12 ms·

Modernizing my 1980s sound system

121 points by woodruffw 4y ago

daggersandscars 4y ago
Depending on how you feel about using outdated network hardware, an Apple AirPort Express functions as an AirPlay receiver, DAC, and USB to network printer adapter. Have it join your existing network or, depending on the version, connect it via ethernet. The 1/8" stereo audio out has a fiber optic digital out in it if you want to BYO DAC. Using the network printer requires Bonjour for Windows. It generally works out of the box on most Linux distros.
- maratc 4y ago
  To add, it is readily available on eBay and costs less there than the usual price of Raspberry Pi.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  I didn't know AirPort Expresses could do that! That would definitely have been an option, if I owned one :-)
  - JohnBooty 4y ago
    They are dirt cheap on eBay if you ever get the itch. No DLNA, though, which your current solution supports. So many guests would be left in the cold. But an Airport Express plus an RPi serving as a simple DLNA-to-Airplay bridge might be a way to go (Thank you for the great article, by the way!)
- ezconnect 4y ago
  Is there a minimum model that we need or even the first version is ok?
  - daggersandscars 4y ago
    I'm not sure an 802.11g one will work -- I'm not sure it uses AirPlay to receive network audio. I'm not sure the first gen 802.11n will work either -- I have a second gen one and no longer have the older ones. Sorry.
- buescher 4y ago
  That's exactly how I would "modernize" the system. Maybe add a modern DSP equalizer for room correction, too - his receiver has two monitor loops.
  - JohnBooty 4y ago
    Maybe add a modern DSP equalizer for room correction, too - his receiver has two monitor loops. Oooh, that's nice. I hate that most modern systems don't include these. DSP correction to compensate for speaker+room issues is just stunning when done well. Turns many cheap speakers into legitimate hifi.
- gedy 4y ago
  Thanks, had an 802.11n one sitting here and just tried, though seems like it doesn't want to join an existing network. Even when I had it create a network and joined, macos Ventura didn't seem to see it as Airplay device.
  - daggersandscars 4y ago
    I have a similar setup and it works. Here's my info in case it helps. AirPort Express 802.11n 2nd gen running firmware 7.8.1. It's joined to my 5Ghz network using 802.11n. I have my home wifi configured with both 2.4 and 5Ghz networks and the AirPort Express is aware of both. Not sure if this makes a difference.
    - gedy 4y ago
      Thanks! Was old firmware, update did the trick.
- AceJohnny2 4y ago
  > Using the network printer requires Bonjour for Windows. Offtopic, but I'm shocked that Windows still doesn't support Bonjour/Zeroconf out-of-the-box. I guess RFC 6762/6763 aren't enough for them?
  - vel0city 4y ago
    Windows does support zeroconf networking out of the box, just different flavors from what Apple does out of the box. NetBIOS and LLMNR are Zeroconf DNS/service advertising in the same vein as Bonjour.
    - AceJohnny2 4y ago
      AFAIK, NetBIOS & LLMNR handle only the hostname lookup. Zeroconf adds the crucial ability to advertise services (SSH, VNC, IPP...), so they're not really the same thing.
      - vel0city 4y ago
        They're most known for hostname lookup but they can also do service discovery. Although service discovery is then tied closr to things like SSDP or WSD. My Windows machine knows my home theater receiver is a home theater receiver and knows it's a DLNA and a web server running on it. My Windows machine knows my Brother printer is a printer and scanner and can auto configure the WSD drivers for it. My Windows machine can see my NAS and can know it has fileshares on it to access as well as knowing it has some DLNA functionality. It does this through zeroconf networking protocols. Different protocols from Bonjour, but it would be incorrect to say it does not have any zeroconf networking support out of the box.
- SECProto 4y ago
  It functions as an Airplay receiver, does it also function as DLNA receiver? A friend has some sort of Apple thing attached to his audio system, it works fine for streaming audio for anyone with itunes, but doesn't do anything for android folks.
  - JohnBooty 4y ago
    That's the only (admittedly, a dealbreaker for many!) downside. It does not do DLNA.
  - Smoosh 4y ago
    > some sort of Apple thing That is probably an AirPort Express: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirPort_Express https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirPort_Express
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  Apple AirPort Express I agree with you. It's absolutely the biggest bargain secret in the audio world. Glorious dirt cheap dead simple lossless 44.1/16 bit perfect streaming. Install one in every room for the world's easiest multiroom audio solution. They're available dirt cheap and in plentiful supply on eBay. The only drawback is a lot of apps don't work with Airplay directly on Windows, need a third-party sound driver app or whatever (it's been ages since I looked)
TheRealPomax 4y ago
I went the other way. I tried laptops and raspis wirelessly, and then with audio over ethernet but the difference in timing caused by differences in signal decoding meant that you can couldn't sit in one room with the door open with the speakers in the next room also going because of microshift flanging (although I say micro, some rooms were over 100ms out of sync, which is unbearable). What I ended up doing instead of just running TRS cables along the ethernet cables that were already going to the various rooms I care to spend most of my time in, with some 4x4 audio interfaces that take care of sending the audio to the various speaker sets in those rooms (for rooms with more than one set). Any interface's output can route to any other interface, so if there's more than one thing playing you just press enable that input in the room you're in, and done. And of course, you can get the same done with some second hand professional audio routing rack units, but (a) those are rather inconveniently sized, and (b) you kinda need to have a hookup for those, or get lucky, whereas audio interfaces are a few clicks away and designed to at least look reasonably decent sat on a bookshelf =) More expensive? Probably. "Perfectly" synced audio across rooms? Very much so.
- bombcar 4y ago
  It's effectively impossible to "sync" audio across a large area (because if it is perfect in one area it will be imperfect in another) so often the best you can do is adjust it until it "sounds right". Some software and some hardware have built-in delays you can use to adjust as they do in a stadium, but often just getting everything "speed of light" in a house is good enough. The main thing is that you don't hear a delay when standing in the doorway between rooms.
  - solardev 4y ago
    Don't Sonos, Ultimate Ears, Echo, Google Home etc solve this problem pretty effectively? I know there was a bit of a patent war between them for a while, but don't they still have this feature?
    - bombcar 4y ago
