multi-room home music streamer?

[baz-r]

I'm looking on building a multi room music streaming system with a selection of pi's and was wondering if this was covered in any back issues of magpi?

I currently have a logitech squeezebox system that works brilliantly but manufactures and 3rd party support is diminishing now so looking to make something fun ,not to expensive and funky to replace it but act like a sonos or squeezebox system

i have 2x pi zero w's and a pi3

my idea is to use the pi3 connected to my home cinema amp via hdmi for displayof track info on the tv and sound via the amps own dac

have 1 zero acting headless (no display) with pimironi phat beat like the pirate radio kit but with an extra speaker for stereo and make a custom enclosure

have the other zero same as above but using a justboom zero phat hidden with a pair of spare hi fi speakers

if nothing has been covered before in magpi could someone point me in a good direction to get the best software for it to run?
i'm sure this is something people would like to see in the magazine .

[epoch1970]

I would try picoreplayer which ships squeezelite.
Sonos and all the other multi room solutions are proprietary, AFAIK.

[Paul Webster]

i.e. Using piCorePlayer turns your RPi into a Squeezebox and will work fine with your existing set-up including sync.

[baz-r]

unfortunately squeezebox support has been dropped by spotify so I'm looking for an alternative software i cant see the point in using the same software the squeezebox is based on

squeezebox has served me well for many years (excuse the pun) but the system is slowly becoming unsupported so i was hoping i could build a replacement system and perhaps add some funky little touches of my own

[epoch1970]

There is a third party plugin that works and replaces the former Spotify app. It's called spotty, see on forums.slimdevices.com
It's a plugin so it runs on the server (contrary to an app) and should work with a venerable SB3.
The change was AFAIK due to a change in the Spotify API. Since Logi doesn't have hardware clients anymore it made more sense to implement the new Spotify connector in the server, I guess.

Again, AFAIK there is no open source multi room audio alternative to LMS that works IRL.
If you run the slim client on a Pi you can do a lot of custom things. The Pi is the defacto replacement of Logi hardware players.

[baz-r]

with all the other software out there in shocked some of them haven't gotten on to this?

i am currently using my squeezebox touch's built in LMS because I never wanted a PC running in my system all the time and at the time squeezeplug and custom NAS drive software's where just coming about

the 2nd hand cost of squeezeboxes are still quite high and now that spotify has stopped service for squeezeboxes I had it in my mind it was time to sell up and to move on

on the market i can only find
sonos - yes it works but its unrealistic cost and lack of having to connect to any nice hardware is letting the system down
Squeezebox - sadly logitech have stopped manufacture of new units and support from 3rd partys is slowly dropping off
Chromecast Audio - i dont have any experance of thease yet but apprently now support muliti player sync . output options are optical toslink or headphone output - not ideal but at a last rrsort i could possibly buy a few of thease and make some form of pi based storage system to hold my large collection of music files?

my pi experince is very much a biginner and oher than building a retropie games machine i havent done much.
support and documentation isnt great in my experance for the pi compared to some other projects i have played with in the past.
i have even built 2 of my own working and running megasquirt ecu's for the fuel injection and ignition system in my car

[Paul Webster]

piCorePlayer (pCP) included option to install LMS on RPi as well - works very well.
The developer of the new "Spotty" plugin did it in his spare time but is a Logitech employee.

[PjV]

Well known images for music streaming on the are: Volumio, Moode and Rune.
I think neither of them does multi-room. If that is a deal breaker, then these will not work for you.
Otherwise, you can put your music on a NAS and add that share to each system; Control the systems via a web browser.

[MarkMutt]

Hi,
Just thought I'd add my £0.02
I use max2play (just do a search) this is an image based on very recent (but still tested as working, slight dig at stretch there) raspbian image but customised to use a Web interface.
You can also use the replacement Spotify plugins if you are so inclined, other streaming services, tie in to chromecast devices (works okay, but you need to have wired Ethernet or very good WiFi coverage as adjusting latency for Synchronous playback can be tricky). Normal squeezelite clients perform flawlessly.
For a small fee you can pick up a premium license which adds functionality like wireless access points, password protection and screen operation (very usefull) I generally run mine headless using the Squeezer app.
The basic system allows you to set up servers and/or clients (I have a holiday system that performs as a boom box - LMS server, LMS client, amp, NAS, DLNA server and WAP)
The free version gives you extensive sound card support, samba setup, WiFi setup, LMS server and player setup, mount point setup and probably some stuff I've forgotten or just don't use.
If you are paranoid about power cycling you could use Pi-core for the players as they run from virtual images so no corruption but I've not had a problem with the 4 off squeezelite players I run fully Synchronised around the house.
The only issues I have found are 1). You may need to set memory split via raspi-config (I like 16MB, I run headless) and 2). I manually add other WiFi networks in to the configuration so I 'could' move the speakers around the house / garden and use the strongest WAP's without reconfiguring.
I don't have any squeezebox's so couldn't comment on their integration but in theory it should be transparent and it shouldn't cost you a penny to try.
As a fun project I even set up a pi zero W, a USB thumb drive and a pimoroni pHAT speaker (with a working built-in led vu meter) to build a micro boom box controlled from my phone, a bit tinny but the dac was Not on the approved list and yet I still got it to work (and support the vu too)
Cheers
Mutt