Where to go with all the changes (Volumio, Roon, Plexamp)

[Geertidow]

Dear fellow members,

I'm looking for a neat way to stream my own music. I have about 350 albums and I listen to spotify.
Plexamp is great, but it keeps giving errors when I cast to my Wiim players. Sometimes when changing from living room to kitchen for example you get an error (something like can't cast to player) and then game over.

So far I've been using Symfonium which works great, but I liked the shuffle options of plexamp better and I liked the interface a bit better.

Roon is way too expensive.

Anyone got a great alternative?

 

[OldTimer]

The most affordable multi-room is Apple Homepod stream to AirPlay 2 devices. It can stream Lossless from Homepod to other Homepod or AirPlay2 devices. Can only stream 16bit/44khz is lie. Just tell the homepod: “Hey Siri, play everywhere!”

 

[Geertidow]

I already have devices, it's more the software I'm interested in. I now use symphonium syncing to plexamp.
It gets me the best experience I have tested so far.

 

[Barrelhouse Solly]

I like Moode Audio on the Raspberry Pi. You have to do some configuration. If you want an appliance--something you connect, plug in, and turn on I'm not so sure. If you have an Android device Bubbleupnp is a UPNP controller and supports some streaming services. I use it for Qobuz. It also does DLNA and SMB sources. It does playback to Google smart speakers as well as UPNP renderers. With a dongle you can connect it to most anything.

 

[SKBubba]

Dear fellow members,

I'm looking for a neat way to stream my own music. I have about 350 albums and I listen to spotify.
Plexamp is great, but it keeps giving errors when I cast to my Wiim players. Sometimes when changing from living room to kitchen for example you get an error (something like can't cast to player) and then game over.

So far I've been using Symfonium which works great, but I liked the shuffle options of plexamp better and I liked the interface a bit better.

Roon is way too expensive.

Anyone got a great alternative?

I use the built-in plex player in wiim. Pretty basic, but seems to work fine for me. Granted, I don't use it that much.

 

[somebodyelse]

LMS gets my vote. It's Lyrion Music Server now, but was Logitech Media Server before that, and back into the days of Slim Devices before that. It plays seamlessly via Squeezelite on the Wiim devices, and pretty much anything else if you enable the right plugins (UPnP/DLNA, AirPlay, Chromecast, maybe more). It's got plugins for most but not all streaming sources - so you're covered for Spotify but stuffed if you want to stream from Amazon. They can even integrate with your local collection, so my Qobuz favourites appear alongside my local content when browsing the collection. It's got custom tagging options if you listen to things like classical or jazz where you want more than just artist, album and track name. It doesn't need much in the way of resources by modern standards, so should run fine on anything above a Pi Zero - unless you're using one of the plugins that does server-side EQ configurable for individual clients, in which case you might need at least one of the faster Pi models. You can control it through a web browser (with plugable skins so you can get something modern looking and touch friendly), multiple apps for different platforms, or their own touch UI if you've got a touchscreen on your hardware.

The downside? To get the best out of it you'll need to find out which plugins you want and which you don't, and maybe go quite in depth to configure them to behave exactly as you'd like (custom tags and custom browsing being related examples). And your collection needs to be well tagged.

 

[Geertidow]

Can it run on home assistant or linux mint? Since I already have that running in my home. A VM is also possible. But preference for Linux.

 

[fatoldgit]

Can it run on home assistant or linux mint? Since I already have that running in my home. A VM is also possible. But preference for Linux.

By 'IT" you mean LMS?, then yes. It has been Linux compatible since birth (in 2003).

It sounds like you are relatively geeky (since you run Mint) so download the correct image (https://lyrion.org/downloads/) and install.

Then connect via a web browser and configure (including specifying where your music files are after which it will scan them)

Make sure you select the "Material" interface as part of the config (it's the best web interface for LMS).

Obviously with any new bit of software, you need to become familiar with tweaking it and if you have questions sign up in the Lyrion forum and look at the guides and ask questions as needed.

LMS is supported by some streamers (wiim in particular...WHICH IS THE OBVIOUS CHOICE if you aren't a roll your own geek)

But you can also use "squeezelite" as an interface into a DAC via USB. Download from https://lyrion.org/players-and-controllers/squeezelite/#features.

It is a bit geeky being a command line interface and you need to know how to spec the ALSA device plus other params.

An example (from my systems)

/home/ricko/lms/squeezelite -v -s localhost -d all=info -a 120:4:16:: -C 1 -b 20000:500000 -o hw:CARD=OUTLIER,DEV=0 -n lenovo -r 48000-48000 -f /tmp/sqlog1 -z -f /tmp/sqlog1 -z

The bit in bold is my DAC which you find via "aplay -L". Won't bother describing it all... that's half the fun. Of note, the last parameter in "-a 120 4 16" is the bit depth which could be 16 or 24... depends on the DAC.

So in my case, the dongle DAC on my laptop only supports 16 bits so when I try and play a track with "-a 120 4 24" I get this error (which means the DAC doesn't support 24 bit):

[11:02:43.923553] alsa_open:430 unable to open audio device requested format: S24_LE

So the hard part with roll your own squeezelite is getting the correct device for your USB DAC

When playing around, drop the "-f /tmp/sqlog1 -z" so you see the output

It is important to note that the LMS you install is the SERVER component which can then talk to a client streamer (such as a wiim) or to a remote PC running squeezelite OR in the case of using squeezelite, you could run both together on the same PC.