      They do - if you're using one kind for all. That's why starting a song can sometimes take a bit as it buffers/aligns. It's when you're mixing software systems that the fun can begin. (Also if you can route cables in your walls whole-home audio is way cheaper than you might expect: https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=10761 https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=10761 kicks ass)
sam1r 4y ago
This is incredible! I wonder if there is any limitations with audio streaming rate, especially for large flac files.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  That's on my list of things to find out! I believe the Pi I'm using (the Model 3B) only supports 10/100 Ethernet, so bandwidth might be a concern. From a quick search plenty of other people are using Pis (including via HiFiBerryOS) as FLAC players, so that part shouldn't be an issue.
- whycombinetor 4y ago
  Uncompressed 2ch 44.1kHz 16bit PCM is only 1.4Mbps. Even 7.1ch 96khz 24bit is only 18.4Mbps. Should be plenty of headroom even on "only" 100Mbps.
- disposition2 4y ago
  If you are referring to in-network, I've never had issues with FLAC files up to 24/192. Out of network, I use Plex and PlexAmp which can encode the same files to OGG for more mobile friendly streamging
royjacobs 4y ago
Ah, very interesting to read about Subsonic being used here. I was in the market for a similar setup a while ago and tried a bunch of different servers. Navidrome was clearly one of the better ones but didn't seem to support folder-based navigation, which I want to use (since most of my music is not structured as album-per-folder but rather as playlist-per-folder). Like a good HN user I ended up writing my own Subsonic compatible server [0]. It also does things mentioned in this blog post series, like automatically grab cover art and metadata from Musicbrainz/CoverArtArchive, Discogs and last.fm. I haven't officially released it yet since it's missing a few features (most notably transcoding, documentation and support for deleting files) but looks like it might be worthwhile to spend that effort. If you're feeling brave, you can compile it from source or grab the Docker edge image[1]. It looks like I missed evaluating https://github.com/sentriz/gonic https://github.com/sentriz/gonic though, so I might give that a go as well. [0] https://github.com/datatrash/beatlocker https://github.com/datatrash/beatlocker [1] https://hub.docker.com/r/datatrash/beatlocker-server https://hub.docker.com/r/datatrash/beatlocker-server
- woodruffw 4y ago
  I think this may have changed since the last time you checked it out! For my setup (Navidrome with Sonixd as the client), I can navigate through folders just fine. Screenshot here[1]. [1]: https://imgur.com/a/NPHyjgC https://imgur.com/a/NPHyjgC
  - royjacobs 4y ago
    Are these folders actual folders on your disk, though? Last time I checked I could use Navidrome to browse folders, but it would actually be browsing through albums instead.
    - woodruffw 4y ago
      Yeah, each of those corresponds to a folder on disk. However, each of my artists is auto-managed by beets[1] so I end up with one folder per artist, including one folder per "feat." artist (like in the screenshot). So this may be a case where my folders happen to align with the artists/albums, which might not work for you. [1]: https://beets.io/ https://beets.io/
jmathai 4y ago
This looks great. I wish I had heard of HiFiBerryOS a year ago. I ended up going with two Sonos Amps (one requirement for me was everything be wired) to play music in 2 zones. I searched a bit and didn’t come across anything like this. Nonetheless, it seems worthwhile enough that I might tinker with it.
squarefoot 4y ago
"It turns out that nothing really runs well on a 32-bit x86 machine anymore, including major Linux distributions and web browsers." Not true. The EeePC 701 netbook is a really minimal underpowered machine, still it will run small Linux distros just fine (it was actually sold with Linux in the first place). If you want a music player that you can control from another room, you can do that by installing a very small distro such as the x86 Alpine Linux image (https://alpinelinux.org/downloads/ https://alpinelinux.org/downloads/) then the mpd daemon (https://www.musicpd.org/ https://www.musicpd.org/ - it's in standard repositories install it with "apk add mpd" from root shell) which can work headless, therefore requiring very few resources, then a suitable control app for your phone or tablet (search for mpd control app), so that you can do pretty much everything through your home WiFi from any room, basement, backyard, etc. Should you experience noises, cracks, hum and static when connecting the netbook to an amplifier and to a mains adapter, that is a common problem of ground loops and not of that particular netbook, that will be easily solved by adding a small audio transformer in between.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  I'll grant that I hadn't tried installing Alpine -- I tried a few different Debian/Ubuntu variants and ran into the same handful of issues (including a few installers failing completely.) That being said, MPD is not a good solution for my particular use case: I have family and friends that come over regularly, and they want to play music. None of them are technical and are easily dissuades by anything that doesn't immediately work with AirPlay or another UPnP-style setup.
  - softwarebeware 4y ago
    MPD works great for non-tech-savvy friends over, you just need to install a web-based client and they can point their smartphone browser to it. To make it even easier for friends and family, I set up a dynamic DNS with a friendly URL like myjukebox.duckdns.org that points to the 192.168.xxx.xxx address where this is hosted. Mopidy (https://mopidy.com/ https://mopidy.com/) as the MPD server with Iris (https://mopidy.com/ext/iris/ https://mopidy.com/ext/iris/) as the client is a good setup for this. Even the tech-illiterate can get along with it.
colinb 4y ago
Forgive my thread hijacking, but I suspect this is a place with people who might know the answer to my question. Given that I have a pair of reasonably nice speakers but a lack of convenient wiring opportunities, I had thought to come up with something like an RPi based amplifier connected to each, with WiFi linking the two to form a stereo pair. I.e. I have two speakers. Putting both of them near mains electricity is easy. Having wires connecting both to the same amp is a PITA. What cover thing could I do?
- lifty 4y ago
  Not an expert but I think synchronising the signals might be challenging if you hack it yourself. I know Airplay 2 has the feature to pair speakers so perhaps if you can get Airplay 2 working on rpi then it might work. But in my experience the rpi experience is sub par; it was working great while it was working and then all of a sudden it stopped working.
- Kaibeezy 4y ago
  Bookshelf speakers in a small room only really need to be 4' apart, up to 6' or 8' for floor-standers in a large room. You could run the wires behind items on a shelf, under the floor, through a "wiremold" cover, paint the wire and tack it along a baseboard, or try "flat speaker wire".
