Building a Raspberry Pi-based streamer - a guide for the nervous

I can't comment on the sonic differences so I'll leave that for someone with more experience. What I will say is that a 2-Bay NAS is fairly inexpensive and could be of other benefits. If you have a large library on a USB drive unprotected a NAS with mirrored drives will buy some protection from drive failure. You might also be able to offload some services running on the PI to the NAS. That will depend on NAS device, distro, and what you want to accomplish.

I think each of the available distros are close enough in functions and features. I would run something that is easy for you to setup and maintain with the least amount of effort. I am running the latest version of Diet-Pi. While I'm comfortable at the command line, Diet-Pi has an easy to use menu system. My Pi is configured with an Allo DigiOne transport running as a Roon Endpoint (not to be confused with Rune) and Spotify Endpoint.

 

More great info everyone.

I'll probably end up getting that 502 board, if for no other reason than the added output connections that the digi+ doesn't have. Then I'll decide whether I want to do a LPS. I considered Mouser as a source because I bought a LPS from them a few years ago to use with my Koss ESP-950 energizer. Theyre cheap and the bulkiness isn't much of an issue.

The main reason I asked about NAS vs. USB is because I already have 6 2TB USB drives that stored everything from family movies and photos to ancient itunes libraries. After dealing with iTunes corruption issues every few years or so (always after an "upgrade") I am so done with iTunes. especially now that my iPod days are over and I stream more than anything else. I've also been in the process of re-ripping my CDs to FLAC. I have always run a back up drive, or two. I'm seeing that a decent 2 bay NAS with dual 2-4 TB drives seem to start around $350 or so, so I fugured That would be money better spent elsewhere since I already have a bunch of other drives. As they die I'll consider a NAS later.

As a former software engineer I've done a bit of command line stuff but when at home I usually like to keep it simple. So I'll probably keep using Rune and then slowly look into the other options mentioned to bypass that GUI. Ideally I'd like to configure stuff so that I have access to Tidal as well as my USB drives. Right now I just use the Rune web interface via Firefox on a Mac Mini.

Thanks again guys.

 

I’m right with you in looking for a way to stream Tidal. I’m early in the journey and looking at RPi3B, Digi + Pro and Rune. I’d really rather stream directly from the RPi as opposed to from my iPhone to the RPi. I’m open to other solutions, but much over $150, and the laptop I already have becomes/remains the better solution.

 

I haven’t found a way to do it with iOS outside of airplay. Bubbleupnp can do it natively through your network but is android only. I ended up using an old Kindle Fire for Tidal via Bubble and that streams through Rune and Rpi/Digi+ Pro. It’s basically just a Tidal controller that sits on my desk next to my PC. In practice it’s not as complex as it sounds.

 

^^^ is AirPlay still limited to 256 kbs lossy or some such? I use it in my speaker rig, but that always ends up being casual listening, so no real issues there. The Kindle Fire is a good, cheap option. Honestly, my 2011 MacBook Air works pretty well, I just find the tether of the power and usb cables troublesome. The rune UI and wireless Tidal are appealing, and the reason I’m looking at the RPi option.

 

Not sure but I’ve had some some sound issues with it streaming to RPi.

 

For iOS there's Linn Kazoo and another other one I forget the name of. You enter your credentials in moode (or distro of choice) and enable the upnp renderer. When you run Kazoo it finds the upnp server which has Tidal content (but it's nowhere near as polished an interface).

 

The 502dac is nice and even has aes output for your Yggdrasil, though I'd get a cable made by blue jeans or whoever instead of using the adapter.

I got an lps (outputting to the 502dac which in turn powers the Pi) but if I did it over again I'd probably go with the iFi and a smaller case.

I use a tiny bus powered ssd and prefer the sound to the network alternatives but there are some considerations. First is the Pi definitely isn't likely to bus power a conventional hard drive. Second is while you can run smb on the Pi and transfer files that way it's definitely slower than a real nas. Third is that the best format for the drive is Ext3/4 which isn't natively supported by Mac or Windows.

I've kind of gone the other way, from a dedicated front end (soundirok) to the web interface, but the web interface has gotten a lot more to my taste on moode lately.

 

Lumin App for iOS should be able to do what BubbleUPNP does with Tidal (control/play direct from your streaming endpoint) - at least that's been my experience with the MicroRendu running the BubbleUPNP server plugin on the Rendu and enabling the "OpenHome" renderer.

The user interface kind of sucks though compared to the BubbleUPNP app for Android.

 

I could never get Linn Kazoo to work with Windows 10. I never could find the option to connect to Tidal.

I just use my Android phone, but you have to make sure to turn off BubbleUPNP, otherwise your battery will go dead in a matter of a couple of hours.

I am using moOde 4.0 and love it. Although I have been a moOde user since ver. 3.4 or so. And I went the hard way of building the distro from scratch during Beta testing. The new build is much easier, but requires two micro-SD cards and a USB to micro-SD adapter.

 

I know this is old and from the first page in this thread, but this made me laugh...

I converted an old N-router to DD-WRT and made it into a Client-Bridge. So yes, it involved flashing with new third party firmware. When I was having issues trying to get it setup, I almost had to re-flash it..hahaha.

 

I use moOde 4 and run it on a single SD card, no USB adapter needed.

Works very well..dB

 

Oh, I do too. But the new automated build I mean.

