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DIY: Your Son or Daughter Can Build a Raspberry Pi Audio Streamer for You in Minutes

somebodyelse

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That's a huge subject to go into detail over. Choice boils down to feature support and personal preference, so if you can narrow it down a bit people can make more targeted response. Have a look at their respective web sites and support fora and you should get a fair idea of which look promising and which you can rule out, then give a few a go and see which one(s) you like. An incomplete list off the top of my head:
  • PiCorePlayer
  • Volumio
  • Moode
  • RuneAudio
  • Ropieee(XL)
  • GentooPlayer
  • Max2Play
 

Thalis

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To keep cost down I am using Bubble UPNP on my phone, moOde player on the RPi 3B+, a laptop with Foobar2000 as the media server. Very hard to beat this combo in my opinion.
 

Atanasi

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Is there a pre-made configuration for Raspberry Pi that provides an AES67 receiver and uses a USB DAC for output?
 

rgpit

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I've set up a streaming system for my brother using Logitech Media Server running on a dedicated pc. For an end point/player, a Raspberry pi 4 running picoreplayer. We're using the RP USB out to his Classe integrated amp. He also has a Marantz home theater receiver and wants use it as an additional end point but it has no USB input so I've configured another Raspberry pi to use it's HDMI out for audio. This seems to work fine. Is anyone else using audio through the pi's HDMI out and are there any issues with HDMI for audio?
 

quattr0

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Unlike this newly minted software, Moode and Volumio don't show you album art, musician credits, and real-time synced lyrics on your TV all at the same time no matter what music streaming service you're using!! And nor does any other software (that I know of)! :)

There is already a perfectly good DAC in my receiver, now being fed a bit-perfect and well-timed 16-bit / 44.1 khz stream by the optical out from the HiFi Berry Digi+ Pro. I don't do ultra HD, Hi Res, MQA, or other super-DAC $$$ voodoo. :cool:

Here is the HiFiBerry Digi+ Pro on top of the Raspberry Pi 4 doing its thing in real time!!! Optical out 16 / 44.1 bit perfect digital audio stream to receiver and video interface to TV by HDMI.

View attachment 48422

I'm noob when it comes to hifi. If I already have an audio system, heos player and a minidlna server that stores flac files, I assume I won't get any more benefit from this build? I have a Pi4 laying around....
 

Feanor

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I use a mini-computer with Windows 10 and Foobar2000 as my musical interface. My music files reside a Synology NAS.. The mini happens to be a Beelink very similar to this one ...
https://www.deviceranks.com/en/minipc/16324/buy-beelink-gemini-t34-price

The price of this mini is well under US$200. As well work fine with Foobar, it can stream pretty much anything to works with a browser like Chrome or Edge, or a Window 10 "app". ...

Why do I need a Raspberry Pi? What advantage does it have over my mini Win 10 computer, either for functionality or price?
 

Silver1omo

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Why do I need a Raspberry Pi? What advantage does it have over my mini Win 10 computer, either for functionality or price?

If you already have a setup and meets your needs, you don't need it.
It does come handy if you need another playback device, a raspberry + case + DAC + power + sd card, can be substantially cheaper than a new PC/laptop/DAP.
 

Atanasi

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Why do I need a Raspberry Pi? What advantage does it have over my mini Win 10 computer, either for functionality or price?
Raspberry Pi has small power consumption, so the power supply has smaller capacity. There is a smaller chance of ground loops or leakage currents, especially if your DAC or amp is unbalanced and connected to grounded active speakers.
 

ahofer

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As @amirm alluded to in his review, if you don’t have much programming or Linux or experience this could be exceedingly difficult. I’m just lucky to have a kid in the house for whom this is not an unusually difficult undertaking. I could never have done it on my own.

I have found that assembling a Raspberry Pi and providing a micro-SD with Volumio, RopieeXL, or MoOde for full-featured streaming requires little or no expertise at all ( I have never connected a "hat", inasmuch as I use USB for streaming to outboard DACs). You don't have to install or configure linux yourself because you can download an image of any of these packages that is complete with minimized operating system ready to go. I haven't tried DietPi yet, but it seems to offer same.

I am interested in the USB out discussion. I was recently corresponding with the owner of smallgreencomputer about his pre-loaded roon servers. He said that you could connect your DAC to the server, but the USB on their endpoints was much better. My priors are that this is nonsense, assuming a competent DAC on the receiving end.
 

somebodyelse

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Is there a pre-made configuration for Raspberry Pi that provides an AES67 receiver and uses a USB DAC for output?
I don't think so. This one has at least been tested on ARM (Beaglebone Black) but it's not pre-made. I've seen a few things about using gstreamer to do it too, but never had anything to try it with.
 