- qbasic_forever 4y ago
  It's very difficult and fighting an uphill battle to get two totally independent wifi music receivers to together output a single stero signal split across them. I don't think even dedicated systems like Sonos support it. Run speaker wire around the room perimeter to an amp and you will be infinitely happier.
  - fuckstick 4y ago
    > I don't think even dedicated systems like Sonos support it. They do. So do HomePods, other mass brands. Not my cup of tea, but people seem to love them when they work.
  - 4y ago
Kaibeezy 4y ago
Not sure how it's this complicated. I have normal laptops, desktops and phones connected to 70s and 80s vintage stuff all over the house. $10 Bluetooth dongle here, £10 DAC there, and Bob's my uncle. Sounds fine most of the time; over to vinyl for whisky time. Examples: - USB to basic DAC to RCA from desktop to huge 70s Sansui G-7000 receiver - 1/8" jack to RCA jack input from desktop to Tivoli Audio radio - 1/8" jack to RCA jack input from Echo Dot to McIntosh MX-115 preamp - Bluetooth dongle to RCA from iPhone to 60s Leak Stereo 70 amp
- iquerno 4y ago
  I once worked for a PA "contractor" and the thing that blew me away the most was how not one of the self professed audiophiles could reliably tell the difference between a universal audio preamp with flat presets and a 1.50$ crapbox I built with some scrap op-amps and a soldering iron.
  - iwillbenice 4y ago
  - mellavora 4y ago
    Well naturally not, because obviously you were using low-quality speaker cable and the cable capacitance would muddy the sound. Also, the speakers were probably the wrong brand. /s
    - iquerno 4y ago
      > PA contract work < referred to very very low-quality work with professional gear, because that's what clients assume must be better! I was refferring to a high qualiy preamp vs my 1.50$ crapbox as used when connected to a (I think telefunken) microphone. Self professed audiophiles were listening on headphones
  - JohnBooty 4y ago
    That's awesome. =) self professed audiophiles The positive news here is that in recent years, there has been a growing trend of objective audiophiles who understand things from an engineering perspective and eschew that kind of snake oil stuff. We would find it totally unsurprising that your $1.50 "crapbox" was indistinguishable from the fancy gear. And congratulate you for helping to expose those frauds.
gaoshan 4y ago
He mentions a Yamaha RX-495 and asks "circa late 1990s, I think?". I can confirm that it is. I bought that same model in 1997 or 1998 and still use it for my turntable.
snalty 4y ago
This would have been a perfect opportunity to use a Chromecast audio, it's a shame Google canned it when it was still useful.
mihaylov 4y ago
Seems like a good use-case for the chromecast audio (RIP). It lets you stream to it over wifi and connects to the receiver with 3.5mm to RCA cable
- dsr_ 4y ago
  Which is especially nice if you install Owntone ( https://github.com/owntone/owntone-server/ https://github.com/owntone/owntone-server/ ) -- now you have a nice web interface for playing music to any or all of your systems.
- bryanmgreen 4y ago
  One of the best dollar-to-performance purchases for home audio.
- psalminen 4y ago
  It was also an spdif optical out which was super nice to hook into a better DAC.
  - JohnBooty 4y ago
    Yes, although the actual streaming was lossily compressed, which more than negates any gains from using a better DAC. (edit - this is incorrect; the Chromecast Audio was apparently updated at some point to support lossless streaming)
    - jensgk 4y ago
      No, that is not true. Chromecast streaming is lossless, so it is certainly possible to stream hi-res flac files bit-perfect.
      - JohnBooty 4y ago
        Thanks for the correction. I think Chromecast Audio initially didn't support lossless streaming, but at some point it was updated to support it? Regardless, thanks, and I updated my post!
mrj0e 4y ago
I have a Technics SU-C800U and SE-A900S with the wonderful VU Meters. I have a Pi running Volumio. Volumio can do all that HifiberryOS does but is not hardware tied, ie you can use any DAC https://volumio.com/en/get-started/ https://volumio.com/en/get-started/ Volumio has a great web UI. Jellyfin is a great OS server. I use Plex as my music server and the rather wonderful Plexamp app on my phone but it's paid and proprietary, but worth it.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  Thanks for sharing! I definitely saw Volumio at some point and completely forgot about it; I'll have to give it another try.
- nrki 4y ago
  Another plug for Volumio. I added smart features to my hifi system with it. Very reliable and great Spotify integration.
- throw4566 4y ago
  Did they finally upgrade from jessie? They had really outdated versions when I last checked them out?
matthewmcg 4y ago
I know that it's probably pretty well insulated with the layer of black crinkle paint, but I still get uneasy seeing that picture of the bare Raspberry Pi printed circuit board sitting directly on top of the conductive metal case of the receiver while powered on. At least put a piece of paper or something behind it, right? Does anyone else worry the solder blobs or connector pins on the bottom of the board will short out?
- neverartful 4y ago
  I had the same thought when I saw the photo. I agree with you on this, I'd put something in between (probably at least cardboard).
- woodruffw 4y ago
  I do indeed worry about it -- I plan on putting it in a case pretty soon. (This is not a justification since you're absolutely right, but I've had a handful of different Pis running for years while sitting on painted metal. In my experience, SD corruption is much more common than shorts.)
  - criddell 4y ago
    I used to use my Raspberry Pi as an Octoprint server but after the third dead SD card, I unplugged it. Are you doing anything on this setup to prolong the life of your SD card?
    - woodruffw 4y ago
      Nothing in particular: I believe HiFiBerryOS does some stuff under the hood to minimize unnecessary writes, but I didn't look too closely into it. The also provide shutdown and reboot buttons via their Web UI, which I greatly appreciate (and presumably help avoid any corruption that can happen when just yanking the power). For the other Pis I use, I see corrupted SDs roughly once every 18 months. I replaced a couple of repeat offenders with new cards (from a different vendor) a while back and things seem to have stabilized, so my (lay) guess is that some cards are just more finnicky on the Pi than others.
anthk 4y ago
I would love a USB audio(4) (OpenBSD) compatible FM transmitter. That's it, an FM transmitter detected as a USB sound card.
- GeorgeTirebiter 4y ago
  Why not just solder on an FM transmitter to an existing USB Sound card? Seems like a 5-minute hack.
- don-code 4y ago
  I have the same FM transmitter that the author mentions. If you're worried about an extra digital-to-analog step somewhere in your audio pipeline: it's a moot point. The transmitter's acoustics leave _a lot_ to be desired: there's background hum, bass goes very flat, there's tons of intermodulation around center frequency, and center frequency itself tends to jump around when amplitude increases. For small Part 15 transmitters, this sort of thing seems like the norm.
