• WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!

Brand new to forum, looking for guidance setting up raspberry pi 4 as dedicated music server, the best player to use, no streaming.

OP
E

Evang

Member
Joined
Mar 30, 2021
Messages
28
Likes
2
Nah, just malware.
Yeah balena etcher worked great and the instructions on the volumio website were excellent. I got it all set up but haven't been able to get any sound from the pi running volumio or to get the pi running volumio to play files off the hard drive. May be a power problem, do people here use a powered USB hub to run their hard drive with rpi? May be a formatting problem, I'm new to setting up a hard drive from scratch, I'll try a different drive, reformatting this drive and getting a powered hub, though I'd rather not add another power source into the mix, this is getting kinda clumsy. Also when setting up volumio the only option for output was hdmi, this seemed wrong to me, I was planning on going from the pi's USB to my smsl Sanskrit input, but so far no sound that way even with volumio radio so somethings wrong, pi recognizes the songs on the drive but cannot play them properly, again no sound.

Can anyone on here who runs a pi from a hard drive to a dac to a stereo tell me how they are set up including cables, connectors and which specific ports they are using from the pi. So far aside from the fan problem it seams like a mini pc run headless would be a much more functional way to go, and would offer all the benefits of being able to access the web and using different apps.

Assuming I figure everything out I'd like to post a walkthrough explaining specifically everything that you need to do to setup the pi as a server. The answers I've gotten here are already more helpful than anything I've found so far online. I've looked at the above posted thread and others , certainly alot of good information but too many different ideas and irrelevant information for someone that doesn't already know what they are doing and no way for someone who doesn't already know to be able to tell what will work and what won't aside from trying it out, and there is just too much to try. Something as simple as not knowing what cable you need for output can mean the difference between setup taking an hour or a week.

Thanks alot for any help you all can give, and I appreciate you getting me started down the right track.
 

Daverz

Major Contributor
Joined
Mar 17, 2019
Messages
1,294
Likes
1,451
What Pi hardware did you get? Did you get the official power supply and USB C cable, or are you trying to use a different one?

I would think you want to use a USB 2.0 socket for the DAC and a USB 3.0 socket for the drive. Without the drive connected, does Volumio see the DAC?
 

rkbates

Active Member
Forum Donor
Joined
Jul 24, 2020
Messages
137
Likes
151
Location
Down Under
Nah, just malware.
Yeah balena etcher worked great and the instructions on the volumio website were excellent. I got it all set up but haven't been able to get any sound from the pi running volumio or to get the pi running volumio to play files off the hard drive. May be a power problem, do people here use a powered USB hub to run their hard drive with rpi? May be a formatting problem, I'm new to setting up a hard drive from scratch, I'll try a different drive, reformatting this drive and getting a powered hub, though I'd rather not add another power source into the mix, this is getting kinda clumsy. Also when setting up volumio the only option for output was hdmi, this seemed wrong to me, I was planning on going from the pi's USB to my smsl Sanskrit input, but so far no sound that way even with volumio radio so somethings wrong, pi recognizes the songs on the drive but cannot play them properly, again no sound.

Can anyone on here who runs a pi from a hard drive to a dac to a stereo tell me how they are set up including cables, connectors and which specific ports they are using from the pi. So far aside from the fan problem it seams like a mini pc run headless would be a much more functional way to go, and would offer all the benefits of being able to access the web and using different apps.

Assuming I figure everything out I'd like to post a walkthrough explaining specifically everything that you need to do to setup the pi as a server. The answers I've gotten here are already more helpful than anything I've found so far online. I've looked at the above posted thread and others , certainly alot of good information but too many different ideas and irrelevant information for someone that doesn't already know what they are doing and no way for someone who doesn't already know to be able to tell what will work and what won't aside from trying it out, and there is just too much to try. Something as simple as not knowing what cable you need for output can mean the difference between setup taking an hour or a week.