 

Aah, yes.

 

Others have done a great job. Maybe I can help answer some of these questions.

To this one, I would think USB is actually better as long as you have a powered USB drive, not a portable one. There is limited power on the USB, so I have had drives not work due to this. There could be dropout and error issues to deal with over NAS. It is actually your file format that matters most. I would suggest either FAT32 or you can go bold and go ext2, ext3, or ext4, but those are all Linux only. Just don't go NTFS.

The same guy that designed moOde (Tim Curtis), also helped design Rune. Rune was the start, but Tim split off and is now doing his own thing.

All the distros work different and are designed different. Rune is actually built with Arch Linux and Volumio and moOde are built off Debian. I tried all 3 and I prefer of the SQ of moOde. All of them are all limited in the interface though. And don't think about changing it unless you are an ace with html, css, and php.

I have not compared boards, but...

AES/EBU or AES3 > BNC S/PDIF > RCA S/PDIF > Toslink

So, if you have a DAC with AES/EBU, then take advantage.

LPS can make a big improvement. iFi iPower is probably the best value at $50 for the wall wart. Currently I am using the USB Regen since it was no longer in use since I switched to the PiFi Digi+ hat board. No more USB audio for me. The Regen made a nice upgrade, so it does help. However, I will say that NOT using WiFi helps out just as much if not more. I turned a router into a Client Bridge so I can use the Ethernet.

 

ext3/4 have journaling which helps prevent drive corruption errors but fat32 is native too, that's what the boot partition on the Pi uses.

I think I said on here once something like I was glad I found Soundirok to use as a front end to moode or otherwise I'd have had to redo the ui. Well... that's kind of what ended up happening. My primary aim was to design a better mobile interface (see below) since that's what I use 99.9% of the time, but it's refreshed across the board. So when you download moode 4.0 in a few weeks and hate the new ui you'll know who to blame.

 

The new UI for MoOde has so many cool choices/themes. Is that all do to Soundirok? I haven't been following th thread extremely close.

 

Thanks @rtaylor76 and @haywood , I might give MoOde a try in the future. I'll probably just consider upgrading the digital board as an upgrade before I do anything else.

My USB drives are all powered. They were set up to work with a Mac, but I don't recall what the default configuration was with the partition. It may use journaling of some sort. I don't have much experience with the differences.

Concerning LPS... I saw this the other day on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Tekpower-TP3...6286215&sr=8-3&keywords=linear+power+supplies

I was wondering if I should ever consider trying one of those. They're probably noisy with the fan, but I could relocate it enough to not be an issue. Then I'd also have to hack up my current power supply from the RP so I'd have the right connector to use with this LPS. Or maybe there's something else about them that makes them unsuitable for my application.

 

I had to learn this the hard way as I went from a 320gb NTFS drive to a 1TB NTFS drive. I could never figure out why it would not mount. Once I changed it to FAT32, it has been smooth sailing and files start playing faster and will no dropouts. I would not mind any of the ext formats, but I use my computer to put on the files on the drive so I would need a) a bit faster write as Samba is quite slow or b) just do have a Linux computer around for music and such. It is too easy to use EAC to rip CD's.

I think I said on here once something like I was glad I found Soundirok to use as a front end to moode or otherwise I'd have had to redo the ui. Well... that's kind of what ended up happening. My primary aim was to design a better mobile interface (see below) since that's what I use 99.9% of the time, but it's refreshed across the board. So when you download moode 4.0 in a few weeks and hate the new ui you'll know who to blame.
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Thanks! Just downloaded Soundirok. I will test it out.

 

At this point I wouldn't waste money on MoOOoDE, plays4C4Tz* or anything else if you want to play files or do Airplay, personally. I'd just grab picoreplayer and use that, with a nice squeezebox control app.

You don't even need a separate LMS server, you can install that on picoreplayer with a few clicks.

Picoreplayer has everything needed, hardware support, easy controls to disable the wifi and HDMI, idiot-proof way to back up config/rebuild in seconds. Moreover it boots from a ramdisk, which means it boots very quickly, and is less likely to corrupt its own O/S filesystem than the full-fat distros. It's built on tinycorelinux, which is much more suitable for embedded deployment.

I kinda wish picoreplayer had been that good all along, this thread would have started off with a guide to that instead. Maybe I should try to do that, if I get time. It's actually simpler, too. Whoever persuaded me to look again at it, thanks. It's a massive improvement.

Using LMS avoids the problem that all the MPD+web interface projects have, of a "web interface playlist" and the underlying MPD playlist sometimes getting out of sync, by the way. It also has player discoverability baked in, and multi-room syncing is easy.

BTW, ignore any talk about X or Y distro having "better SQ", that's Head-Fi talk. Given that this isn't Roon**, and you should be shooting for bit-perfect output, once you've turned all the radios and HDMI off, electrical noise levels will be almost non-existent. The content of the signal is supposed to be unchanged in bit-perfect playback. If it isn't, the software is broken. Moreover, the Digi+ Pro does the clocking out over S/PDIF, not your choice of distro.




*I can't remember what it's called, the other commercial one with the really ugly web site

** Roon is a special kind of crazy, and gets a free pass for pulling off stuff that you probably shouldn't do. If it wasn't so bloody expensive, I am sure we'd all be using it.