criddell 4y ago
Which HiFiBerry DAC are you going to use? Looks like they have about a dozen different DACs and I'd love some guidance on what would probably be a decent default choice. Also, you mentioned that volume control is a next step. For me, that feels like a pretty fundamental thing. Isn't that built-in to the Spotify, AirPlay protocols, and DNLA protocols?
- LeoPanthera 4y ago
  For hifi use, the HiFiBerry DAC2 HD is reasonable. All the other HiFiBerry DACs are good "for the price" but not that great on an absolute scale. You'd be much better off with a USB DAC. For example, the Topping D10s or the JDS Atom DAC+ are both about $100 and you're unlikely to be able to tell the difference between them and literally any other DAC available at a higher price.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  I bought the DAC2 Pro. I don't know if it's the right pick for me yet -- I guess I'll find out! The part about volume control was a little ambiguous: I can absolutely control the volume via the "soft" controls in AirPlay, DLNA, or my desktop's own soft mixer. What I meant was the "main" volume control on the receiver itself, which is motorized and controllable via an IR remote. It's kind of a non-issue since I can just set the receiver's volume sufficiently high and then moderate using the "soft" controls, but I thought it'd be fun to try and automate the main control as well.
- doubled112 4y ago
  One thing that doesn't seem immediately obvious with the HiFiBerry DAC+ ADC Pro I have is that input and output are separate devices. I assumed it would be a checkbox or two, but I couldn't mix the input jack into the output without doing it in software, and PulseAudio would drop samples at lower latencies. I admit I didn't troubleshoot this very long though. MPD, Bluetooth and an AUX input was all I wanted, and I could make it work for scenarios that didn't need the low latency part.
DrPhish 4y ago
I did something similar, except I netboot a diskless hp thin client (cheap for previous gen and no/bad storage) with openelec. I opted specifically to not use a pi because I've had atrocious luck with reliability, especially of the sd drive. Once Kodi is running under openelec, everything can be controlled via Kodi remote on a phone. No bluetooth, but that's a feature imo.
jordanthoms 4y ago
If you want something which runs on the Raspberry PI and can do airplay/DLNA etc to a USB DAC without any hacks, try RoPieee XL: https://ropieee.org/xl/ https://ropieee.org/xl/
friend_and_foe 4y ago
As someone who used to do all this kind of stuff, what I settled on in the end was having a subwoofer and two speakers on a desk with a 3.5mm cable strewn across in case anyone wanted to use it. I mostly gave up on wireless this and that and constantly on electronics doing things in the background. Now I just watch shows on my laptop, keep my media on a 2.5" sata HDD with a sata to USB cable, and be sure to copy anything I've downloaded onto it every once in a while. I keep it simple, I'm now of the opinion that if you spend more time administering than using software it's not worth it. And to me, the amount of time I'd put into setting this stuff up, troubleshooting, updating software and whatever else just doesn't make up for having to plug things in when I need to.
- analog31 4y ago
  Same here. I tried setting up a "system" for my family, with Raspberry Pi, etc. It always required futzing, and rebooting, and never just worked. Also, everybody in the family already had something that they wanted use, ranging from Spotify to physical CDs. So I made a little box with a 20-Watt amplifier board from Ali Express, a potentiometer for a volume control, and a cord with an 1/8 inch plug. Heaven.
WalterBright 4y ago
I just use the RCA plug to feed stereo to my 1980s Carver preamp, then 1980s Carver amp, then 1980s Dahlquist speakers. Been doing that forever. It all runs basically 16 hours a day, every day, for decades. No complaints about it.
- gregschlom 4y ago
  >Been doing that forever ^H^H^H^H^for the last 42 years
  - endgame 4y ago
    > Been doing that for<ACK>or the last 42 years
lowbloodsugar 4y ago
I prefer diet-pi to HifiBerryOS, even for HiFiBerry devices. diet-pi can survive power failures, whereas HiFiBerryOS bricks itself. I use Roon on an old Intel NUC for the source usually, but it supports AirPlay etc.
deeblering4 4y ago
If you are in the apple ecosystem an airport express or apple tv is the way to go. Instant multi room hifi, and super cheap. You can even redirect your laptop/system audio into it with a click in the sound menu
kirenida 4y ago
I have a similar setup: a raspi 3B+ with a Hifiberry dac pro, running vanilla raspbian (or whatever it is called now), connected to a mid-90s Yamaha AX amplifier. I set up PulseAudio to run as a system daemon on the raspi so it can receive all audio from my laptop. On the laptop side, I switched to pipewire - it was practically a drop-in replacement, I don't remember having to do much configuration. I also use Raspotify so the raspi appears as a Spotify Connect device. The biggest challenge for me was getting uninterrupted audio playback when watching video content on my laptop, as i'm using wifi to connect to the home network. Everything was ok with my cheap TP-Link router running OpenWRT until I decided to upgrade to a Mikrotik hAp ac2. I got a lot of dropouts when using RouterOS on the MT, tried everything I could think of, even submitted a problem report directly to MT, but they decided that my use case was too unique for them to care about it. After upgrading the MT to OpenWRT, everything is in sync and I don't get any dropouts. As for the volume control problem, I connected a basic IR LED module to the raspi, set up the correct remote in lirc [1] and added buttons to my OpenHAB dashboard for changing the volume, inputs and toggling power. [1]https://lirc-remotes.sourceforge.net/remotes-table.html https://lirc-remotes.sourceforge.net/remotes-table.html
johnwalkr 4y ago
I found some nice bookshelf speakers in a thrift store, which got me wondering if there’s modern amplifiers available which are compact for my desk and simple, i.e.: not loaded with software for airplay etc that will be obsolete in 5 years. It turns out they are easily findable on Amazon or aliexpress, and they are under $60 (although they were half the price a couple of years ago). They generally have bluetooth, which I don’t see as adding the same type of complexity as airplay as there’s no network or configurable software component. I did research to find one with high quality components and a good Qualcomm bluetooth chipset. I do have airplay available because it’s usually connected to my desktop PC with an airplay server running, but if my main use case was a standalone setup like the author’s, I think his solution of using a raspberry Pi is a better long-term solution than buying a similar amplifier which includes airplay. Then the amplifier has a good chance of being useful for decades.