Thanks alot for any help you all can give, and I appreciate you getting me started down the right track.
First thing - do you see any other options for your output device? If you have a DAC plugged in, you should see something listed against USB:
1617594125508.png
 
OP
E

Evang

Member
Joined
Mar 30, 2021
Messages
28
Likes
2
Okay great, that helped alot, the initial setup instructions for volumio didn't say the dac needed to be plugged in when setting up now that it's plugged in USB shows up and I can select it. Radio played for about a minute before getting an error message that dissapeared now no music, no response in ui, no messages. Still no hardrive, plugged it into the USB 3 and yes the dac is connected with usb2. I'll try a lil more, different browsers, checking settings etc, thanks for the help!
 
OP
E

Evang

Member
Joined
Mar 30, 2021
Messages
28
Likes
2
Error message is error opening alsa device.
 

rkbates

Active Member
Forum Donor
Joined
Jul 24, 2020
Messages
137
Likes
151
Location
Down Under
Okay great, that helped alot, the initial setup instructions for volumio didn't say the dac needed to be plugged in when setting up now that it's plugged in USB shows up and I can select it. Radio played for about a minute before getting an error message that dissapeared now no music, no response in ui, no messages. Still no hardrive, plugged it into the USB 3 and yes the dac is connected with usb2. I'll try a lil more, different browsers, checking settings etc, thanks for the help!
Sounds like a reboot is needed first off. To see if your pi is reading the hard drive, create a shortcut to your pi. Something like below, but yours will be "volumio" instead of 'garagevolumio"
1617602222478.png

You then can navigate to your music:
1617602294599.png

If that all works, then you need to read up on PuTTY or similar (I use mRemoteNG) so you can delve a bit deeper into alsa via a terminal connection (sounds ominous but really quite easy)
 
OP
E

Evang

Member
Joined
Mar 30, 2021
Messages
28
Likes
2
Ummm thanks, but I don't have a clue what you're talking about.
 

rkbates

Active Member
Forum Donor
Joined
Jul 24, 2020
Messages
137
Likes
151
Location
Down Under
Ummm thanks, but I don't have a clue what you're talking about.
Small steps then - is your Pi connected to your network? If so, is it wired or wireless and what other devices do you have on the network? Does your phone connect to the same network?
 

Guermantes

Senior Member
Joined
Feb 19, 2018
Messages
484
Likes
561
Location
Brisbane, Australia
For what it's worth, I've generally needed to run an external portable drive via a powered USB hub even with an RPi4. My USB DAC (Topping D10) runs fine directly from the ports on the Pi.

I am using Moode as my player/library. It has just had a major update with the addition of CamillaDSP which will allow fairly sophisticated room correction and EQ options.
 
OP
E

Evang

Member
Joined
Mar 30, 2021
Messages
28
Likes
2
THANK YOU!!!!!!!! Computers are not my thing, if I could set this up so it works though it would be amazing. Yes my pi connected to my network fine, it is wireless though I can use Ethernet if necessary. I have several computers connected as well, macs and a windows tablet that I am trying to switch to as my screen for navigating my music, and an iPhone. Trying to do most of this on pc with mixed success. I'm getting a powered USB hub, the Alsa error is related to heating cable right, so is it possible USB will help with this? I tried loading moode, played for a minute then alsa error. I'll reload volumio. Volumio did detect the hard drive and show its contents but was unable to play songs, just scanned through each track without producing anything. Then error. Raspberry pi 4 with raspberry pi power supply, SSD is in a case and it gets hot, might try and find out if another case will run cooler and maybe help, also ill try troubleshooting with different drives. Thank you for the help!
 

Beershaun

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Oct 3, 2019
Messages
1,864
Likes
1,910
I believe the ALSA error means the system doesn't know what audio hardware you want to use to play audio.

