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

rkbates

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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!
All good - always trying to bring new people into the Raspberry Pi world. I'll be buying a portable SSD shortly (for another purpose) but I'll try it on the Pi first and see if it works. One last thing to try - your SSD may not be formatted correctly. Plug it into your windows computer, click on This PC then right click on the SSD and select Properties. It should be NTFS or FAT32 for the file system - they are both visible in both windows and linux (Pi). FAT32 can only handle files up to 4GB so NTFS is preferable. Just remember that reformatting erases everything
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Evang

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Ok, I was using exfat because I still have the macs and am in the process of trying to convert my music setup to pc, which I'm clueless on how to use, basically I got fed up with iTunes. Is exfat no good with the pi?
I just managed to Cobble together a powered USB, plugged the ssd in and plugged it into the pi, bingo, got music from the ssd, all good, no error codes coming up. Sounds pretty good, seems maybe not as clean as straight from pc to dac, at the high end, snares and symbols maybe a little dirty, I'll listen more. What do you all think of the sound in this setup, any tips for cleaning up expanding the high end, one of the things I love bout my tube amps sound is it's like there's no ceiling. I'll listen more though, might be just my imagination, or tweaters.
Now I want to explore volumio's possibilities. Can I use it to send music being played in a browser page, for example band camp, to the pi, or would that require a full pi os. Any suggested improvements? And then the big one, ripping vinyl and archiving music, is it possible with the pi? Just loving hearing my music now, it's been awhile. Still interested in ps solutions that are a bit slicker, not super into a USB hub as part of my sixties hifi system, or a box of bits either. What do you guys think about powered USB hub and it's connections affecting sound?
 
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Evang

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Also volumio's interface is so much better than iTunes, why don't they do a cross platform music player?
 

rkbates

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Ok, I was using exfat because I still have the macs and am in the process of trying to convert my music setup to pc, which I'm clueless on how to use, basically I got fed up with iTunes. Is exfat no good with the pi?
I just managed to Cobble together a powered USB, plugged the ssd in and plugged it into the pi, bingo, got music from the ssd, all good, no error codes coming up. Sounds pretty good, seems maybe not as clean as straight from pc to dac, at the high end, snares and symbols maybe a little dirty, I'll listen more. What do you all think of the sound in this setup, any tips for cleaning up expanding the high end, one of the things I love bout my tube amps sound is it's like there's no ceiling. I'll listen more though, might be just my imagination, or tweaters.
Now I want to explore volumio's possibilities. Can I use it to send music being played in a browser page, for example band camp, to the pi, or would that require a full pi os. Any suggested improvements? And then the big one, ripping vinyl and archiving music, is it possible with the pi? Just loving hearing my music now, it's been awhile. Still interested in ps solutions that are a bit slicker, not super into a USB hub as part of my sixties hifi system, or a box of bits either. What do you guys think about powered USB hub and it's connections affecting sound?
FAT32 can share between Pi, Windows and Mac. ExFAT should be able to, but Volumio may not support it since it's not a full Linux distribution. Sound quality wont be affected by a powered hub or external drive - the only likely issues are glitches and you'll definitely hear them. For any sound improvements you need to look at Volumio doing equalization. Ripping vinyl is probably easier on a windows pc (never done it), then just access the ripped file via the pi.
 
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Evang

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So I had the power off and was adding music, now none of my browsers can find volumio.local or the ip.
 

Guermantes

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So I had the power off and was adding music, now none of my browsers can find volumio.local or the ip.
Can you log into your router's network management page and see if the RPi is being assigned an IP address? IP addresses can shift around through dynamic allocation. Try connecting the RPi to your router via ethernet cable and see if it's accessible.

And then the big one, ripping vinyl and archiving music, is it possible with the pi?

Recording vinyl is technically possible with an RPi using an ADC but you may have to load software with recording functionality on a full RPiOS. You will want to optimise the audio (e.g. cutting silence from start and end of rip, cut rumble, maybe clean up ticks and pops, normalise peaks) and you will want to custom tag the resulting files otherwise they will all be listed under unknown album and unknown artist in the Volumio database. Really the recording and/or editing of the files is best done with one of your Macs or PCs. Audacity is a good free cross-platform audio editor and they have posted a vinyl ripping workflow:
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/sample_workflow_for_lp_digitization.html
 

rkbates

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So I had the power off and was adding music, now none of my browsers can find volumio.local or the ip.
Fing (to see what's connected and IP addresses) and Net Analyzer (to see wifi signal strength and SSID) are pretty handy network troubleshooting apps
 
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Evang

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So again thank you for the help, I don't know anything about tech and don't understand any of this. I logged in to my router's network page but would not even know where to look for the pi. I downloaded fing and it shows all the desktop pc's but not pi. Next I will try connecting with Ethernet but i will have to disconnect the pi to do this. What exactly am I looking for and how would I fix it? A quick search online showed many other people having the same problem and I was unable to find a solution I could make sense of.
 