121 points by woodruffw 4y ago

Depending on how you feel about using outdated network hardware, an Apple AirPort Express functions as an AirPlay receiver, DAC, and USB to network printer adapter. Have it join your existing network or, depending on the version, connect it via ethernet. The 1/8" stereo audio out has a fiber optic digital out in it if you want to BYO DAC. Using the network printer requires Bonjour for Windows. It generally works out of the box on most Linux distros.

maratc 4y ago
To add, it is readily available on eBay and costs less there than the usual price of Raspberry Pi.
woodruffw 4y ago
I didn't know AirPort Expresses could do that! That would definitely have been an option, if I owned one :-)
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  They are dirt cheap on eBay if you ever get the itch. No DLNA, though, which your current solution supports. So many guests would be left in the cold. But an Airport Express plus an RPi serving as a simple DLNA-to-Airplay bridge might be a way to go (Thank you for the great article, by the way!)
ezconnect 4y ago
Is there a minimum model that we need or even the first version is ok?
- daggersandscars 4y ago
  I'm not sure an 802.11g one will work -- I'm not sure it uses AirPlay to receive network audio. I'm not sure the first gen 802.11n will work either -- I have a second gen one and no longer have the older ones. Sorry.
buescher 4y ago
That's exactly how I would "modernize" the system. Maybe add a modern DSP equalizer for room correction, too - his receiver has two monitor loops.
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  Maybe add a modern DSP equalizer for room correction, too - his receiver has two monitor loops. Oooh, that's nice. I hate that most modern systems don't include these. DSP correction to compensate for speaker+room issues is just stunning when done well. Turns many cheap speakers into legitimate hifi.
gedy 4y ago
Thanks, had an 802.11n one sitting here and just tried, though seems like it doesn't want to join an existing network. Even when I had it create a network and joined, macos Ventura didn't seem to see it as Airplay device.
- daggersandscars 4y ago
  I have a similar setup and it works. Here's my info in case it helps. AirPort Express 802.11n 2nd gen running firmware 7.8.1. It's joined to my 5Ghz network using 802.11n. I have my home wifi configured with both 2.4 and 5Ghz networks and the AirPort Express is aware of both. Not sure if this makes a difference.
  - gedy 4y ago
    Thanks! Was old firmware, update did the trick.
AceJohnny2 4y ago
> Using the network printer requires Bonjour for Windows. Offtopic, but I'm shocked that Windows still doesn't support Bonjour/Zeroconf out-of-the-box. I guess RFC 6762/6763 aren't enough for them?
- vel0city 4y ago
  Windows does support zeroconf networking out of the box, just different flavors from what Apple does out of the box. NetBIOS and LLMNR are Zeroconf DNS/service advertising in the same vein as Bonjour.
  - AceJohnny2 4y ago
    AFAIK, NetBIOS & LLMNR handle only the hostname lookup. Zeroconf adds the crucial ability to advertise services (SSH, VNC, IPP...), so they're not really the same thing.
    - vel0city 4y ago
      They're most known for hostname lookup but they can also do service discovery. Although service discovery is then tied closr to things like SSDP or WSD. My Windows machine knows my home theater receiver is a home theater receiver and knows it's a DLNA and a web server running on it. My Windows machine knows my Brother printer is a printer and scanner and can auto configure the WSD drivers for it. My Windows machine can see my NAS and can know it has fileshares on it to access as well as knowing it has some DLNA functionality. It does this through zeroconf networking protocols. Different protocols from Bonjour, but it would be incorrect to say it does not have any zeroconf networking support out of the box.
SECProto 4y ago
It functions as an Airplay receiver, does it also function as DLNA receiver? A friend has some sort of Apple thing attached to his audio system, it works fine for streaming audio for anyone with itunes, but doesn't do anything for android folks.
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  That's the only (admittedly, a dealbreaker for many!) downside. It does not do DLNA.
- Smoosh 4y ago
  > some sort of Apple thing That is probably an AirPort Express: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirPort_Express https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AirPort_Express
JohnBooty 4y ago
Apple AirPort Express I agree with you. It's absolutely the biggest bargain secret in the audio world. Glorious dirt cheap dead simple lossless 44.1/16 bit perfect streaming. Install one in every room for the world's easiest multiroom audio solution. They're available dirt cheap and in plentiful supply on eBay. The only drawback is a lot of apps don't work with Airplay directly on Windows, need a third-party sound driver app or whatever (it's been ages since I looked)

TheRealPomax 4y ago

I went the other way. I tried laptops and raspis wirelessly, and then with audio over ethernet but the difference in timing caused by differences in signal decoding meant that you can couldn't sit in one room with the door open with the speakers in the next room also going because of microshift flanging (although I say micro, some rooms were over 100ms out of sync, which is unbearable). What I ended up doing instead of just running TRS cables along the ethernet cables that were already going to the various rooms I care to spend most of my time in, with some 4x4 audio interfaces that take care of sending the audio to the various speaker sets in those rooms (for rooms with more than one set). Any interface's output can route to any other interface, so if there's more than one thing playing you just press enable that input in the room you're in, and done. And of course, you can get the same done with some second hand professional audio routing rack units, but (a) those are rather inconveniently sized, and (b) you kinda need to have a hookup for those, or get lucky, whereas audio interfaces are a few clicks away and designed to at least look reasonably decent sat on a bookshelf =) More expensive? Probably. "Perfectly" synced audio across rooms? Very much so.

bombcar 4y ago
It's effectively impossible to "sync" audio across a large area (because if it is perfect in one area it will be imperfect in another) so often the best you can do is adjust it until it "sounds right". Some software and some hardware have built-in delays you can use to adjust as they do in a stadium, but often just getting everything "speed of light" in a house is good enough. The main thing is that you don't hear a delay when standing in the doorway between rooms.
- solardev 4y ago
  Don't Sonos, Ultimate Ears, Echo, Google Home etc solve this problem pretty effectively? I know there was a bit of a patent war between them for a while, but don't they still have this feature?
  - bombcar 4y ago
    They do - if you're using one kind for all. That's why starting a song can sometimes take a bit as it buffers/aligns. It's when you're mixing software systems that the fun can begin. (Also if you can route cables in your walls whole-home audio is way cheaper than you might expect: https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=10761 https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=10761 kicks ass)

sam1r 4y ago

This is incredible! I wonder if there is any limitations with audio streaming rate, especially for large flac files.