RPG

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I have found that assembling a Raspberry Pi and providing a micro-SD with Volumio, RopieeXL, or MoOde for full-featured streaming requires little or no expertise at all ( I have never connected a "hat", inasmuch as I use USB for streaming to outboard DACs). You don't have to install or configure linux yourself because you can download an image of any of these packages that is complete with minimized operating system ready to go. I haven't tried DietPi yet, but it seems to offer same.

I am interested in the USB out discussion. I was recently corresponding with the owner of smallgreencomputer about his pre-loaded roon servers. He said that you could connect your DAC to the server, but the USB on their endpoints was much better. My priors are that this is nonsense, assuming a competent DAC on the receiving end.

My experience is that you're correct. On this, I think it's just a matter of physical convenience and system design/configuration, especially with regard to either fan noise and/or disc access noise (if you have a spinner). I believe there is little or no difference in what you hear, music-wise, whether connected via an endpoint or directly to the server.

I happen to have an RPI4 connected, via ethernet, to one of the SGC microjukeboxes (which has been an excellent and reliable device). I use Logitech Mediaserver as the server software on the microjukebox and, while not particularly noisy, the fan and disc access noises from the microjukebox were audible in my listening area. So, the microjukebox got banished downstairs. I use the RPI4 solely as a streamer (piCorePlayer/Squeezelite) and it is connected, via usb, to my RME ADI-2 dac. One of the neat little features of the ADI-2 is that it will do bit tests (pass/fail) at various resolutions and bit depth streams all the way to 32 bits. Via the RPI4/usb combination, all of the resolutions up to 24 bit passed (I didn't test 32 as I have no 32 bit music files). So, I have a great deal of confidence, both empirically, and by ear, that the RPI4, used as streamer-->usb--->dac, is every bit as good as just about anything else, streamer-wise, that you'd connect to a dac via usb.
 
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Bluemootwo

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I have found that assembling a Raspberry Pi and providing a micro-SD with Volumio, RopieeXL, or MoOde for full-featured streaming requires little or no expertise at all ( I have never connected a "hat", inasmuch as I use USB for streaming to outboard DACs). You don't have to install or configure linux yourself because you can download an image of any of these packages that is complete with minimized operating system ready to go. I haven't tried DietPi yet, but it seems to offer same.

I am interested in the USB out discussion. I was recently corresponding with the owner of smallgreencomputer about his pre-loaded roon servers. He said that you could connect your DAC to the server, but the USB on their endpoints was much
So, as I wrote in another thread, my son is building me an audio streamer. This is a second-hand account unless he wants to write something.

A HifiBerry Digi+ Pro is on the way from Amazon. It has optical and coax outs.

Today we went to Microcenter and we bought some stuff. A Raspberry Pi 4 (4 gb I think), a micro HDMI to HDMI cable, a 64 gb Samsung Evo+ microSD card, and a Raspberry 4 USB C connected power supply,

He‘s working on the software. He’s going to be using Arch Linux (which is what he uses on his main PC also). He’s going to start by making a basic WiFi streamer and then adding on a bunch of cool stuff over time.

Okay, so he just came downstairs and said he finished making the streamer. That was quick. He used Arch Linux and installed shairport on it. I don’t know what all that means. We get the Hifi berry digi+ Pro from Amazon tomorrow and pop it on there and the basic streaming stuff is done. Then he adds the extras via coding and stuff.

So this just goes to show you, your son (or daughter) can build a Raspberry Pi audio streamer for you in minutes. Let me edit the title here to make this more accurate.

Now I will go upstairs and he will show me how to use it. If you have any questions you can ask me and I will ask him. I guess I’ll post a pic.

I’ve just set myself up - without the help of a teenager too!
Really simple, in fact. Bought a rPi 4, no mouse or keyboard needed. Bought a microSD card for it. Downloaded Ropieee onto the card. Put the card in the rPi. Plugged in the Ethernet cable. Plugged in the power. USB out to my DAC. Went to Roon audio settings and there was the DAC showing up. Clicked play, and beautiful music came out.
Recall that lots of very expensive streamers are just a rPi in a shiny box, and sit back and enjoy yours which cost less than £60 all in.
 

