I understand. That requirement was put in there in anticipation of "well, the Sonos does everything you want to do, so what are you asking here for?" And also to cover the Android side of things.

If it weren't for the podcast issue, I could just go with a Sonos and be done with it. But at least half of the audio my wife and I listen to are podcasts. Because Sonos seems to be terrible with podcasts (from everything I've read), it means I'm going to have to make some sort of workaround.

That aside, I needed to add that requirement to also cover Android. Since Airplay is Apple-only, I need something that covers both platforms. It's because I need to go cross-platform that I have to do this weird workaround to begin with. Otherwise I could just put an Airport Express and a pair of computer speakers wherever I wanted music, and just Airplay everywhere. But my and my Android OS have to mess everything up