View Full Version : What streamer software do you use?
Clive197
24-07-2016, 10:28
For the last 4 years I've been using "Twonky", which was the default software on my 2Tb WD NAS. I've now got a new NAS and it has been suggested that "MinimServer" is the way to go. So I was just wondering what you guys use and why.
I still don't think you can beat LMS
Especially as it's so easy to put together a pi based squeezebox these days
I still don't think you can beat LMS
Especially as it's so easy to put together a pi based squeezebox these days
...ditto! :)
Ex squeezebox user went the way of Jriver...bought a Transporter then returned to LMS.
Love the squeezebox way of doing things as it "just works."
Now use Roon with Ipad as controller (wow!) and wont ever go back.
Does Roon replace LMS or integrate with it?
Stratmangler
25-07-2016, 20:55
Ex squeezebox user went the way of Jriver...bought a Transporter then returned to LMS.
Love the squeezebox way of doing things as it "just works."
Now use Roon with Ipad as controller (wow!) and wont ever go back.
I never left the Squeezebox fold.
It just works.
When I get around to playing with a Pi player it will be so that it runs on LMS.
Roon looks interesting, but addressing LMS via a web browser has a much more acceptable price tag (ie nothing).
Roon does appear to give a similar visual experience to the system Meridian used to make such a big deal about. Are the same developers involved?
Stratmangler
25-07-2016, 21:50
https://roonlabs.com/pricing.html
thanks...was looking for hat:) Way the £ is, its maybe not the best time to buy. Have to say I am hardly using the pi at moment. cd player is sounding so good.
Stratmangler
25-07-2016, 22:22
I take it you use your Pi to stream online services, Grant?
Spotify, or something similar?
I have a large local digital library, don't have a CD player in my audio setup, and Roon would fill in a bit of the detail of that library, but, to be honest, I know my library quite well, and a lot of the artist links are already stored in my head.
Where I can be bothered I sort the tagging to give artist names, and allow them to cross reference to other artists.
It doesn't look as pretty as Roon, but it could be nearly as comprehensive - all that would be missing is links to other projects an artist has been involved with that don't happen to be on my server.
At moment I just stream from my Hdd. was considering another service in future though. Not really sure I would get my money's worth out of it as I now use cd and vinyl mostly and have a biggish library. Going to keep it in mind though and maybe take the free trial along with a tidal one. Need to wait finances improving though as I spent a lot lately on the speakers and got the car to get through another mot. I should get it for nowt after all these years lol
Does Roon replace LMS or integrate with it?
It replaces it, like LMS on steroids. Not free though but (to me) very much worth it.
Early version didn't do internet radio latest one does.
The Discover feature in Roon is becoming a favourite feature for me, presents a selection of Artists, genres, particular musicians or even record labels from your collection and lets you browse.
Rediscovered a lot of stuff I forgot I had this way. :)
* They do a 14 day free trial, check it out.
Had a try playing directly from a usb stick into the Oppo to the Dac?
Quite impressed sound wise ctually, though the interface is a bit cack.
I never left the Squeezebox fold.
It just works.
When I get around to playing with a Pi player it will be so that it runs on LMS.
Roon looks interesting, but addressing LMS via a web browser has a much more acceptable price tag (ie nothing).
Roon does appear to give a similar visual experience to the system Meridian used to make such a big deal about. Are the same developers involved?
The same Team Chris aye.
Stratmangler
25-07-2016, 23:20
The discovery thing Meridian had left an impression on me - it was well thought out.
Ultimately it depends on how well the software collates information, and more to the point, how much information there is on t'interweb about a certain artist, and how good that information is.
Here's one that might be interesting ....
Who worked with Hiromi, and also Steely Dan, Madonna, and John Scofield?
Does that kind of association come up?
On a similar vein, Scorpions, Judie Tzuke, and Jeff Beck?
Spectral Morn
26-07-2016, 09:15
J River 17 on one laptop, J River 18 on another.