Sukie

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I’ve just set myself up - without the help of a teenager too!
Really simple, in fact. Bought a rPi 4, no mouse or keyboard needed. Bought a microSD card for it. Downloaded Ropieee onto the card. Put the card in the rPi. Plugged in the Ethernet cable. Plugged in the power. USB out to my DAC. Went to Roon audio settings and there was the DAC showing up. Clicked play, and beautiful music came out.
Recall that lots of very expensive streamers are just a rPi in a shiny box, and sit back and enjoy yours which cost less than £60 all in.
Welcome to ASR and great 1st post. I sometimes read that people don't want to "build" an RPi or that they're DIY. As you have experienced, there's no "building" involved. People seem to spend far longer getting expensive streamers to work properly that I spent setting up my 2 RPis.
 

Glasvegas

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If anyone has any questions just let me know. It sounds good on my Hifi using even using an analog audio out jack from the Raspberry Pi 4 even without the HiFiBerry HAT Digi + Pro sound add-on card (which comes tomorrow). I stream anything I want from my iPad to it. He turned my A/V system into a giant computer for a while and tweaked some things. He made setup auto log in and turned the max digital volume up to just short of digital clipping. The iPad says it is sending lossless 44.1 / 16 from both Amazon music HD and Qobuz and the Raspberry Pi seems to indicate its native DAC is receiving and processing straight 44.1 / 16 received by Airplay. There is a dazzling array of code, parameters, options, and resource use indicators sent out by the HDMI port to the TV right now. It seems to be pretty light lifting for the Raspberry Pi 4 hardware.

He could do other setups on other SD cards but he really likes the way Shairport is implemented and refined. He says other options along these lines do not appear to be nearly as polished. He says Google seems to have locked down its Chromecast audio protocol way tighter than Apple has locked down Airplay. He says the Amazon music API is right there in front of people’s noses but apparently they don’t know it when they see it. Since Amazon apparently doesn’t want to share it maybe he shouldn’t say more about that. Of course the Qobuz API is all over the place, it’s no secret.

For anyone as non-techie as I am, of course you need a USB mouse and keyboard and a monitor to do the installation and programming and tweaking on the Raspberry Pi 4.

Edited for accuracy as per son KevinEleven. He seems pretty enthused—he is upstairs on his computer designing the video interface.

Further edit: He’s got album art and real time lyrics up and running. And now he has the album credits (session musicians, composer, etc.) up and running.

I note your comment about Chromecast, but can he find a way way to cast Tidal streaming from an Android phone (similar to Chromecast or the new Tidal Connect)?
 
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StevenEleven

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I note your comment about Chromecast, but can he find a way way to cast Tidal streaming from an Android phone (similar to Chromecast or the new Tidal Connect)?

I don’t use Tidal so we’d have no way to find out. :)
 

ahofer

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I note your comment about Chromecast, but can he find a way way to cast Tidal streaming from an Android phone (similar to Chromecast or the new Tidal Connect)?

Download BubbleUPnP for the android control point, and enter your Tidal subscription details. Bubble can point to both Chromecast and DLNA endpoints (your RPI is the latter).
 
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StevenEleven

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How about Qobuz or Spotify?

It can receive streams from Qobuz, Spotify, Amazon HD, and Apple Music. :) He’s made me two of these streamers, each is a little different for its purpose. The somewhat unique thing is they do not require a third-party software or standalone server and they combine the attributes and advantages of the different services in some ways.

You can see a relatively early photograph of the hdmi video output on a TV of one of the streamers (the audio splits out by optical or coax on a hat or over the pi’s own USB or over the pi’s own audio out or over the pi’s hdmi stream) in post 9 of this thread. https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...streamer-for-you-in-minutes.11222/post-319045 It’s since been refined a little bit as per my preferences. As you can see, scrolling lyrics, several types of album credits and metadata, and album art.
 
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Glasvegas

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Download BubbleUPnP for the android control point, and enter your Tidal subscription details. Bubble can point to both Chromecast and DLNA endpoints (your RPI is the latter).

I've tried BubbleUPnP. It works really well.

However, it's not quite the same as casting from the native Tidal app. For example, it won't allow you to edit Tidal playlists.
 

ahofer

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True. So if you want the built-in Tidal streaming you have to stick with what they support in the app, I guess. Airplay is possible with Volumio and ROPIEEXL I think, but you are on android. Google is keeping Chromecast proprietary despite discontinuing the audio. So you have to go used, or use a Chromecast HDMI Dongle as an audio player. An HDMI splitter is only $20 or so.
 
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