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Evang

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Ok, raspberry pi is visible as connected to the router via Ethernet on fing. Since I don't know what to do next I'll go ahead and see if I can setup volumio from scratch and hope it works again when I unplug the pi. This doesn't seem like a real fix to me though, as nothing has really changed, won't the pi continue to do this in the future? Does the pi need to stay on all the time in order to work properly as a server? Will a pi music server constantly have these kinds of problems and need continuous attention to function? Are there permissions in my router or security settings I can change that will allow the pi to function without problems, and what are they? Thank you!
 

Guermantes

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If, for some reason, Volumio is not able to re-connect to your router wirelessly, it will boot as a hotspot. [EDIT] But note that the guide says this hotspot fallback is disabled by default.

This is from the Volumio quick start guide:
VOLUMIO HOTSPOT
  • If your device has wireless capabilities (and a supported Wireless card) Volumio will create a Wireless network called Volumio, the default password is volumio2
  • The Hotspot mode will allow you to connect to your Wireless network without the need for a wired connection, just connect to Volumio Hotspot and configure your network in the Network options page
  • Once your Wireless network has been configured, Volumio will automatically disable the Hotspot
  • If, for whatever reason, your configured Wireless network is not available (e.g. password change), Volumio will automatically re-enable the Hotspot; in case of a connection lost a reboot is needed in order to reactivate the hotspot, since the feature is triggered only at startup. This feature is disabled by default and can be activated by enabling the option Hotspot fallback located in Settings -> Network
  • You can change the Hotspot options in the Network options, such as its name, password and channel (useful if you experience poor Hotspot performance)
  • Once in Hotspot Mode, Volumio can be reached with IP 192.168.211.1 or via http://volumio.local as usual
Connecting via ethernet should temporarily avoid this as usually it doesn't require all the security measures such as passwords that wireless protocols need. If you still can't see it on your network after connecting via ethernet, then there may be a problem with Volumio booting.
 
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Evang

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Also are there any proper procedures for powering off, disconnecting drives on the pi?
 

Guermantes

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Ok, raspberry pi is visible as connected to the router via Ethernet on fing. Since I don't know what to do next I'll go ahead and see if I can setup volumio from scratch and hope it works again when I unplug the pi. This doesn't seem like a real fix to me though, as nothing has really changed, won't the pi continue to do this in the future? Does the pi need to stay on all the time in order to work properly as a server? Will a pi music server constantly have these kinds of problems and need continuous attention to function? Are there permissions in my router or security settings I can change that will allow the pi to function without problems, and what are they? Thank you!

The network settings should be persistent between re-boots of the RPi. The only inconvenience that may occur is dynamic IP address allocation by the router which can cause havoc with shortcuts. The way around this is to setup a static IP for the RPi in your router config (the static IP is tied to the respective hardware MAC address - a unique identifier assigned to the wireless network interface in the Pi), this way the router will always reserve that IP address for that hardware.
 
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Evang

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Thanks, I could see it connected with Ethernet, and I downloaded fing and logged in as admin to my router and I believe I have theright password from the back of the router to make changes if that will be a permanent fix. What changes do I need to make? I have resetup volumio from Ethernet and connected to wifi, I'll see if it still works when plugged into my system.
 

Guermantes

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Also are there any proper procedures for powering off, disconnecting drives on the pi?
I don't know if Volumio has an unmount feature (I use MoOde) but I usually power off the RPi before disconnecting attached drives, just to be safe.

I've found MoOde to be quite robust - I often just pull the power from the RPi while it's running and have never had a corruption of the SD card boot drive.
 
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Evang

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Thanks, I'm really appreciative of the time you all are taking but again I am not knowledgeable with tech. Unfortunately I need specifics on how to do those things as I don't know what they mean. I have access to my routers configuration, I have fing, and I can get another ap if that's what I need, but I don't know specifically what to do. Also I don't have experience in tech or understanding of terminology. Thanks again for your help, can you explain it in a way that would make sense to someone who doesn't already know how to configure router settings?
 
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Evang

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Okay if it still doesn't work maybe I'll give moode another try, thanks. Again if anyone can explain how to configure the router I'd love to try it, but googling the info in the above post and trying to understand it is going to take me some time. I don't even know if you're talking about making changes to the router or to the volumio os, but I'll see if I can figure it out.
 
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Evang

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Yeah, doesn't work. I'll probably start from the beginning one more time just to make sure. In the mean time I'll try and learn how to set up that static ip and hopefully not mess up my router to much in the process.
 
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Evang

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So do I understand correctly that the problem is being caused by dynamic ip address allocation by the router?
 

Guermantes

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So do I understand correctly that the problem is being caused by dynamic ip address allocation by the router?

Unfortunately I really don't know why your Volumio install is dropping off the network. It sounds unusual. Dynamic IP address allocation would still connect Volumio to your network and it should be visible to Fing.

Even if the IP address is being changed by your router on each boot, typing http://volumio.local/ in a browser from your Apple Mac should find it. But note: if you have changed the name of your device in setup, then you would substitute that name for "volumio" in the web address.
 

rkbates

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So do I understand correctly that the problem is being caused by dynamic ip address allocation by the router?
Going to static IP is handy, but everything should work fine with dynamic IP. If you scan the network with fing, do you see the Pi (should appear as volumio)?
 
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