I used to use J River, but find myself using a lot of TIDAL for music, Netflx / Amazon / iPlayer for video. I use a Windows silent PC into my TV with a wireless keyboard & mouse.
Another Roon user here.
Before Roon I used MinimServer too and I really liked it. Very configurable and you could have it sort your music exactly as you wanted it presented. It was also very light and efficient. Used my phone as a remote for selecting tunes and it never crashed or got annoying.
Roon was a big jump though. Yes, there's a hefty price tag to it, but I'd seriously recommend just trying the 14-day trial. They did an offer on lifetime subscriptions last year and I went for it and haven't looked back. I can't imagine using anything else now. I have 3 Raspberry Pis in 3 rooms and Roon is my central point for playing all of the music on my NAS, my Tidal subscription (and the interface for Tidal via Roon is far better than Tidal's own) or internet radio. It's absolutely seamless, very reliable, looks fantastic, it's a joy to use and yes, it's just like the Meridian Sooloos interface (same developers - Roon is a spin off of Sooloos).
The development is coming on in leaps and bounds too and they're very open to feature requests and very responsive to bug reports.
Stratmangler
27-07-2016, 13:54
Just how good is the Roon database?
Does it give supporting musicians, and if you clicked on one of those musicians does it link to other projects participated in?
For example, if you have the album "Elegant Gypsy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elegant_Gypsy)" by Al Di Meola in your collection, you'll find a phenomenal musician playing bass, namely one Anthony Jackson.
If he's listed, and you click on his name, do you get a comprehensive list of other artists and albums he's played with?
What I'm interested in is whether you get proper sleeve notes and other associated artists.
For the largest part of my collection, yes you do - All musicians involved with clickable links to take you to their own page, their own releases and credits in other albums and if you've got a Tidal account then you can just go straight ahead and listen to whatever they have on there. I also love the fact that I can search by recording engineers and producers and get full lists of their stuff.
Sleeve notes though, no. At least not as yet. It's on the development roadmap but the sticking point seems to be in finding a data provider and the licensing that goes with it. The next step is having the ability to display the PDF liner notes that come with a lot of downloads.
Sure does Chris.
When playing an album you get the usual Now Playing info, but additionally theres a "credits" Tab which lists all the guys playing on the album....
...as well as Mastering Engineers, Producers, all of those guys.
Each name a clickable link to information about them, who,what,when, who they collaborated with....you name it.
If the album or artist is in your collection...yup, hyperlink to that too.
Ive 5000ish albums and Id say theres metadata easily for 90odd percent of it and the Roon guys are constantly improving it.
Can only get better and its only on V1.2
Its very very cool Chris, check it out.
Anything it can't do that lms can?
Roon doesnt do any of the LMS plugins, so if your reliant on them then it could be a bit of a shock.
With LMS I had some display plugins for my Transporters dual displays...totally blank with Roon but hey ho.
Win some lose some. :)
How about multi room audio synchronisation?
Currently have a trial of Roon until mid September and to be honest I've hardly used it as it requires my pc to be left on to provide the server software which to be honest is a waste of electricity. If the software could run in my NAS then it might be better but I can't see me spending £400 on Roon. When I can do my own searching and play to my Pi using MoOde.
I couldn't get the Roon ready version of IQAUDIO software to run on my Pi either so that was another fail.
Personally think Roon is a bit of smoke and mirrors and is vastly overpriced and the £20 per month on top for Tidal just makes it far too expensive for music that A. I already own on my NAS and B. Music I'll never own on Tidal.
Pi with MoOde for me ;-)
...
For example, if you have the album "Elegant Gypsy (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elegant_Gypsy)" by Al Di Meola in your collection, you'll find a phenomenal musician playing bass, namely one Anthony Jackson.
If he's listed, and you click on his name, do you get a comprehensive list of other artists and albums he's played with?
...