Using NFS, you could host your files on a NAS somewhere or have them on the same PC as the LMS server software.

Peter

 

[somebodyelse]

Can it run on home assistant or linux mint? Since I already have that running in my home. A VM is also possible. But preference for Linux.

Native on Mint has already been mentioned. There's also a Docker image. For HA there's https://github.com/pssc/ha-addon-lms/

 

[Geertidow]

Yeah I remember this from running it on an RP4. Do you like the UI on a mobile phone?

I've attached some images of Symphonium using Plex as a database.
Works better with Upnp and chromecast. Plexamp just gives me so many chromecast errors (40% of the time it works every time).

 

[somebodyelse]

I usually use Squeezer on Android. There are others for both iOS and Android. Material Skin mostly works well too. IIRC there are a few functions I use that work better with a mouse and the classic skin, but can't remember what they are.

 

[SPOautos]

Yeah I remember this from running it on an RP4. Do you like the UI on a mobile phone?

I've attached some images of Symphonium using Plex as a database.
Works better with Upnp and chromecast. Plexamp just gives me so many chromecast errors (40% of the time it works every time).

I don't get any Chromecast errors with Plex, but I'm casting to a different device, not a WiiM. In Plex Server if you go to settings, down towards the bottom of the menu there's DLNA and you can activate that. This will allow a lot more music phone apps to access your database via DLNA. You might was to try HiFi Cast (I've only used it on Android). It can find your Plex Server via dlna then play to your WiiM using UPNP. It's not perfect, but it might work great for you and help avoid using Chromecast.

On a side note, have you tried using the Plex addition to the WiiM app? I wanted to get a WiiM Ultra but I'm pretty heavily integrated in Plex and use PlexAmp in the car, work, at home (using Chromecast but I don't have drop errors). My biggest problem with PlexAmp is I have hundreds of 192/24 albums and Chromecasting from PlexAmp to my preamp is maxed at 96/24 and the process of down converting affects the sound.

I SO wish PlexAmp would add upnp support, it would make it 100x more useful at home.

 

[Geertidow]

I don't get any Chromecast errors with Plex, but I'm casting to a different device, not a WiiM. In Plex Server if you go to settings, down towards the bottom of the menu there's DLNA and you can activate that. This will allow a lot more music phone apps to access your database via DLNA. You might was to try HiFi Cast (I've only used it on Android). It can find your Plex Server via dlna then play to your WiiM using UPNP. It's not perfect, but it might work great for you and help avoid using Chromecast.

On a side note, have you tried using the Plex addition to the WiiM app? I wanted to get a WiiM Ultra but I'm pretty heavily integrated in Plex and use PlexAmp in the car, work, at home (using Chromecast but I don't have drop errors). My biggest problem with PlexAmp is I have hundreds of 192/24 albums and Chromecasting from PlexAmp to my preamp is maxed at 96/24 and the process of down converting affects the sound.

I SO wish PlexAmp would add upnp support, it would make it 100x more useful at home.

I have and it works fine. UI is simple but effective. See photo for quality.
I reinstalled plexamp and chromecast seems to work now. I only have 4 192/24 albums and cannot hear the difference.

 

[SPOautos]

I have and it works fine. UI is simple but effective. See photo for quality.
I reinstalled plexamp and chromecast seems to work now. I only have 4 192/24 albums and cannot hear the difference.

Yeah, what I've noticed is that down converted files tend to not sound as good as if they are originally in that format. So a 192/24 down converted to 44/16 doesn't sound as good as the same music in 44/16. It must just be that the processing has a impact, I'm not sure.

BUT yeah, no reason to jump through hoops for 4 albums lol. I have a HiFi playlist with 1732 tracks in it and it's my favorite playlist, I listen to it the most. It's pretty much all 192/24 and sounds fantastic!

 

[Geertidow]

Yeah, what I've noticed is that down converted files tend to not sound as good as if they are originally in that format. So a 192/24 down converted to 44/16 doesn't sound as good as the same music in 44/16. It must just be that the processing has a impact, I'm not sure.

BUT yeah, no reason to jump through hoops for 4 albums lol. I have a HiFi playlist with 1732 tracks in it and it's my favorite playlist, I listen to it the most. It's pretty much all 192/24 and sounds fantastic!

But I do have the HQ playback in Plex (in Wiim) So it should be possible (right?)

 

[SPOautos]

But I do have the HQ playback in Plex (in Wiim) So it should be possible (right?)

I just changed my entire setup with PkexAmp that I REALLY like and thought about your situation. I use a Yamaha wxc-50 which is the equivalent of your WiiM. I run Plex Server on a Unraid server (Unraid is Linux based).

I decided I REALLY just wanted to stick with PlexAmp phone app and most people suggest building a Raspberry Pi that runs PlexAmp and the RPi is plugged in to WiiM (in your case). PlexAmp works GREAT when you have multiple versions of it on the network and can easily select one to play too.

Well I didn't want to build a RPi so instead since my server has a optical audio output I set up a Windows VM on the server and passed through the audio card to it. I installed PlexAmp on it and this method works fabulous and plays full Hi Res of 192/24. It's very easy to use my phone to control everything including the volume.

PlexAmp has a desktop version for Win, Linux, and Mac. If your server has a digital output and can sit close to your WiiM, setting up a VM works excellent.