Best OS/server to stream Tidal/Qobuz via Raspberry PI

[HemiRick]

Another Vote for you to try Moode

 

[Max]

Can you give some info on how good the Qobuz integration is? For example does it integrate well with Qobuz playlists?

Good question.The Qobuz integration is generally good and complete : favorites tracks, albums, artists, suggestions from Qobuz and specialist magazines, etc. For the playlist, I'm quite sure but I'm out for few days and the Volumio app doesn't work without connection to the Volumio streamer [I'll check when I'll be back, send me a MP if I forget]. The UI is nice and good but a bit weird (for example, to navigate into previous tasks or menu you have to click on a dedicated button and not use the general "previous" button of your OS phone).

For my personnal taste, I prefer the native Qobuz app for its UI and due to my habits, but it is not userfriendly at all when not used through bluetooth or with a non "Qobuz direct" compliant device...

 

[Glasvegas]

Good question.The Qobuz integration is generally good and complete : favorites tracks, albums, artists, suggestions from Qobuz and specialist magazines, etc. For the playlist, I'm quite sure but I'm out for few days and the Volumio app doesn't work without connection to the Volumio streamer [I'll check when I'll be back, send me a MP if I forget]. The UI is nice and good but a bit weird (for example, to navigate into previous tasks or menu you have to click on a dedicated button and not use the general "previous" button of your OS phone).

For my personnal taste, I prefer the native Qobuz app for its UI and due to my habits, but it is not userfriendly at all when not used through bluetooth or with a non "Qobuz direct" compliant device...

Yes, the Volumio UI is very nice. It just didn't work very well with Tidal. For example if I wanted to create a playlist on Tidal, I had to go back to the standard Tidal app. I use playlists a lot, and continually switching between apps was a pain.

However, if I thought it worked really well with Qobuz, I might give it another try.

 

[somebodyelse]

Has anyone tried the Tidal or Qobuz support in PiCorePlayer/LMS? I know LMS has plugins for them, but have no idea how good or bad the integration is, either from the perspective of the normal LMS interface or the Tidal/Qobuz apps. As I understand it the Tidal one also requires a free mysqueezebox.com account.

 

[marco80]

Thanks for all the suggestions and input! Funnily at the end of the day after trying Tidal (worked quite well via Chromecast Audio but no gapless playback sucks a bit), I'll just go back to Spotify. The UI, suggestions, playlists, and especially Spotify Connect are beating Tidal easily for me and if I'm honest I simply couldn't tell a difference between the two in terms of sound quality at all. Why none of these other streaming services has something similar to Spotify Connect I'll never understand though. It's so convenient!

I still might give Moode a shot instead of Volumio but just for Spotify Connect it seems like it really doesn't matter.

 

[Thunder240]

if you are willing to run a server-side app, BubbleUPnP Server, then any Linux distro that can run on a Raspberry Pi and that supports DNLA/UPnP can be utilize BubbleUPnP as a proxy for accessing Qobuz and Tidal. BubbleUPnP Server works by creating an OpenHome proxy for each of your UPnP renderers, which it uses to send your stream to them. You must use an OpenHome compatible control point that is capable of storing your Tidal/Qobuz credentials. (I use the Linn Kazoo iOS app. I have heard that the LUMIN app also works, but I can’t confirm this.)

Note that BubbleUPnP Server is not a UPnP AV server, despite its name. If you want to stream your own music using UPnP, you must run a separate UPnP AV server. (I can confirm that a Mac Mini can run both BubbleUPnP Server and Kodi as a music server at the same time with no conflicts as long as it has sufficient RAM).

Using this method, I am able to use Volumio on my Allo Digione Signature player running Volumio to stream to Qobuz without paying for a MyVolumio subscription. I’ve also tested it with MoOde, but I found Volumio to be more user friendly to configure and to interact with. (I could not perceive any difference in SQ, but I didn’t evaluate their sound critically, let alone take measurements! I will likely try DietPi soon.)

Finally, I believe that BubbleUPnP Server may be the only completely free method of accessing Qobuz from a Pi-based streamer, in other words without subscribing to a paid service like Roon or MyVolumio. (Perhaps it can be done with PiCorePlayer? I’m prepared to be corrected on this!) Last a November Qobuz revoked the API credentials of Kodi and perhaps others based on a security concern, according to issues posted in Github, so that’s no longer an option.

 

[somebodyelse]

Finally, I believe that BubbleUPnP Server may be the only completely free method of accessing Qobuz from a Pi-based streamer, in other words without subscribing to a paid service like Roon or MyVolumio. (Perhaps it can be done with PiCorePlayer? I’m prepared to be corrected on this!) Last a November Qobuz revoked the API credentials of Kodi and perhaps others based on a security concern, according to issues posted in Github, so that’s no longer an option.

LMS (and hence PiCorePlayer) does have a Qobuz plugin, and its forum thread suggests it is still working and supported.

 

[simbloke]

Finally, I believe that BubbleUPnP Server may be the only completely free method of accessing Qobuz from a Pi-based streamer, in other words without subscribing to a paid service like Roon or MyVolumio.

No, it's not the only way. I use upmpdcli with a regular DLNA server and a player running mpd. I can then play Qobuz using the BubbleUPNP Android app.

 

[Theriverlethe]

Has anyone tried the Tidal or Qobuz support in PiCorePlayer/LMS? I know LMS has plugins for them, but have no idea how good or bad the integration is, either from the perspective of the normal LMS interface or the Tidal/Qobuz apps. As I understand it the Tidal one also requires a free mysqueezebox.com account.

I can’t vouch for Tidal but Qobuz works very well with LMS. I’m using the UPNP LMS plugin to stream to my receiver and Jriver on my desktop.

