Recommendation for home audio system
Looking for a self-hosted home audio system, something like Sonos where you can play music in different zones/rooms and control it from a phone or tablet. Not sure on speakers, maybe something running off of raspberry pi's or just standalone speakers if that would work. Anyone doing something like this?
Logitech media server, every day of the week. Despite its name, it is open source and in the hands of the community. Then, with cdrummond's Material Skin and LMS Android Wrapper, it's next level good. I can't ever imagine going back
Edit: if hosting the server on a RPI, check out piCorePlayer. It can host your server and also serve as a player simultaneously
What are you using for client devices?
I'm using a Raspberry pi, my desktop computer, my phone, some Logitech Squeezebox devices, and Google Home Minis all through my house
What is the name of the client software on the pi? How did you connect your pi to an amplifier?
For my pi, PC, and phone, I use Squeezelite. For the pi specifically, piCorePlayer is the OS that I use to run Squeezelite
For the pi, and DAC will do. I personally use a Hifiberry DAC which connects via the GPIO, but any USB DAC will do the job
I can recommend mopidy and snapcast.
This will allow for a Sonos like setup you are looking for.
Snapcast works incredibly well for multi-device audio.
Has anyone tried setting up multiple zones with it that can play different things at the same time? I imagine you would need one snapcast server per zone? And is there an easy way to assign the clients to one of the servers?
You can configure multiple zones on a server snap with multiple hosts
A client can assign to one host only.
This looks really cool. Any recommendations on clients(speakers)? I have a couple of older raspberry pies I could use if as remote speakers, but I'd need a few more.
Personally I use Raspi 2 and Zero for that purpose. HATS for digital connection or if you want connecting speakers directly consider AMP2 HAT.
Homeassistant controls grouping, volume etc.
There's moode as an alternative to Volumio and only really supported on the Pi.
You can do most of this stuff manually too, but of course that's more work.
Music Player Daemon - mpd - is a small Linux utillity that does most of this.
It is a small music player runs as a service on a linux machine (RPi worked for me when testing) which can be controlled through a remote control app or desktop program.
It needs access to your music library, so look into sharing it, possibly through NFS, or set up a copy of your music library on local storage in the RPi.
I am a bit concerned about how well it would work with a shared solution, I know that some systems might lock open files preventing other clients from using them, but that is nothing I have tested.
Maybe Volumio can work? It’s some time since I last tried it.
In the past I've used Volumio, but they've made multiroom a paid feature now.
One way around it would be to run a chromecast or airplay client, as they both have inherent multizone support, just not as polished as a sonos-style setup with groupings and stereo mapping when using DIY hardware.
Roon is self-hosted but not open spurce. Incredible at playing music, beautiful UI etc. Not free but best in class imo. https://roon.app/en/
No linux client and needs a credit card for the free trial. It should be avoided