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

Piss

Possible it is redundant. As for the latency it is normal with my experience with airplay on wifi.
You can experiment with a hard wired connection.
The quality of airplay(1) I believe is limited to 16 Bit / 44.1kHz

As for tweaks @dubharmonic recomened SoundSource under Computer Audio Players Airfoil might also be a solution but I do not know the difference between the two

Another solution might be Mconnect for iOS or BubleUpnp for android

 

SoundSource settings only apply to USB devices. It's especially good at normalizing audio from horrible zoom meetings, and applying EQ from a variety of plugins like Audeze's Reveal.

When there's no chance of a sudden zooms, I AirPlay from Apple Music. I use the Apple apps because the UX is so much better than the distros for the Raspberry Pi.

I don't notice any degradation from AirPlay, but I can hear a difference between Pi2AES and Schiit Unison USB.

 

Apologies for the nervosa here but can anyone then confirm that as Tidal (HiFi) streams music in the form of 16bit, 44.1kHz FLAC files with a bitrate of 1411kbps that there is theoretically no degradation via AirPlay given the match between the streams of AirPlay and Tidal?

And consequently, in theory, playing Tidal from Mac (not Volumio) via AirPlay is at least equal to playing Tidal via Volumio's source to the PI2AES (if the volume at source on the Mac is set to maximum preventing sound quality deterioration due to reduction in bit depth transfer.)

Hoping I'm not hijacking a thread here.

 

AirPlay sends lossless audio at 16/44.1 using the ALAC codec.

 

If the sound volume icon is enabled on your menu bar (not sure if it's on by default), just click on it and it should show you available output choices.

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For PI2AES, set the volume to max for best sound quality (assuming you have a volume control further down the chain). On iPhone/iPad devices you can cast to AirPlay from apps such as YouTube:
https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...ay-your-pc-or-laptop.8878/page-23#post-301522

 

So i finally, during my nightshift since it was calm (finally one), got to setup my PI2AES. I tried, and compared, Volumio and Moode and although i preferred Volumio's UI i decided to use Moode just because i preferred it overall.

I wasn't expecting to notice a difference even on Spotify (possible placebo?), which made me very smiley, listening to Courage from Manowar and Euphoria by Lorene, made this a great start but now i need help. I know that i can just plugin an external drive and have my music play that way but i am wondering, is there anyway that my Raspberry could access my desktop's library wirelessly?

Thanks in advance


Edit - Just came home and listening to Gotham City... it took me only 5 sec to realize that it was not placebo.

 

Yeah, you will need to share the library's folder on your computer and then in MoOde go to Configure -> Library to add the shared folder as a music source. When adding the music source, the "Type" is Samba for a Windows share, NFS for OS X.

 

I tried and after much frustration i gave up. It doesn't mount at all, this is the path DESKTOP-IF4HLCK\share and put 1 music inside as a test. I gave permissions to "everyone" (just in case, although i don't know if it really matters).

User ID (i really didn't know what to put here so i just randomly chose Guest), no pass and name "test".

I tried to also connect Plex and i was successful, so i could at least do something right ^^. I really dislike bubbleupnp interface though but i found "mconnect" and i prefer this one, at least for now.

Wish Moode had a (infinitely) better interface for plexus as Volumio has.

 

This could very well be your issue. Try setting the user ID to "Everyone" with no password and see if that works.

Also, you can try your normal computer's username in the format DOMAIN\USER. where DOMAIN is the computer name where the drive is located followed by a backslash. USER is the username you use to log on to your computer.

Not familiar with Moode's cifs/SMB interface but name could also be the same as DOMAIN in my example above so you would not have to do the whole DOMAIN\USER thing.

Case sensitivity matters.

 

I tried (i think) as u suggested and was a no go.

Thanks for the help anyway mate. Appreciated.

 

@Walderstorn Try exposing your library on the local network via BubbleUPnP or PS3 Media Server

 

@Walderstorn I suggest just using an external drive connected to the raspberry pi by usb. I had issues with both moOde and volumio trying to do it other ways. You can drag and drop music files to it over the network, and if you enable DLNA server in moOde (under audio settings) you can mount moOde's library to your pc.

 

@Walderstorn I'm like a broken record on this, but for wireless access to a PC library, UPnP/DLNA (in my case with Volumio as the renderer) has been easy, convenient and stress-free for me (although others have reported problems - maybe with libraries heavy with high-res files).

If you're an Android user, Hi-Fi Cast is a good control point app. Not available for iOS though. If you have trouble with MoOde's DLNA server, try a free 3rd party one (eg Minimserver, Bubble).

 

It's a shame but i guess an external is just more conveniente and hassle free. May i enquire how to u do that in Volumio though? Any tutorial? Whatever i found didn't help me.

Yeah i am considering giving up and just getting an external one.

 

Just install the UPnP server on your PC. As long as the player on the Pi is connected to the same (wireless) network that your PC is on and both server and renderer (MoOde or Volumio) are visible to your PC as 'Mulitimedia Devices', a control-point app on your phone that's connected to the same network will communicate between the two.

You could try this first without installing a server on your PC because there's already one (crap) built into Windows. Make sure 'Network Discovery' is turned on, and you'll see the server(s) and renderer(s) in your 'Multimedia Devices' list, the Windows server being named whatever you've named your PC:



Presuming you've got MoOde connected wirelessly to your PC already? The Volumio documentation goes through how to do that, I've never done it myself in MoOde.

 

Pardon. I haven't scrolled thru all 40 pages if the answer to the following is 'yes' and it was posted somewhere in those 40 pages...

But, I know some of the member here have advanced instrumentation testing abilities. Has anyone done an instrumentation test of the performance of a DAC fed by this, in comparison to a DigiOne or similar?

The bonus, and what I really am hoping to see, would be how a DAC that has a IIS / I2S over a HDMI cable input (some PS Audio or Gustard DACs) performs vs when fed by USB instead of this. Very intrigued with the I2S over HDMI this can provide my upcoming Gustard X15. Would love to see data suggesting it's at least as jitter free as USB from a RPi 4.

 

The PC has no problem seeing the PI, is the Pi that's the problem and even with everything on (on network discovery) it still doesn't show up. Meh i will buy an HDD on BF.

 

So Pi won't connect wirelessly to PC?

If you can connect from PC to Pi like this (under WAP) and you have a UPnP server on your PC, a control point app on your phone connected to the same wifi network should see both server and Pi.

If I'm misunderstanding the problem - and I suspect I probably am - apologies for adding to the frustration!

 

No but i found 2 ways to go around this problem.

The first, and easiest, and the one i advise so you don't pull hairs, was just to use my Plex Media Server. I only had videos there but i just added my folders to the "Audio" one and that fixed it.

The other one it's tricky...because i don't remember what the hell i did (i didn't sleep that much after a night shift), so i don't remember all the steps but it was something with W10 sharing and right clicking the FLAC folder and giving individual permission to that folder for "everyone" and then right clicking that folder and choosing "include in Library" option and it kinda worked.

This is another thing that Volumioo does much better, i can see all the art-covers but not with Moode.

Thanks very much for the help mate.

 

We have done testing that covers some of the use case you are looking for. These plots are on our web site in a zip file located at:

http://www.pi2design.com/uploads/4/8/5/3/48531975/pi2aes_plots.zip