Possible Raspberry Pi network audio solutions

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Paul Barker
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#46

Post by Paul Barker »

Just leaving my pi on tuned into Jazzgroove if get five minutes pick up headphones and drown out the world. Highly recommend.
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IDM
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#47

Post by IDM »

I just realised that if you run an update of Raspbian operating system it is possible to use I2S. You just need to enable the modules (which I have done). When this is done the Hifiberry DAC is listed which works through I2S and I understand that a TDA1541a should also work in the same way. So far so good.

My problem now is that I cannot work out which music player I should download to try and get the whole thing to work. I see stuff written about mplayer and mpd but to be honest for a non-linux person it doesn't look easy. Though, I am prepared to have a go!

So does anybody have a suggestion of the best and easiest to configure music player to work with Raspbian? All I want is something that can read FLAC files off a USB stick.


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Ian
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pre65
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#48

Post by pre65 »

What about Foobar ?
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Paul Barker
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#49

Post by Paul Barker »

I don't think Foobar is available for Linux.

There was a player I used with Linux which at that time sounded better than foobar in Windows. Just can't recall which player I was using at that time. Sorry.

This was on the same machine all other things being equal.
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#50

Post by IDM »

I use Foobar to create FLAC copies of CD's.

What I am looking for is a program that I can download onto the pi to use it as a music player. In particular I need it to work with Raspbian as Raspbian apparently has the facility to put audio out as I2S for an external DAC.

I have read about people using mplayer or music payer daemon (MPD). I just wondered if anybody had any experience as when I read some of the articles I start glaze over when it comes to some of the configuration.

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#51

Post by pre65 »

Paul Barker wrote:I don't think Foobar is available for Linux.

There was a player I used with Linux which at that time sounded better than foobar in Windows. Just can't recall which player I was using at that time. Sorry.

This was on the same machine all other things being equal.
Seems Foobar will work under Wine.
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Paul Barker
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#52

Post by Paul Barker »

I don't know if the rPi is powerful enough to run Wine. Or if Foobar is worth converting via Wine to Linux, since my experience was that the Linux based player sounded better.
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#53

Post by Nick »

Paul Barker wrote:I don't know if the rPi is powerful enough to run Wine. Or if Foobar is worth converting via Wine to Linux, since my experience was that the Linux based player sounded better.
Wine is a Windws emulator, not a Intel x86 emulator. the Pi being ARM not x86 may cause problems. Though I do know that work is ongoing with wine and arm.
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Ray P
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#54

Post by Ray P »

IDM wrote:So does anybody have a suggestion of the best and easiest to configure music player to work with Raspbian? All I want is something that can read FLAC files off a USB stick.
Why Raspbian? Given your requirements I would suggest that Volumio fits the bill. It turns the RPi into an audio appliance rather than a Linux computer running audio software, if you know what I mean.
http://volumio.org/

Mr Barker is a satisfied user I believe, controlling it from his smartphone with 'Sound@home' from the Google Playstore

Oh, and Volumio works with the HiFiBerry, including i2s interface.

I think this one is generally similar to Volumio (they come from the same roots).

http://www.runeaudio.com/

Although I've tried Volumio and found it nice and easy my personal preference is for a DLNA/UPnP solution and I've configured my RPi with GMediaRenderer sitting on Raspbian as described here;

http://blog.scphillips.com/2013/07/play ... revisited/

it, and my other DLNA/UPnP devices are controlled with BubbleUPnP on my Android phone/tablet, also available from Google Playstore. My music files are on the network but I don't know if it would work with a local USB device; BubbleUPnP allows you to select devices, including a 'local' (to the device) library so it may be possible - I'll try to check it out a bit later.

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#55

Post by Ray P »

I tried GMediaRenderer with a local USB device and no joy. When I thought about it after my previous post its what I expected as the RPi isn't running any sort of library service, just the renderer.

It could probably be addressed but to be honest it would take time I don't have to spare at the moment.

Ray
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#56

Post by Ray P »

I finally got around to uploading some pictures of my Raspberry Pi renderer; that's an AA battery just to give a sense of scale.

Image

Image

As you can see, I'm using the HiFiBerry DAC, connected via i2s. It's configured as a UPnP/DLNA renderer using GMediarenderer (instructions here; http://blog.scphillips.com/2014/05/play ... d-dlna-v3/). It works well. I control it with BubbleUPnP on my Android tablet.

Ray
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Paul Barker
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#57

Post by Paul Barker »

Fantastic. Beuatiful job too.

Have to be honest I let mine fall by the wayside, but bought the earlier pi which is less workable with in these ways.

Must get something like this organised.
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#58

Post by Andrew »

Nice job, Ray.
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#59

Post by Cressy Snr »

Yes, a great job :)
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Ray P
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#60

Post by Ray P »

Thanks for the complements chaps.

If it's of interest I got the case on ebay; about £8 from China, including shipping. I did get the end panel CNC machined though.

Although there's only a limited amount of ventilation it only gets a little warm and it runs reliably for weeks on end.

Sound quality wise, its quite reasonable and represents excellent value when sound quality is balanced against cost, but not from the very top drawer (I'm hoping my next streamer project, Buffalo DAC 3SE, Beaglebone Black and Twisted Pear Botic (audio cape for BBB) will get into that territory. There's a long thread here http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/twisted- ... cance.html).

Ray
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