Kelsey Jordahl

@kajord

Looking to set up multi-room audio in our new house. My previous solution was old school: a stereo receiver with wired speakers in 3 rooms, selectable by room. Great sound, not easy to do the same in the new house.

10/18/2022, 9:48:41 PM

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Kelsey Jordahl

@kajord

So looking for current wireless solutions.
Requirements:
Must be able to play local files from my NAS
Play albums on shuffle
Play local NPR station
Stream from phone
Sync audio between adjacent rooms

Nice to have:
Stream Spotify, etc. directly
Automation via Home Assistant

10/18/2022, 9:55:21 PM

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Kelsey Jordahl

@kajord

There are a few smart speaker systems that can do multi-room audio, but I'm not that interested in the Apple, Google, or Amazon ecosystems for this. They each lock you in in their own way, and none are that great for playing music from a local file server.

10/18/2022, 9:56:55 PM

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Kelsey Jordahl

@kajord

Sonos is the obvious choice: good sound, well supported, can play local music and many services built in, Airplay 2, etc. There is still the lock-in of a proprietary system. I don't love it, but if it did everything I needed, I might put up with it.

10/18/2022, 9:59:06 PM

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Kelsey Jordahl

@kajord

It turns out that Sonos can still not play random albums from a genre or playlist on shuffle.
Not in 2014 (https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers-software-228995/album-shuffle-4699519)
Not in 2016 (https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers-software-228995/add-album-shuffle-6736741)
Not in 2021 (https://en.community.sonos.com/controllers-software-228995/album-shuffle-6857125)
A simple feature, that has been available in iTunes and iPods forever.

10/18/2022, 10:04:56 PM

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Kelsey Jordahl

@kajord

So I think the only real solution for me is DIY, with something like a Raspberry Pi in each room. There are a number of ways to do this, but not necessarily one obvious solution.

10/18/2022, 10:06:36 PM

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Kelsey Jordahl

@kajord

One thing that would probably work just fine is piCorePlayer (http://picoreplayer.org) with a Logitech Music Server (which may be a bit old fashioned these days, but open source and well maintained, and even does album shuffle!).

10/18/2022, 10:10:01 PM

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Kelsey Jordahl

@kajord

And there are other options, running snapcast on multiple RPis, with any number of clients and servers. Interested to hear if anyone has solutions for multi-room audio that they like!

10/18/2022, 10:11:37 PM

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Kelsey Jordahl

@kajord

The wrench in the new plan is that Raspberry Pis of any kind are apparently unobtainable now. I have a couple that I could potentially repurpose, but I would want more than that. So maybe looking for other small, cheap substitutes.

10/18/2022, 10:13:36 PM

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Kelsey Jordahl

@kajord

I have Version 0.0 of multi room audio running with 2 raspberry pis running piCorePlayer, Logitech Media Server running the audio, and output to a clock radio and set of powered speakers I already had. Hardware cost so far: $0.

10/22/2022, 10:20:25 AM

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Kelsey Jordahl

@kajord

So far, pretty good! Playback and synchronization is working well for local music and streaming radio. Doesn’t have Spotify or Airplay integration, although these both seem possible.

10/22/2022, 10:24:39 AM

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Kelsey Jordahl

@kajord

The web interface is quite clunky, so I paid for an iOS client app that seems decent (iPeng).

A full working setup for the house will need some new speakers and raspberry pi substitutes.

10/22/2022, 10:28:42 AM

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