Yes, you can find his name (clickable) on the review of, say; Casino, Electric Rendezvouz, Tiramisu or Elegant Gypsy.
I does not matter if these albums are in your own library or from Tidal.
When clicking his name you get to his "artist-page" from where you can play/navigate to loads of collaborations and performances.
(Both locally and to music on Tidal)
A couple of samples:
http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20160727/f0b981ece3deebc415dec0dbc60a0464.png
From Tidals collaboration list;
http://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20160727/92fdcf6fe85c0cbbd98c2347006fa863.png
Would love to give Roon a try, but none of my tablets are supported.
For easy of use, respectable sound quality and a high quality GUI Roon is much better than most, easily streets ahead of that over blown JRiver playback software. I even use it on some of the demonstration machines.
For those with a tweaky nature and patience then Bug Head is good. but be warned lots of hair pulling can happen.
I seen and heard a few good Linux based playback devices again simple but good, not for your everyday user though.
Very fortunate to be able to write my own memory based software for my reference playback device, If I hear something better I would change so far nothing seems to tick the SQ boxes yet.
Rothchild
28-07-2016, 18:02
Big fan of www.subsonic.org running on a Raspberry Pi here - Easy to install using the www.dietpi.net distribution, as well as a whole host of other tools and players (including Plex and Ampache), great for working out what you like best.
I'm still using JRiver 17 and my phone or tablet with Gizmo as remote. It's never let me down and my dedicated music server just works, so never felt the need to update the software, which means paying more. I have read a few people say that JRiver got too bloated, so I'm happy to stay was where I am and spend the time spinning toons :)
Sent from my XT1580 using Tapatalk
I couldn't get the Roon ready version of IQAUDIO software to run on my Pi either so that was another fail.
Personally think Roon is a bit of smoke and mirrors and is vastly overpriced and the £20 per month on top for Tidal just makes it far too expensive for music that A. I already own on my NAS and B. Music I'll never own on Tidal.
Pi with MoOde for me ;-)
Really? But the IQAudio Roon Ready build is a matter of creating the SD card and plugging it in. No configuration required. It doesn't work with wireless though which is a bit of a shame, so I've just built a Raspbian installation with the Roon Bridge software installed on top.
Roon isn't vastly over-priced when you consider where it has come from. It's basically Sooloos without having to buy the hardware. It's a fair bit to fork out for a piece of software I'll grant you, but I wouldn't be without it now.
How about multi room audio synchronisation?
Can a Roon user please answer Markii's question, apologies if I've missed it...:eyebrows:
In fact can it handle multiple clients in general?
Really? But the IQAudio Roon Ready build is a matter of creating the SD card and plugging it in. No configuration required. It doesn't work with wireless though which is a bit of a shame, so I've just built a Raspbian installation with the Roon Bridge software installed on top.
Roon isn't vastly over-priced when you consider where it has come from. It's basically Sooloos without having to buy the hardware. It's a fair bit to fork out for a piece of software I'll grant you, but I wouldn't be without it now.
Nope, Roon refused to see my Pi with the IQAUDIO software. As for price being too much for Roon, well, I can do everything it does for free, so for me it is far too expensive when you consider it really is just a search engine with audio enhancements, and I never trust 'lifetime' subs as they can die anytime.
And I don't want my pc on 24/7 so that's another reason not to have it. If I was to buy a suitable NAS then you can add another £500-600 for one that Roon recommends as minimum spec to install Roon to, add the £400 subscription and the £20 per month per user for Tidal it soon adds up.
So far I've spent £60 on the Pi, and have a NAS that cost £150 and I have the Family sub for Apple music that 5 of us use due £15 a month.
So you can see financially it's not worth it, and yet the money isn't really the issue as I can certainly afford it, it's just that, I can't see any benefit from using Roon.
But I do realise that many people like Roon and that's fair enough, everyone is different.
Now if Roon had Apple Music built in, then I might think differently. But that ain't going to happen, ever, lol.
