[HN Gopher] Smart Audio for the Smart Home
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Smart Audio for the Smart Home
Author : realityking
Score : 36 points
Date : 2021-12-10 20:08 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (computer.rip)
(TXT) w3m dump (computer.rip)
| alvarlagerlof wrote:
| Hoping for matter
| monitron wrote:
| Is there an alternative? If I want to build a flexible, high-
| quality, open whole-house audio system that my whole family can
| use without cursing my name, do I have any options?
|
| It feels like there has to be a prosumer/low-end-professional
| product I can shoehorn into my house, kind of like how I've moved
| up from awful home network products to Ubiquiti gear over which I
| feel like I have some actual control (though their more recent
| UniFi products seem like a step backwards in that regard...)
| dementik wrote:
| Squeezebox (Logitech Media Server) with material-ui plugin is
| something which happens to work quite well. Family members are
| happy as well.
|
| Syncs perfectly on multiroom setup, supports Spotify, works
| with Home Assistant and has at least enough device choices for
| playback.
| Cerium wrote:
| Years ago I helped a friend install a CasaTunes [1] setup in
| their house. They already had speakers installed in the
| ceilings of each room, but they were routed to local closets
| with the intention of putting a system in each closet. We
| pulled cable to haul them all back to one closet and installed
| the CasaTunes system. The result was very nice, smart phone app
| control over the music in each room. It worked well for
| individual listening or to set the atmosphere for events.
|
| [1] https://www.casatunes.com/
| acidburnNSA wrote:
| * Server running mopidy [1] with all your audio loaded up on it
| and connected to Spotify.
|
| * Install the Iris plugin for UI [2] on server
|
| * Install snapcast [3] server on the audio server and snapcast
| client on raspberry pi's near all stereos you want to pipe
| audio into
|
| * Put bookmarks to the Iris page on all family member's phone
| home screens.
|
| * Add the snapdroid app [4] to each phone so people can adjust
| volume of each stereo and also play audio on their phone (or
| anything it's bluetoothed into)
|
| [1] https://mopidy.com/
|
| [2] https://mopidy.com/ext/iris/
|
| [3] https://github.com/badaix/snapcast
|
| [4] https://github.com/badaix/snapdroid
| hammock wrote:
| Spotify Connect. Even though the whole article is making a case
| for consumer-grade DLNA, towards the middle the author
| concedes: "No one needs DLNA because they use Spotify, and
| Spotify has worked commercial partnerships to get Spotify Cast
| support in their A/V devices."
|
| Except it's not open.
| snthd wrote:
| Nymphcast looks promising.
|
| Otherwise for the sync there's stuff built around snapcast. It
| has the fundamental limitation that it's a dumb pipe. You can
| control the volume and mute it, but a pause only happens when
| the snapcast gets to the silent "paused" part of the buffer.
| The sync does work very well though.
|
| Maybe something will be possible with pipewire?
| chaosharmonic wrote:
| If you don't mind waiting until near-future for support for
| devices to actually support these, the group that's building
| out the Matter spec just confirmed yesterday[0] they're also
| working on casting functionality, and for audio in particular
| the Bluetooth ecosystem is slowly inching toward LE Audio.
|
| [0] https://www.theverge.com/2021/12/9/22824559/matter-tv-
| stream...
| dsr_ wrote:
| Do you want the same music everywhere, or do you want each
| person to be able to play their own music where they are?
|
| Almost all the installable-box systems assume the first: you
| want the same music in your office, the living room, your
| bedroom simultaneously, and if your husband picks up a
| controller and changes it to what he likes, that's what
| everybody gets.
|
| If you want the second, you need a music server that makes a
| filesystem full of FLAC and MP3 available via NFS or CIFS or
| DLNA, and a bunch of clients with speakers around that house
| that can be used to select music and play it. Those clients can
| be Raspberry Pi based units that look as good as you're willing
| to pay for, and the whole thing will take you one afternoon.
| dsr_ wrote:
| What I've got:
|
| The media server is a Debian x86 box with a big RAID on it. It
| has MP3 and FLAC rips of all the discs. That filesystem can be
| accessed via read-only NFS or CIFS or AFP. It is running:
|
| Owntone - MPD compatible, web interface, can stream to any client
| that can handle ChromeCast or AirPlay, including machines running
| shairport-sync. That's how you get multiroom party audio.
|
| minidlna - DLNA server, no interface, makes the library available
| to clients that only speak DLNA. That's a way of getting local
| play.
|
| Various devices around the house speak DLNA or mount the
| filesystem and present a local player.
| pablobaz wrote:
| Im my experience Serviio was the only thing that made DNLA even
| half work and even with that it was flakey.
|
| https://serviio.org/
| cobbzilla wrote:
| This article is a really fun trip down memory lane:
|
| "Some of you may remember installing an IDE CD drive and having
| to connect the three-wire analogue audio output from the CD drive
| to the sound card."
|
| And until today, I never knew the real "why". Fascinating
| messo wrote:
| What a great read! I have been playing with DLNA equipment lately
| and have found that, while extremely niche, is still alive and
| quite flexible for the few of us who like to curate local copies
| of our own music.
|
| I do sometimes pirate music, but I have found that buying used
| CDs at thrift-shops and at Discogs is cheap (and much more fun!)
| and lets me rip to FLAC with my own preferences.
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