Spotify & Squeezebox

[Stratmangler]

At long last a RasPi has darkened my doorstep.
I bought a complete starter kit, so case, Pi, SD card and PSU were supplied.
The thing was built up, hooked up to the network, and having the power applied within 10 minutes, and that included formatting the SD card and burning a PiCorePlayer image onto the SD card.

A couple of minutes on the router admin, and an IP address was reserved for the beast.
This was followed by much head scratching and swearing, as the damned thing would not read the NAS of my network - eventually it dawned on me, after consulting several web pages and forums, that I needed to mount the NAS drive as a repository, so a mount was created, IP address and passwords provided, and the whole thing started scanning the NAS and building a library.
Result!

A little bit of tinkering, to bring BBC iPlayer radio to the table, and also to set up Spotify to access my premium account, and all works swimmingly well.
It's a very responsive bit of kit, so there's no discernible lag to commands from a web browser, or the Squeeze Commander app on my Smartphone.

I'm well pleased!
The only fly in the ointment is that there doesn't appear to be a way to turn off the embedded player, so for the time being I'm just going to have to live with it.
I'm sure I'll get used to ignoring it.

[WAD62]

I'm well pleased!
The only fly in the ointment is that there doesn't appear to be a way to turn off the embedded player, so for the time being I'm just going to have to live with it.
I'm sure I'll get used to ignoring it.

Hi Chris if you're using piCorePlayer you can turn off the 'Squeezelite' player in PCP main page, advanced settings...

Given you've managed to mount the NAS for your library, another good option is to define a USB mount for the 'Cache', this will make it immune to power outages, as the SD card will be opened read only...

[Stratmangler]

Hi Chris if you're using piCorePlayer you can turn off the 'Squeezelite' player in PCP main page, advanced settings...

Tried it after I posted.
I found out how the kill the player on the Pi, so I did.
All I had to do was turn off Squeezelite.

As a result the whole shebang became unstable and unpredictable.
Albums I lined up to play on a specific player didn't, but they did start playing on the other player.
The graphics lag when controlling things from a web browser was unbelievable.
And the Spotty app started doing a "now you see me, now you don't" act.

I have since restarted Squeezelite, and as a result stability and speed have been restored.
I'll put up with having a redundant player showing up in the player list

[WAD62]

Tried it after I posted.
I found out how the kill the player on the Pi, so I did.
All I had to do was turn off Squeezelite.

As a result the whole shebang became unstable and unpredictable.
Albums I lined up to play on a specific player didn't, but they did start playing on the other player.
The graphics lag when controlling things from a web browser was unbelievable.
And the Spotty app started doing a "now you see me, now you don't" act.

I have since restarted Squeezelite, and as a result stability and speed have been restored.
I'll put up with having a redundant player showing up in the player list

Odd! I've had no trouble since I turned squeezelite off...FYI I'm using piCorePlayer 3.11

Edit; However I do have another piCorePLayer installation (player only) in the network, perhaps it needs to see at least one squeezelite player?

[Stratmangler]

Odd! I've had no trouble since I turned squeezelite off...FYI I'm using piCorePlayer 3.11

Edit; However I do have another piCorePLayer installation (player only) in the network, perhaps it needs to see at least one squeezelite player?

I'm using 3.22, so potentially there could be a bug that needs ironing out.
It's also given me LMS 7.9.0 .
Maybe it does need to see at least one Squeezelite player.
I'm happy the the installation is stable with the unused Squeezelite player.

[Stratmangler]

Had a further dig around, and found out that the Squeezelite had set itself to run on the TinySC I had running on the main Touch downstairs, and had managed to get the same IP address.
I turned off the embedded server on the Touch, and removed the SD card.
I then looked for Squeezelite, and found that it had reallocated itself on the Pi IP address.

Went into admin on PiCorePlayer and disabled Squeezelite followed by a reboot of the system.
Then I accessed LMS from my web browser and found that Spotty had dropped off again, so I went back to pCP admin, rebooted the system, went back to LMS and saw that Spotty was back, wentback into pCP admin and disabled Squeezelite.

I tested both Touch players on the system, making them play material from each of my sources, namely BBCiPlayer, Spotty, and my local file library, and this time things ran very quickly and without hitch or lag.

I think the Squeezelite attaching itself to an embedded server on a local Touch player must have caused a shedload of IP conflicts that ground the system to a near halt.

With things now running in a manner I have become accustomed to, I am rightfully pleased

[mikeyb]

Not sure if any use to you but I run Spotify Connect on my main Pi with MoOde, and on my Allo Sparky using Volumio. No need for LMS on either system.

I can then just choose which output I want on the Spotify app on either my phone or my iPad.

Both work great, although I would say MoOde is my preferred OS.


Edit: I posted then realised you use a squeezebox touch - so just ignore me lol

[WAD62]

With things now running in a manner I have become accustomed to, I am rightfully pleased

Excellent Chris!

FYI I'm on LMS 7.9.0 too...

[Stratmangler]

Not sure if any use to you but I run Spotify Connect on my main Pi with MoOde, and on my Allo Sparky using Volumio. No need for LMS on either system.

I can then just choose which output I want on the Spotify app on either my phone or my iPad.

Both work great, although I would say MoOde is my preferred OS.


Edit: I posted then realised you use a squeezebox touch - so just ignore me lol

Thanks Mike

I've been using Squeezeboxes and LMS for a long time, and as an ecosystem it all functions very, very well.
I'm currently using LMS 7.9.0 and it's very good indeed.
Anything that I try in the future will be held up against LMS for comparison.
The only one I can think of that would give improved functionality and performance would be Roon, but it's an expensive option.

I remember seeing the Meridian forerunner to Roon a good few years ago, and it was very impressive with its capabilities and user interface.
My thoughts at the time were along the lines of "it's local network streaming for the very well heeled who can't be bothered learning even the slightest bit about how things function. If it breaks just contact a man who can fix it".
Still impressive though.

The Roon guys did all the library management systems for Meridian, only they've incorporated interfacing capabilities with most, if not all, of the decent streaming hardware that's available.

[Stratmangler]

Excellent Chris!

FYI I'm on LMS 7.9.0 too...

I'm pleased with the added functionality with 7.9.0.
There's also something to do with Spotify end points to play with - both players work well with Spotty on a web browser, so the end point thing might just be overkill.

Thanks for the advice