I'll try the IQAUDIO software again for Roon as I don't like being beat by PC/audio problems, but at the moment I'm not that peeved as I know the end result isn't what I'm after anyway.
How about multi room audio synchronisation?
Yes indeed. You can have any number of 'end points'. That's anything that Roon will recognise as a player, be it a Raspberry Pi running Roon Bridge, or a Squeezebox, or a tablet or phone running the Roon application or any of the number of new devices that support Roon coming to market. You can then either treat these all as separate devices, or you can group some or all of them together depending on how you want your rooms set up, so when it comes to controlling them, you select either the device or the group you want to send music to from your remote application, then just go and select the music or radio station that you want to send to them. You have individual volume controls for each from the remote app too (assuming you haven't set any to fixed output).
Would love to give Roon a try, but none of my tablets are supported.
Is that still the case? If you haven't looked for a while then it might be worth another go. Originally Roon dictated that you needed a 10" tablet screen for it to run, but now that there's a mobile phone app as well I'm not sure that limitation still stands for tablets.
Yes indeed. You can have any number of 'end points'. That's anything that Roon will recognise as a player, be it a Raspberry Pi running Roon Bridge, or a Squeezebox, or a tablet or phone running the Roon application or any of the number of new devices that support Roon coming to market. You can then either treat these all as separate devices, or you can group some or all of them together depending on how you want your rooms set up, so when it comes to controlling them, you select either the device or the group you want to send music to from your remote application, then just go and select the music or radio station that you want to send to them. You have individual volume controls for each from the remote app too (assuming you haven't set any to fixed output).
thanks Rich, thats good to here, is it as seamless with synchronisation as LMS? no echoe effects or anything?
Nope, Roon refused to see my Pi with the IQAUDIO software. As for price being too much for Roon, well, I can do everything it does for free, so for me it is far too expensive when you consider it really is just a search engine with audio enhancements, and I never trust 'lifetime' subs as they can die anytime.
And I don't want my pc on 24/7 so that's another reason not to have it. If I was to buy a suitable NAS then you can add another £500-600 for one that Roon recommends as minimum spec to install Roon to, add the £400 subscription and the £20 per month per user for Tidal it soon adds up.
So far I've spent £60 on the Pi, and have a NAS that cost £150 and I have the Family sub for Apple music that 5 of us use due £15 a month.
So you can see financially it's not worth it, and yet the money isn't really the issue as I can certainly afford it, it's just that, I can't see any benefit from using Roon.
But I do realise that many people like Roon and that's fair enough, everyone is different.
Now if Roon had Apple Music built in, then I might think differently. But that ain't going to happen, ever, lol.
I'll try the IQAUDIO software again for Roon as I don't like being beat by PC/audio problems, but at the moment I'm not that peeved as I know the end result isn't what I'm after anyway.
If Roon can recognise a Squeezebox (mentioned in another post) you could try installing piCorePlayer on your pi, I run it on my IQaudio PiDAC and it works seamlessly with LMS. It's rock solid and only runs from RAM so no SD card corruption issues.
What's the spec of your NAS? I run LMS on a modest QNAP TS-119 (1.2ghz ARM processor, 500MB RAM, 2TB HD, 3kCDs FLAC), with 4 clients, and it doesn't miss a beat...and about 4 mins for a delta re-index :)
EDIT; Just spotted the Roon server minimum spec thread...
https://community.roonlabs.com/t/minimum-roonserver-hardware-requirements/3450
...you could host a web site on those specs, 24/7 that'll take some electricity ;)
Is that still the case? If you haven't looked for a while then it might be worth another go. Originally Roon dictated that you needed a 10" tablet screen for it to run, but now that there's a mobile phone app as well I'm not sure that limitation still stands for tablets.
I am afraid so, I have a ipad 1 and a ipad 4, a cheap android tablet and a very simple mobile phone.