woodruffw 4y ago
That's on my list of things to find out! I believe the Pi I'm using (the Model 3B) only supports 10/100 Ethernet, so bandwidth might be a concern. From a quick search plenty of other people are using Pis (including via HiFiBerryOS) as FLAC players, so that part shouldn't be an issue.
whycombinetor 4y ago
Uncompressed 2ch 44.1kHz 16bit PCM is only 1.4Mbps. Even 7.1ch 96khz 24bit is only 18.4Mbps. Should be plenty of headroom even on "only" 100Mbps.
disposition2 4y ago
If you are referring to in-network, I've never had issues with FLAC files up to 24/192. Out of network, I use Plex and PlexAmp which can encode the same files to OGG for more mobile friendly streamging

royjacobs 4y ago

Ah, very interesting to read about Subsonic being used here. I was in the market for a similar setup a while ago and tried a bunch of different servers. Navidrome was clearly one of the better ones but didn't seem to support folder-based navigation, which I want to use (since most of my music is not structured as album-per-folder but rather as playlist-per-folder). Like a good HN user I ended up writing my own Subsonic compatible server [0]. It also does things mentioned in this blog post series, like automatically grab cover art and metadata from Musicbrainz/CoverArtArchive, Discogs and last.fm. I haven't officially released it yet since it's missing a few features (most notably transcoding, documentation and support for deleting files) but looks like it might be worthwhile to spend that effort. If you're feeling brave, you can compile it from source or grab the Docker edge image[1]. It looks like I missed evaluating https://github.com/sentriz/gonic https://github.com/sentriz/gonic though, so I might give that a go as well. [0] https://github.com/datatrash/beatlocker https://github.com/datatrash/beatlocker [1] https://hub.docker.com/r/datatrash/beatlocker-server https://hub.docker.com/r/datatrash/beatlocker-server

woodruffw 4y ago
I think this may have changed since the last time you checked it out! For my setup (Navidrome with Sonixd as the client), I can navigate through folders just fine. Screenshot here[1]. [1]: https://imgur.com/a/NPHyjgC https://imgur.com/a/NPHyjgC
- royjacobs 4y ago
  Are these folders actual folders on your disk, though? Last time I checked I could use Navidrome to browse folders, but it would actually be browsing through albums instead.
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    Yeah, each of those corresponds to a folder on disk. However, each of my artists is auto-managed by beets[1] so I end up with one folder per artist, including one folder per "feat." artist (like in the screenshot). So this may be a case where my folders happen to align with the artists/albums, which might not work for you. [1]: https://beets.io/ https://beets.io/

jmathai 4y ago

This looks great. I wish I had heard of HiFiBerryOS a year ago. I ended up going with two Sonos Amps (one requirement for me was everything be wired) to play music in 2 zones. I searched a bit and didn’t come across anything like this. Nonetheless, it seems worthwhile enough that I might tinker with it.

squarefoot 4y ago

"It turns out that nothing really runs well on a 32-bit x86 machine anymore, including major Linux distributions and web browsers." Not true. The EeePC 701 netbook is a really minimal underpowered machine, still it will run small Linux distros just fine (it was actually sold with Linux in the first place). If you want a music player that you can control from another room, you can do that by installing a very small distro such as the x86 Alpine Linux image (https://alpinelinux.org/downloads/ https://alpinelinux.org/downloads/) then the mpd daemon (https://www.musicpd.org/ https://www.musicpd.org/ - it's in standard repositories install it with "apk add mpd" from root shell) which can work headless, therefore requiring very few resources, then a suitable control app for your phone or tablet (search for mpd control app), so that you can do pretty much everything through your home WiFi from any room, basement, backyard, etc. Should you experience noises, cracks, hum and static when connecting the netbook to an amplifier and to a mains adapter, that is a common problem of ground loops and not of that particular netbook, that will be easily solved by adding a small audio transformer in between.

woodruffw 4y ago
I'll grant that I hadn't tried installing Alpine -- I tried a few different Debian/Ubuntu variants and ran into the same handful of issues (including a few installers failing completely.) That being said, MPD is not a good solution for my particular use case: I have family and friends that come over regularly, and they want to play music. None of them are technical and are easily dissuades by anything that doesn't immediately work with AirPlay or another UPnP-style setup.
- softwarebeware 4y ago
  MPD works great for non-tech-savvy friends over, you just need to install a web-based client and they can point their smartphone browser to it. To make it even easier for friends and family, I set up a dynamic DNS with a friendly URL like myjukebox.duckdns.org that points to the 192.168.xxx.xxx address where this is hosted. Mopidy (https://mopidy.com/ https://mopidy.com/) as the MPD server with Iris (https://mopidy.com/ext/iris/ https://mopidy.com/ext/iris/) as the client is a good setup for this. Even the tech-illiterate can get along with it.

colinb 4y ago

Forgive my thread hijacking, but I suspect this is a place with people who might know the answer to my question. Given that I have a pair of reasonably nice speakers but a lack of convenient wiring opportunities, I had thought to come up with something like an RPi based amplifier connected to each, with WiFi linking the two to form a stereo pair. I.e. I have two speakers. Putting both of them near mains electricity is easy. Having wires connecting both to the same amp is a PITA. What cover thing could I do?

lifty 4y ago
Not an expert but I think synchronising the signals might be challenging if you hack it yourself. I know Airplay 2 has the feature to pair speakers so perhaps if you can get Airplay 2 working on rpi then it might work. But in my experience the rpi experience is sub par; it was working great while it was working and then all of a sudden it stopped working.
Kaibeezy 4y ago
Bookshelf speakers in a small room only really need to be 4' apart, up to 6' or 8' for floor-standers in a large room. You could run the wires behind items on a shelf, under the floor, through a "wiremold" cover, paint the wire and tack it along a baseboard, or try "flat speaker wire".
qbasic_forever 4y ago
It's very difficult and fighting an uphill battle to get two totally independent wifi music receivers to together output a single stero signal split across them. I don't think even dedicated systems like Sonos support it. Run speaker wire around the room perimeter to an amp and you will be infinitely happier.
- fuckstick 4y ago
  > I don't think even dedicated systems like Sonos support it. They do. So do HomePods, other mass brands. Not my cup of tea, but people seem to love them when they work.
- 4y ago

