![]() Bugs will be ruled out and features will be added. But that was a mess, because it didn’t support album artist tags. I also tried to control it from MPDroid on my phone. It didn’t really have a library I just got the folder structure from my SAMBA share. ![]() It worked “out-of-the-box”, and was controlled from a nice web interface. But the main problem was that I couldn’t get a sound out of it. The library was a bit messy, and very slow to show up. Then it could scan my files and make a library. I tried to connect it to my SAMBA share, but it failed. Now it has forked into two different projects: Volumio and RuneAudio. Raspify was another Pi music player project aimed at audiophiles. I googled a bit and saw that others had the same problem, but I couldn’t find a solution. All I got was the web interface and a “connecting to Musicbox” message. The guide says to install the image, connect it through the web interface and “wait for a while”. This offers Spotify, Soundcloud, Google Music, webradio etc. They all are controlled through a web interface rather than apps, they have support for USB DACs, and they encourage users to make DIY projects for hardware (add displays, hardware buttons etc.) They are Pi Musicbox, Volumio and RuneAudio. There are three more recent distributions that look promising, and offer easy setup and are “ready-to-play-out-of-the box”. I don’t need USB DACs anyway, since I use HDMI. But I got problems with stability, and reverted back to version 6. Later versions of Squeezelite support USB DACs. I also tried the Deezer plugin, but it seemed to support only the “radio” function – they decide what you should listen to. But that is not available on Squeezebox anyway. This is a feature you don’t have on the mobile apps, unless you have the premium subscription (at twice the price) with lossless and gapless. To my surprise Wimp playback will also be gapless. There you can add additional services like web radios, Spotify, Deezer, Wimp etc. ![]() Squeezeplug is also quite easy to set up, but it has to be done through Putty, and the library is setup through a web interface. That’s why I tried another solution – Squeezeplug. But then this was broken (it’s back now). When I first installed XBMC (Openelec), it provided gapless playback. I wasn’t so impressed by this, but it might improve. The Wimp (the music service) plugin is quite new. I haven’t tried the Spotify or Grooveshark plugins. So I can play back my DVD-audio 5.1 channel rips. One great advantage with XBMC is that it supports multichannel ac3 or dts files that can be decoded by the receiver. So you are not stuck with just mp3 or flac. XBMC also supports a lot of audio codecs. But it takes a while to scan the library, and usually the program crashes half way through. The library is quite good, as it supports “album artist” tags, plus the latest additions to the library. Yatze adds some extra features, like streaming to Chromecast or your phone. I use Yatze as my Android app to control it. But it can also be used as a headless music player. It is meant primarily to connect to a TV. plus for pictures, weather and other things. It has a host of plugins for almost everything that is media related – TV/movie channels, audio plugins for Spotify, radios, Grooveshark, etc. XBMC is also the most advanced media player program you can get for the Pi. Even my SAMBA share was easy to connect – the program sees all my network shares, so I just had to click to connect it. All of them work fine, and they are very easy to set up. I know next to nothing about Linux, so I depend on programs that are easy to set up, or they must have good step-by-step instructions. That is more out of curiosity or fun than out of need, because the first programs I tried works perfectly fine. When googling around for music server/player projects on the Pi, I find new solutions every time. There are now quite many good solutions to use the Pi as a music player. I have a large collection – 1450 albums, and they are on a harddisk connected to my Asus router. I use an Android phone, or occasionally an iPad, to control it. I use a PC to set it up, but the Pi is otherwise headless. The VGA signal goes to a projector, and the S/PDIF goes to my receiver. My hardware setup is: Raspberry Pi model B, 256 MB, wired connection, HDMI goes to a device that splits the signal to VGA and optical S/PDIF audio. The main reason why I bought the Raspberry Pi was to use it as a music or media player.
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