Hi. Here is a link to the Moode setup guide that walks you through step by step.
https://github.com/moode-player/moode/blob/master/www/setup.txt

For a USB DAC here is the step by step instructions from the guide.
. AUDIO DEVICE SETUP
- USB DEVICE
a) Menu, Configure, Audio
b) Select "None" for I2S audio device then SET
c) Restart
d) Menu, Configure, Audio
e) EDIT MPD config
f) Leave Volume control set to "Software"
g) Set Audio output to the name of the USB audio device
h) SAVE
i) Restart
 
Last edited:

Beershaun

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Oct 3, 2019
Messages
1,864
Likes
1,910
To add a USB storage device in Moode here is the next set of steps.
4. ADD SOURCE(S) CONTAINING MUSIC FILES
- USB STORAGE DEVICES
a) Insert USB storage device
b) Menu, Update library
c) Wait for completion (no spinner)
 

Beershaun

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Oct 3, 2019
Messages
1,864
Likes
1,910
From the Moode Guide. To add a Network storage device like your PC hard drive.
4. ADD SOURCE(S) CONTAINING MUSIC FILES
- NAS DEVICE
a) Menu, Configure, Library
b) CREATE Music source, type in the IP address/hard drive path to your music file directory <Note you need to select if your NAS/PC is using Samba (SMB) or NFS.>
c) After SAVE, return to Playback or Library
d) Menu, Update library
e) Wait for completion (no spinner)
 

rkbates

Active Member
Forum Donor
Joined
Jul 24, 2020
Messages
137
Likes
151
Location
Down Under
The Pi will run hot, but normally not a problem unless the SSD is drawing heaps of power so until you have things running properly you can try a powered USB hub. If you are using Volumio, does your home page look something like this? "Music Library" on the left is what you are looking for
Capture.JPG
 

rkbates

Active Member
Forum Donor
Joined
Jul 24, 2020
Messages
137
Likes
151
Location
Down Under
Yup, that's it exactly.
If you click on "Music Library", you should see "USB" like below
Capture.JPG

Click on USB, then in my case you get to SANDISK, for you it will be the name of your SSD, then click again (you may need to keep going down a few levels) and you should get to your music. If you can see your music files, click on any file and it should play.

If nothing plays, click on Settings then Playback Options and it will show you the currently selected DAC. In my case this is C-Media USB Headphone Set.
What do you see when you click on Playback Options?

Capture2.JPG
 
OP
E

Evang

Member
Joined
Mar 30, 2021
Messages
28
Likes
2
So under usb nothing shows up, tried switching ports and still nothing.
 

rkbates

Active Member
Forum Donor
Joined
Jul 24, 2020
Messages
137
Likes
151
Location
Down Under
So under usb nothing shows up, tried switching ports and still nothing.
Click on Settings then Sources - in the My Music section if your USB/SSD is being read you will see how many artists, albums and tracks you have. You may need to click on Rescan. If it says 0 artists/albums/tracks, then your USB/SSD is not being seen. If this is the case, transfer some of your tracks onto a different USB (dont use an SSD) and try again
Capture.JPG
 
OP
E

Evang

Member
Joined
Mar 30, 2021
Messages
28
Likes
2
I had tried the rescans etc. with no luck at all, and yes, finally put some music on a flash drive and it works perfect, easy, I can even see pictures on the drive. So this means the drive is the problem right, I'm pretty disappointed because I bought a nice ssd and enclosure specifically to avoid things like the drive spinning up. I still haven't received the powered USB hub to test that but I'd really like to avoid a mess of cords all over the place, any way to mount the ssd directly to the pi so it gets enough power, different power supply, connecting with the pins rather then usb? I'm comfortable building a ps from schematics if there's one out there that will do the trick. Sounds like alotof you guys needed power for your hard drives to work, is that right? Anyone who didn't have that problem tell what drive you're using? Any way to get more power to those usb3 ports by modifying the program, I'm very inexperienced at that stuff but could do it with a step by step walkthrough. Thank you all for your time and especially rkbates for getting me on track!
 
OP
E

Evang

Member
Joined
Mar 30, 2021
Messages
28
Likes
2
Also what happens when you connect multiple drives? I'm assuming the pi doesn't have enough power Or is it really the os that is limiting power to protect the circuitry? It took four or five rescans for the pi to read a flash drive, whats that about? There must be alot of diy pi PS's out there if this is a common problem right? Any recomendations? Listening to a flash drive of mp'3s I made in the early 2000's, pretty great! mermaid ave, the butchies, first kills album, anyone remember pretty girls make Graves, so good, man mp3's really sucked though. Is ditching drives a problem, guess I'll just find out, stoked to be on step closer to listening to my music.
 
Top Bottom