Really? But the IQAudio Roon Ready build is a matter of creating the SD card and plugging it in
just this minute tried it and again nothing showing in ROON, IQAudio Roon Ready Package written to mSD Card rebooted it and nothing........................ putTy sees the Pi ok via SSH so I know it's working and I can select the IQAudio DAC as audio device but Roon just refuses to see it. Quite a few users on Roonlabs forums having the same issue, but as yet no definitive solution.
I can see my MoOde PI in the Living Room via Airplay in Roon, but that's no good, I want it to be fully wired system and was hoping IQAudio would just work like it seems to do for almost everyone else:(
As for the problem with Tablets, Roon Control on iOS it can only be installed on an iPad Air or latest models, it won't install on my iPad 3 :(
thanks Rich, thats good to here, is it as seamless with synchronisation as LMS? no echoe effects or anything?
Well, I've not actually tried any grouping as my Pi's are all in separate Rooms and I only tend to use one at a time. I'll try and give that a go over the weekend and get back to you.
I see Roon have just posted a software update for all devices - Added support for HiFiBerry products as Roon end points is rather good.
just this minute tried it and again nothing showing in ROON, IQAudio Roon Ready Package written to mSD Card rebooted it and nothing........................ putTy sees the Pi ok via SSH so I know it's working and I can select the IQAudio DAC as audio device but Roon just refuses to see it. Quite a few users on Roonlabs forums having the same issue, but as yet no definitive solution.
That's really odd. I wonder why it works for some and not others given that there can't be much in the way of difference between hardware/software.
Might be worth giving PiCorePlayer a go if you still want to give Roon a spin... I used that for a while before the RoonBridge software was released and it was rock solid. You just need to enable Squeezebox support in the Roon audio setup and piCorePlayer will present your Pi as a Squeezebox. You can get wireless working with that too if you want it.
I am afraid so, I have a ipad 1 and a ipad 4, a cheap android tablet and a very simple mobile phone.
Ah yes, it's more a horsepower issue than a screen size issue. I have my remote running on a Sony Experia 10" tablet and it looks ace, but it can be pretty laggy when you go into the 'Discover' pages. Which is odd because my Moto X phone has no such problems.
I had some graphics issues when I was first setting things up as I wanted to use mini Dell laptop as my remote in the music room, but Roon required OpenGL3 to be running under Windows, so this little Dell had no chance. It is a power hungry beastie that's for sure.
Might be worth giving PiCorePlayer a go if you still want to give Roon a spin... I used that for a while before the RoonBridge software was released and it was rock solid. You just need to enable Squeezebox support in the Roon audio setup and piCorePlayer will present your Pi as a Squeezebox. You can get wireless working with that too if you want it.
FYI If you do want to go wifi, I'm using one of these wifi adapters with piCorePlayer, and my IQaudioDAC...
https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B00H28H8DU/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1
...I'd previously tried a 'recommended' Edimax alternative, but they'd modified the chip set, so it was no longer compatible with the Pi
Absolutely rock solid...:)
To be honest I'm not bothered about Roon and will just cancel demo and the Tidal trial.
for me this is my list of Pro's and Cons of Roon
PROS:
It's fun to use for about 15 minutes, then you realise you can do the same for free
CONS:
Expensive
Power Hungry
PC needs powered up
Can't use Roon Remote with older iPads such as 1,2,3
It's basically a search engine with some audio addons ( MoOde/Volumio/Rune/Kodi etc can do the same )
Requires Tidal Sub to make it useful
You have to give payment details to use the Trial version of Roon
I'll leave this thread now and let the Roon lovers in peace while I spend my £400+ on a different toy :eyebrows:
To be honest I'm not bothered about Roon and will just cancel demo and the Tidal trial.
for me this is my list of Pro's and Cons of Roon
PROS:
It's fun to use for about 15 minutes, then you realise you can do the same for free
OK show me the free software that looks as good as Roon, integrates your own library entirely with Tidal, gives you a much better interface to browse Tidal with, supports MQA playback, gives you full multi-room capability, is compatible with a growing range of hardware and portable devices, has it's own drivers for many hi-fi DACs to allow direct bit-perfect streaming, avoiding going through the OS mixer, uses it's own lossless transport to get audio from the server to the endpoint without any resampling, unlike AirPlay etc., has an excellent internet radio interface, sorts and tags your music with the smallest amount of user overriding required that I've ever come across, tags classical music properly, has a fantastic discovery engine that gets you discovering and rediscovering music and could take you on a journey of exploration when you're running short of inspiration. I've probably missed a load of stuff.
