the sound bar before either, but now I could, progress. Not sure what caused that change.
The Solution:
If I remove the crave 360 from the speaker group in the Google Home app, then start casting to the group, then add the Crave 360 back in AFTER I am already casting, it will catch on and start casting also, solving my issue, but I have to do this every time, if the Crave is in the group when I first try to cast, it wont play, it has to be out of the group when I start to cast, then added in.
Questions:
Uh, so what the **bleep** is going on? It seems that the Crave 360 is the issue, but why did YouTube music work fine? Does this mean Spotify is part of the problem too? Or is the Google Home app the issue? I have deleted and re added all devices in the Google Home app, I've deleted and re installed the app, logged in and out etc. The problem is still there.
Anyway this issue was so bizarre and I've spent so much time looking at forums I thought Id put this out there to hopefully save someone else some time and frustration.