5/19/2024 Setup oss multiroom hi-fi
This post briefly details how to setup a ( fully open-source ) multi-room hi-fi setup, relying on :
- a Logitech Media Server ( LMS ) distributing its contents to players located in various rooms.
- one or many SqueezeLite players, with optional capability to synchronize players in real-time, playing the same media content.
Note that other player distributions (like Volumio, etc) may also work, though a LMS + PiCorePlayer combination seems the best, imho ( also because it's all open-source and free ). You can read this article for an in-depth comparison.
Prerequisites
- a single wifi network with
- working DHCP and DNS
- in a given room, a laptop hosting the LMS.
- in each room, a Raspberry-Pi ( RPi ) device ( ideally 3B + for stable wifi ) with a Digital Analog Converter (DAC) hosting the SqueezeLite ( also known as PiCorePlayer ) player
- sound speakers attached to each RPi-DAC
Installation
Install the LMS on your laptop ( macOS is possible ). Physically mount the DAC ( e.g IQAudio DAC + ) on each RPi.
Flash each RPi sd-card with latest PiCorePlayer OS using Raspberry Pi Imager. No need to configure the OS, it can be done in the next step.
Insert the flashed sd-card in each RPi-DAC, insert an Ethernet wire ( will be removed once wifi setup on the RPi-DAC ), and boot the RPi-DAC.
Setup
Check on a browser that it is up and running at http://{server IP}:9000
Check on a browser that each RPi-DAC is up and running by visiting each http://{player IP}.
In each PiCorePlayer webUI, now you can :
- setup the wifi on the RPi-DAC
- choose the corresponding DAC ( by default it booted with HeadPhones, i.e no DAC )
- check various diagnostics or restart the RPi-DAC if needed
Then, via ssh into each RPi, disable the native RPi audio :
ssh tc@{RPi-DAC IP}
# password is 'piCore' by default
mount /mnt/mmcblk0p1 && cd /mnt/mmcblk0p1
vi config.txt
# disable native audio by commenting out this line
#dtparam=audio=on
# then you can check that you have this line, i.e DAC is already configured:
dtoverlay=iqaudio-dacplus
# or add it yourself !At last, remove the Ethernet cable, reboot, and the RPi-DAC, aka your PiCorePlayer, should now be ready !
Check on the LMS interface available at http://{server IP}:9000 that the server has automatically recognized each of your players.
You should be now able to listen to your media ( local media files on the server disk, as well as webradios and more with LMS plugins ) accross all your rooms, either choosing to synchronize each player with each other, or not !