I'm sure you can get a combination of things to work for free which will approach the same functionality, but the fundamental difference for me is faffing about with computers rather then enjoying music. Roon makes my Pi feel like a piece of cutting edge hi-fi kit. As good as things like Volumio and Moode etc. are, it never feels like anything more than computer audio geekery.
OK show me the free software that looks as good as Roon, integrates your own library entirely with Tidal, gives you a much better interface to browse Tidal with, supports MQA playback, gives you full multi-room capability, is compatible with a growing range of hardware and portable devices, has it's own drivers for many hi-fi DACs to allow direct bit-perfect streaming, avoiding going through the OS mixer, uses it's own lossless transport to get audio from the server to the endpoint without any resampling, unlike AirPlay etc., has an excellent internet radio interface, sorts and tags your music with the smallest amount of user overriding required that I've ever come across, tags classical music properly, has a fantastic discovery engine that gets you discovering and rediscovering music and could take you on a journey of exploration when you're running short of inspiration. I've probably missed a load of stuff.
I'm sure you can get a combination of things to work for free which will approach the same functionality, but the fundamental difference for me is faffing about with computers rather then enjoying music. Roon makes my Pi feel like a piece of cutting edge hi-fi kit. As good as things like Volumio and Moode etc. are, it never feels like anything more than computer audio geekery.
But I don't want it to do all that, I just want it to play music from my NAS, Radio and stream from Tidal, Qobuz, Google, Apple, and for me my Pi in it's current setup with free software does all that, for $500 all Roon does for me integrate with Tidal, search and offers suggestions to what I might listen to, I can do that myself lol.
Cost wise if I took a lifetime sub for Roon - $400 plus let's say 10 years of Tidal ( 1 user ) - £2400 so roughly £2750 over 10 years, and that's without factoring in I would need a new iPad to control it AND have my PC on almost 24/7 as I listen to music at all hours from 7am until 1 am. Now for the same time using Apple Music which costs me £14.99 for 6 family members so that's £2.50 each per month so my cost over 10 years is £300 plus the cost of my Pi at say £75, that's a huge difference, granted Apple ain't lossless but I've heard it vs Tidal and for the cost there isn't a huge difference, I don't use Apple exclusively on my main system, its mostly for browsing/searching while using headphones in bed or for use in the car so Tidal HiFi isn't really justified for that use. It's not like I can't afford it, my system is worth several £1000's, and would quite happily spend more IF it improved it.
Sorry but no matter how I or you spin it we will never agree on Roon and that's cool, be a very boring world if we all liked the same thing, would be interesting to have a head to head with the two systems and see which one people would choose ;)
Right now I have access to Roon free until mid September and Tidal free until October ( I used to be a subscriber to Tidal for my own use, but the family sub at Apple was far too tempting with 2 kids using Spotify at £10 each a month, and 2 grandkids wanting music too ) and yet I haven't touched either since week 1.
As for IQAudio Roon Ready on my Pi - won't work period, I've also tried installing Raspbian and then the SSH install of Roon Bridge but it fails saying my Pi isn't compatible as the software is ARM 7?, PiCoreplayer works but that's really only Airplay isn't it? I was keen to try a Sonore mRendu but with Brexit the price has risen to just short of £600 and I didn't fancy that cost just to have a play, ah well I'll just have to stick to my Pi and it's freebies.
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