Dummies Guide to Pi2AES! Throw away your PC or laptop.

First one is totally doable with Volumio. Install that and then from the plugins menu install Spotify Connect plugin

 

I posted some information on a proposed case for the PI2AES and the official 7 inch display. Here:

https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/raspberry-pi-i2s-to-spdif-hat.1990/page-118

 

1- Incorrect. Spotify is built into moOde at least. Tidal did take away their API, so no 3rd party stuff. However, the workaround is to use your phone and UPnP. Basically your phone acts as the receiver/server and streams to the pi, and then whatever hat/decoder you have (like the PiAES) gives you digital (or analog depending on your hat) output.

2- No. Foobar is Windows only. The concept is Linux and headless. Meaning not connected to a keyboard, screen, or anything else but power and and a DAC (or network cable). The distros have web severs built in and then you just go to any browser and type in the local IP of the pi and you can control it from there. Everything. Some choose to hook up an external touch screen, but I find this unnecessary.

Just remember, different distros have different uses and feature sets. It really depends on your needs and what you want to get out of it. I use and like moOde, but others here like picoreplayer because all they do is stream to it and do not really need an interface if at all.

 

Thanks!

There seems to be diverging answers though.

So using Spotify there is no problem to use as a controller, the only problem is Tidal. I would like to use mainly Tidal so that sucks.. I didn't want to stream to the pi since I'm trying to control the wireless pollution inside my House.(Yeah I know, strange..)

Using an adapter Ethernet for the phone with UpnP should work too right?

 

Maybe?

Might need a switch or a crossover cable possibly. I have never hooked into a Pi this way.

 

In UPnP the phone does not actually stream audio data to the receiver, the phone connects to the backend of the streaming service and retrieves the url of the track that is supposed to be played and then passes it to the receiver.
If you don't want any special apps on your phone and at the same time retain ease of Tidal use then Volumio has a Tidal plugin in their paid version

 

Great thread. Looks like Pi2AES is in near (3 months) future. Interesting how well it will incorporate into setup here.

What I am struggling with is:

My digitized music is currently in ALAC, on my mac, maintained by Music ( formerly known as iTunes) under Catalina. I'd like to avoid recoding whole set. I know I can use Airplay to send streams to some of devices - Apple Express, AppleTV, but this require to be at computer desk. On top of that, AppleTV 4K no longer provides SPIDF out, so I am left with use of AVR as DAC.

Assuming that I have Pi2AES + RPI, what software would provide me with access to my library + internet based streams ???

(Ideally, no recoding, just dump the 16/44.1 stream into the DAC).

Does any of [piCoreplayer, moode, volumio ] can use network mounted filesystem with ALAC collection ?
Do I need to run uPNP/DLNA server ?
Is a LMS(slimeserver, squeezebox) on iMac a good solution to use with Pi2AES as clients - with piCoreplayer ?

back to listening mode..

/kleks

 

Folks, I hope somebody can help me here. I currently use the Pi4+Pi2AES combo headless with Volumio. I have a Seagate HDD connected to it as the music source. Yesterday, I added some more music to the HDD and reconnected it to the Pi combo. I went to Sources > My Music and clicked on the Rescan button. For whatever reason, Volumio is showing I have a significant drop in music files. For example, I had like 70 artists previously and now it's showing 9. I had over 3000 tracks and it's now 139. However the sync indicator in Volumio has been rotating for like 20 minutes but there has been no increase in my music files. Any thoughts? Thanks

Edit: Dumb of me not to mention but I copied the music from a Mac Mini. I checked the format of the Seagate and it says Mac OS Extended (Journaled). I don't know if this is an issue.

 

Your HDD is formatted in an OS X format. So yes, this is the issue.

 

Thanks. I reformatted it to FAT32. Let's see how this works out.

 

oh! I thought it actually acted as a streamer in UPnP , sending the audio data. So any any UPnP app on any OS will do this ?

 

MOode and PiCorePlayer both directly support the ALAC codec. Did not check Volumio, but pretty sure it does as well. So you should not need to recode your music collection to a different codec.

So long as you identify your network file source in the configuration section of your preferred player, you will be able to use it as your music source.

The Pi2AES is a HAT that resides on Raspberry Pi board. MOode, PiCorePlayer, etc install and operate in the Pi board. The Pi2AES HAT take the processed digital audio information from the Pi board and converts into different digital formats. One of those formats will then to be transmitted to your DAC.

You mention using your AVR as a DAC. Does the AVR accept one of the digital format from the Pi2AES (SPDIF, BNC, etc)?

LMS works well with PiCorePlayer. Not sure about LMS implementation with a MAC, but it works fine in Windows.

 

The paid version of Volumio with Tidal is what I use. Works well, but the Tidal interface doesn’t have as many functions and features as the App version. I find it easier to discover new music on the app, but I prefer to listen through the Pi2AES /Volumio because it sounds better and doesn’t suck down the phone batteries.

 

Great that both moode & pcp support Alac. Yeah, I can export proper volumes via SMB, that is already done.

Reading through moody config files.

Thanks for step through rPi & Pi2AES; I thought that it works this way. The AVR accepts both Toslink and SPiDF; I also have few dedicated dax I plan to use with rPI+Pi2AES.

Tried installing LMS on MAC today; using softsqueeze as player; utter failure .

Probably time to get a raspberry, and see if I can get it working together - and then get hat and upgrade audio quality.
Time for proof of concept.

(Reminds me when I was learning how to deal with Arduino... )

Thanks again.
/kleks

 

Any UPnP app that has Tidal integration, on Android the most popular ones are BubbleUPnP and mConnect, both support streaming services. As for desktop OS, try Audirvana or Upplay.

I used to use the Volumio paid version, the browser controls were nice but it required fiddling with mpd cache sizes to work properly with my dac and even then it sometimes just stuttered heavily whereas the same hardware but equipped with Roon worked perfectly.

 

I haven’t had those issues. I have had to reboot the Pi once, but that’s about it. Roons are nice but I haven’t yet reached the point where I’m willing to spend that much.

 

I searched the internet back then looking for people with similar issues and appearently the issue was specific only to my device therefore I wouldn't hold it against Volumio.

 

A while ago I wrote a post in the Focal Elex thread about how I thought the HD650 and the Elex sounded very similar to me. Back then I used the Digigram VX222e as a source to the Yggdrasil A2. In hindsight I am pretty sure alot of folks who read that post thought I was crazy. With the Pi2AES as a source, the two headphones are wildly different and it takes a while for me to adjust when switching between the two. This is obviously a very good thing.

I put my media pc back into my system to try to figure this out and somehow the Digigram doesnt hurt the HD650 but manages to negate some of the Elex's strengths (transient speed, and just speed in general etc). The Digigram sounds like it has a speed governor on it that I never noticed until heard something that didn't.

The Pi2AES is just fantastic and I can't recommend it enough.

 

@kleks is it not possible to simply use the Pi2AES as an AirPlay endpoint from macOS? Others have said that this is supported.

 

moOde has an Airplay render. I haven't test it since I don't own anything Apple.