Kaibeezy 4y ago

Not sure how it's this complicated. I have normal laptops, desktops and phones connected to 70s and 80s vintage stuff all over the house. $10 Bluetooth dongle here, £10 DAC there, and Bob's my uncle. Sounds fine most of the time; over to vinyl for whisky time. Examples: - USB to basic DAC to RCA from desktop to huge 70s Sansui G-7000 receiver - 1/8" jack to RCA jack input from desktop to Tivoli Audio radio - 1/8" jack to RCA jack input from Echo Dot to McIntosh MX-115 preamp - Bluetooth dongle to RCA from iPhone to 60s Leak Stereo 70 amp

iquerno 4y ago
I once worked for a PA "contractor" and the thing that blew me away the most was how not one of the self professed audiophiles could reliably tell the difference between a universal audio preamp with flat presets and a 1.50$ crapbox I built with some scrap op-amps and a soldering iron.
- iwillbenice 4y ago
- mellavora 4y ago
  Well naturally not, because obviously you were using low-quality speaker cable and the cable capacitance would muddy the sound. Also, the speakers were probably the wrong brand. /s
  - iquerno 4y ago
    > PA contract work < referred to very very low-quality work with professional gear, because that's what clients assume must be better! I was refferring to a high qualiy preamp vs my 1.50$ crapbox as used when connected to a (I think telefunken) microphone. Self professed audiophiles were listening on headphones
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  That's awesome. =) self professed audiophiles The positive news here is that in recent years, there has been a growing trend of objective audiophiles who understand things from an engineering perspective and eschew that kind of snake oil stuff. We would find it totally unsurprising that your $1.50 "crapbox" was indistinguishable from the fancy gear. And congratulate you for helping to expose those frauds.

gaoshan 4y ago

He mentions a Yamaha RX-495 and asks "circa late 1990s, I think?". I can confirm that it is. I bought that same model in 1997 or 1998 and still use it for my turntable.

snalty 4y ago

This would have been a perfect opportunity to use a Chromecast audio, it's a shame Google canned it when it was still useful.

mihaylov 4y ago

Seems like a good use-case for the chromecast audio (RIP). It lets you stream to it over wifi and connects to the receiver with 3.5mm to RCA cable

dsr_ 4y ago
Which is especially nice if you install Owntone ( https://github.com/owntone/owntone-server/ https://github.com/owntone/owntone-server/ ) -- now you have a nice web interface for playing music to any or all of your systems.
bryanmgreen 4y ago
One of the best dollar-to-performance purchases for home audio.
psalminen 4y ago
It was also an spdif optical out which was super nice to hook into a better DAC.
- JohnBooty 4y ago
  Yes, although the actual streaming was lossily compressed, which more than negates any gains from using a better DAC. (edit - this is incorrect; the Chromecast Audio was apparently updated at some point to support lossless streaming)
  - jensgk 4y ago
    No, that is not true. Chromecast streaming is lossless, so it is certainly possible to stream hi-res flac files bit-perfect.
    - JohnBooty 4y ago
      Thanks for the correction. I think Chromecast Audio initially didn't support lossless streaming, but at some point it was updated to support it? Regardless, thanks, and I updated my post!

mrj0e 4y ago

I have a Technics SU-C800U and SE-A900S with the wonderful VU Meters. I have a Pi running Volumio. Volumio can do all that HifiberryOS does but is not hardware tied, ie you can use any DAC https://volumio.com/en/get-started/ https://volumio.com/en/get-started/ Volumio has a great web UI. Jellyfin is a great OS server. I use Plex as my music server and the rather wonderful Plexamp app on my phone but it's paid and proprietary, but worth it.

woodruffw 4y ago
Thanks for sharing! I definitely saw Volumio at some point and completely forgot about it; I'll have to give it another try.
nrki 4y ago
Another plug for Volumio. I added smart features to my hifi system with it. Very reliable and great Spotify integration.
throw4566 4y ago
Did they finally upgrade from jessie? They had really outdated versions when I last checked them out?

matthewmcg 4y ago

I know that it's probably pretty well insulated with the layer of black crinkle paint, but I still get uneasy seeing that picture of the bare Raspberry Pi printed circuit board sitting directly on top of the conductive metal case of the receiver while powered on. At least put a piece of paper or something behind it, right? Does anyone else worry the solder blobs or connector pins on the bottom of the board will short out?

neverartful 4y ago
I had the same thought when I saw the photo. I agree with you on this, I'd put something in between (probably at least cardboard).
woodruffw 4y ago
I do indeed worry about it -- I plan on putting it in a case pretty soon. (This is not a justification since you're absolutely right, but I've had a handful of different Pis running for years while sitting on painted metal. In my experience, SD corruption is much more common than shorts.)
- criddell 4y ago
  I used to use my Raspberry Pi as an Octoprint server but after the third dead SD card, I unplugged it. Are you doing anything on this setup to prolong the life of your SD card?
  - woodruffw 4y ago
    Nothing in particular: I believe HiFiBerryOS does some stuff under the hood to minimize unnecessary writes, but I didn't look too closely into it. The also provide shutdown and reboot buttons via their Web UI, which I greatly appreciate (and presumably help avoid any corruption that can happen when just yanking the power). For the other Pis I use, I see corrupted SDs roughly once every 18 months. I replaced a couple of repeat offenders with new cards (from a different vendor) a while back and things seem to have stabilized, so my (lay) guess is that some cards are just more finnicky on the Pi than others.

anthk 4y ago

I would love a USB audio(4) (OpenBSD) compatible FM transmitter. That's it, an FM transmitter detected as a USB sound card.

GeorgeTirebiter 4y ago
Why not just solder on an FM transmitter to an existing USB Sound card? Seems like a 5-minute hack.
don-code 4y ago
I have the same FM transmitter that the author mentions. If you're worried about an extra digital-to-analog step somewhere in your audio pipeline: it's a moot point. The transmitter's acoustics leave _a lot_ to be desired: there's background hum, bass goes very flat, there's tons of intermodulation around center frequency, and center frequency itself tends to jump around when amplitude increases. For small Part 15 transmitters, this sort of thing seems like the norm.

criddell 4y ago

Which HiFiBerry DAC are you going to use? Looks like they have about a dozen different DACs and I'd love some guidance on what would probably be a decent default choice. Also, you mentioned that volume control is a next step. For me, that feels like a pretty fundamental thing. Isn't that built-in to the Spotify, AirPlay protocols, and DNLA protocols?

