[HN Gopher] Smart Audio for the Smart Home ___________________________________________________________________ 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. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-12-10 23:00 UTC)