 

[Thunder240]

LMS (and hence PiCorePlayer) does have a Qobuz plugin, and its forum thread suggests it is still working and supported.

No, it's not the only way. I use upmpdcli with a regular DLNA server and a player running mpd. I can then play Qobuz using the BubbleUPNP Android app.

@somebodyelse ok, thanks for the correction.
@simbloke I’m not familiar with BubbleUPnP’s Android app, being an iOS guy myself. I gather that it’s the BubbleUPnP app that is accessing Qobuz stream, and then sending it to your DNLA server and onward to your renderer(s)? Or does it work some other way? If the former, I agree it’s a different network topology than what I described, but at the end of the day you’re still making use of BubbleUPnP’s Qobuz API credentials.

 

[simbloke]

The app has my credentials and the Qobuz API key. I haven't looked in to it but I guess it then supplies a custom URL to the DLNA end point which Qobuz recognizes as being my account using a valid app. The app/phone does not forward any stream. Once it's playing it's completely independent of the app.

 

[Dominique-T]

I came from Volumio, been using Ropieee on my RP4’s for a while now as Roon endpoints with Tidal and won’t look back. Works sooo well it’s not funny.

I confirm, I have got Jriver, Volumio. I have installed Roon on a dedicated Nuck with Rock, and I play to a RPI4 with Ropieee. Fantastic...

 

[yejun]

I think airplay and Chromecast audio are the only options if you want to use native ui. Almost all pi distros support airplay, but it only supports 44.1khz.
Or get Roon as other already suggested.
Myself has been researching this for a while and found nothing.

 

[Bamyasi]

You can also use Qobuz app to search / browse tracks and albums you want to play and then use its "Share" menu option to send the playlist with selected tracks (or album) to BubbleUPnP app on the same phone / device for playback. BubbleUPnP can be set up to automatically play it via the DLNA renderer installed on your Pi streamer (I use GMrender). It's a bit awkward to use it this way but it works pretty well and I prefer my Allo USBridge w/GMrender SQ to the CCA option, which I also have, connected to the same DAC.

 

[Cebolla]

ConversDigital's mconnect Player app can be used to control any standard UPnP/DLNA supporting streamer (so includes RPi ones), as well as Chromecast devices, to stream audio file tracks from directly from both TIDAL's & Qobuz's respective online servers.

Support for Qobuz includes its lossless hi-res FLAC tracks and as ConversDigital is an official MQA Limited partner manufacturer, TIDAL's (lossy) MQA hi-res tracks are also available. However, since the MQA file tracks arrive at the streamer drectly from TIDAL's online server in their original undecoded/distributed state, either the streamer or its DAC needs to do any required MQA decoding.

Available both on Android & iOS, including the free Lite version (ideal for testing).

 

[Bamyasi]

ConversDigital's mconnect Player app can be used to control any standard UPnP/DLNA supporting streamer (so includes RPi ones), as well as Chromecast devices, to stream audio file tracks from directly from both TIDAL's & Qobuz's respective online servers.

Needless to say, you can easily play back TIDAL & Qobuz streams directly from BubbleUPnP app as well, it's just a different GUI from the native TIDAL & Qobuz apps.

 

[Thunder240]

If you go the route I described above (post #26) of running BubbleUPnP Server on a computer on your home network, you’d then have the option to use an OpenHome control point app of your choice (eg LUMIN app, Linn Kazoo) to store your Qobuz credentials, search Qobuz, and then “stream” tracks to your RPi-based DNLA/UPnP renderers.

I put stream in quotes because the control point app doesn’t ever touch the stream. Under the hood, it passes your credentials to BubbleUPnP Server which handles the actual interaction with Qobuz and forwards the stream to your RPi using DNLA/UPnP. It’s pretty elegant, and it sounds more complicated than it is. The user experience is pretty nice. It looks and feels like I’m using Linn Kazoo to play Qobuz music on my RPi, not at all awkward unless something crashes or Qobuz updates an API method and doesn’t tell anyone. If/when that happens, all bets are off!

 

[Cebolla]

Needless to say, you can easily play back TIDAL & Qobuz streams directly from BubbleUPnP app as well, it's just a different GUI from the native TIDAL & Qobuz apps.

The BubbleUPnP app is my preference on Android, but unlike the mconnect Player app I mentioned, there's no version for iOS and it cannot provide TIDAL's hi-res MQA masters tracks - for those that must have them.

Also, BubbleUPnP does have the (optional) capability to proxy TIDAL's & Qobuz's audio streams and transcode them. This can be very useful for those streamers that can't cope with the streams being received directly from the online music streaming service, but of course the audio streams are now passing through the BubbleUPnP Android app. However, if you are able to run the associated BubbleUPnP Server helper software on a computer or NAS on the same network (I use a Raspberry Pi for this), the BubbleUPnP Android app offloads the stream proxy & transcoding function to the BubbleUPnP Server, saving the Android device from handling the audio streams & doing any of the work.

 

[shumi]

I am presently using Volumio on a Raspberry Pi 4 to stream Tidal and it sucks!!!! But one feature Volumio has which I love is the Brutefir plugin for digital room correction (not a parametric or graphic equalizer). The Tidal inter phase is being re-written and I am willing to suffer until it is fixed. Are there any other o/s servers which offer digital room correction as a plug in?

 

[yejun]

I am presently using Volumio on a Raspberry Pi 4 to stream Tidal and it sucks!!!! But one feature Volumio has which I love is the Brutefir plugin for digital room correction (not a parametric or graphic equalizer). The Tidal inter phase is being re-written and I am willing to suffer until it is fixed. Are there any other o/s servers which offer digital room correction as a plug in?

Roon also support dsp with impulse response.