LeoPanthera 4y ago
For hifi use, the HiFiBerry DAC2 HD is reasonable. All the other HiFiBerry DACs are good "for the price" but not that great on an absolute scale. You'd be much better off with a USB DAC. For example, the Topping D10s or the JDS Atom DAC+ are both about $100 and you're unlikely to be able to tell the difference between them and literally any other DAC available at a higher price.
woodruffw 4y ago
I bought the DAC2 Pro. I don't know if it's the right pick for me yet -- I guess I'll find out! The part about volume control was a little ambiguous: I can absolutely control the volume via the "soft" controls in AirPlay, DLNA, or my desktop's own soft mixer. What I meant was the "main" volume control on the receiver itself, which is motorized and controllable via an IR remote. It's kind of a non-issue since I can just set the receiver's volume sufficiently high and then moderate using the "soft" controls, but I thought it'd be fun to try and automate the main control as well.
doubled112 4y ago
One thing that doesn't seem immediately obvious with the HiFiBerry DAC+ ADC Pro I have is that input and output are separate devices. I assumed it would be a checkbox or two, but I couldn't mix the input jack into the output without doing it in software, and PulseAudio would drop samples at lower latencies. I admit I didn't troubleshoot this very long though. MPD, Bluetooth and an AUX input was all I wanted, and I could make it work for scenarios that didn't need the low latency part.

DrPhish 4y ago

I did something similar, except I netboot a diskless hp thin client (cheap for previous gen and no/bad storage) with openelec. I opted specifically to not use a pi because I've had atrocious luck with reliability, especially of the sd drive. Once Kodi is running under openelec, everything can be controlled via Kodi remote on a phone. No bluetooth, but that's a feature imo.

jordanthoms 4y ago

If you want something which runs on the Raspberry PI and can do airplay/DLNA etc to a USB DAC without any hacks, try RoPieee XL: https://ropieee.org/xl/ https://ropieee.org/xl/

friend_and_foe 4y ago

As someone who used to do all this kind of stuff, what I settled on in the end was having a subwoofer and two speakers on a desk with a 3.5mm cable strewn across in case anyone wanted to use it. I mostly gave up on wireless this and that and constantly on electronics doing things in the background. Now I just watch shows on my laptop, keep my media on a 2.5" sata HDD with a sata to USB cable, and be sure to copy anything I've downloaded onto it every once in a while. I keep it simple, I'm now of the opinion that if you spend more time administering than using software it's not worth it. And to me, the amount of time I'd put into setting this stuff up, troubleshooting, updating software and whatever else just doesn't make up for having to plug things in when I need to.

analog31 4y ago
Same here. I tried setting up a "system" for my family, with Raspberry Pi, etc. It always required futzing, and rebooting, and never just worked. Also, everybody in the family already had something that they wanted use, ranging from Spotify to physical CDs. So I made a little box with a 20-Watt amplifier board from Ali Express, a potentiometer for a volume control, and a cord with an 1/8 inch plug. Heaven.

WalterBright 4y ago

I just use the RCA plug to feed stereo to my 1980s Carver preamp, then 1980s Carver amp, then 1980s Dahlquist speakers. Been doing that forever. It all runs basically 16 hours a day, every day, for decades. No complaints about it.

gregschlom 4y ago
>Been doing that forever ^H^H^H^H^for the last 42 years
- endgame 4y ago
  > Been doing that for<ACK>or the last 42 years

lowbloodsugar 4y ago

I prefer diet-pi to HifiBerryOS, even for HiFiBerry devices. diet-pi can survive power failures, whereas HiFiBerryOS bricks itself. I use Roon on an old Intel NUC for the source usually, but it supports AirPlay etc.

deeblering4 4y ago

If you are in the apple ecosystem an airport express or apple tv is the way to go. Instant multi room hifi, and super cheap. You can even redirect your laptop/system audio into it with a click in the sound menu

kirenida 4y ago

I have a similar setup: a raspi 3B+ with a Hifiberry dac pro, running vanilla raspbian (or whatever it is called now), connected to a mid-90s Yamaha AX amplifier. I set up PulseAudio to run as a system daemon on the raspi so it can receive all audio from my laptop. On the laptop side, I switched to pipewire - it was practically a drop-in replacement, I don't remember having to do much configuration. I also use Raspotify so the raspi appears as a Spotify Connect device. The biggest challenge for me was getting uninterrupted audio playback when watching video content on my laptop, as i'm using wifi to connect to the home network. Everything was ok with my cheap TP-Link router running OpenWRT until I decided to upgrade to a Mikrotik hAp ac2. I got a lot of dropouts when using RouterOS on the MT, tried everything I could think of, even submitted a problem report directly to MT, but they decided that my use case was too unique for them to care about it. After upgrading the MT to OpenWRT, everything is in sync and I don't get any dropouts. As for the volume control problem, I connected a basic IR LED module to the raspi, set up the correct remote in lirc [1] and added buttons to my OpenHAB dashboard for changing the volume, inputs and toggling power. [1]https://lirc-remotes.sourceforge.net/remotes-table.html https://lirc-remotes.sourceforge.net/remotes-table.html

johnwalkr 4y ago

I found some nice bookshelf speakers in a thrift store, which got me wondering if there’s modern amplifiers available which are compact for my desk and simple, i.e.: not loaded with software for airplay etc that will be obsolete in 5 years. It turns out they are easily findable on Amazon or aliexpress, and they are under $60 (although they were half the price a couple of years ago). They generally have bluetooth, which I don’t see as adding the same type of complexity as airplay as there’s no network or configurable software component. I did research to find one with high quality components and a good Qualcomm bluetooth chipset. I do have airplay available because it’s usually connected to my desktop PC with an airplay server running, but if my main use case was a standalone setup like the author’s, I think his solution of using a raspberry Pi is a better long-term solution than buying a similar amplifier which includes airplay. Then the amplifier has a good chance of being useful for decades.