daws0n
01-02-2020, 09:57
For years I have used foobar2000 as my digital audio player of choice... It has some great DSP plugins, media library functionality and features (particularly when combined with foobarcon pro android app). Best in class IMO, and whilst my interest in Linux / Raspberry Pi has been growing over the years I've not found an ARM based audio player that compares. I've always kept a small windows based PC near the stereo to accommodate for this, but it's a little noisy and not very neat.
I tried Volumio and it works fine, but foobar2000 remains my preference of choice for a variety of reasons. It's not linux compatible however but I've found a way to "stream" playback via UPnP to native Raspbian O/S. This allows you to retain the Pi's innate functionality (e.g I can still use it browse to BBC sounds and play radio 6 via Chromium). Whilst also background listening for foobar's audio broadcasts from another device. So, I can have foobar200 running / "serving" from another part of the house on say a noisy desktop or laptop device, and the output comes through to a tiny Raspberry Pi 4 on the hifi rack. The broadcast's bit depth and sample rates and dictated within foobar's config, and all DSP functions are applied. It transcodes the audio to stream, but set to FLAC it's a lossless process. It takes a bit of delving into mpd to ensure that linux is not resampling the incoming stream, but from what I can tell it's outputting without alteration.
It's surprisingly stable over a decent LAN, and combined with an XMOS xu208 USB > SPDIF convertor gives me a fanless energy efficient transport for a very low cost.
If this pricks anyone's interest post below and I'll provide a few how-to instructions.
I tried Volumio and it works fine, but foobar2000 remains my preference of choice for a variety of reasons. It's not linux compatible however but I've found a way to "stream" playback via UPnP to native Raspbian O/S. This allows you to retain the Pi's innate functionality (e.g I can still use it browse to BBC sounds and play radio 6 via Chromium). Whilst also background listening for foobar's audio broadcasts from another device. So, I can have foobar200 running / "serving" from another part of the house on say a noisy desktop or laptop device, and the output comes through to a tiny Raspberry Pi 4 on the hifi rack. The broadcast's bit depth and sample rates and dictated within foobar's config, and all DSP functions are applied. It transcodes the audio to stream, but set to FLAC it's a lossless process. It takes a bit of delving into mpd to ensure that linux is not resampling the incoming stream, but from what I can tell it's outputting without alteration.
It's surprisingly stable over a decent LAN, and combined with an XMOS xu208 USB > SPDIF convertor gives me a fanless energy efficient transport for a very low cost.
If this pricks anyone's interest post below and I'll provide a few how-to instructions.