Flies and Bikes Blog

I have recently been playing around with using Raspberry Pi devices as streaming music players within a Squeezebox-based system. I've arrived at quite a comprehensive arrangement, which includes a Pi as a player: This is a rough illustration of my current implementation of a network of Squeezebox players linked to a NAS (GrumpyBox) running Logitech Media Server (LMS). It consists of several Logitech Squeezeboxes, a couple of iPads that are playback-capable through apps such as SqueezePad and iPeng, and the software Squeezebox emulater, SqueezePlay. To this I have recently added a Raspberry Pi running piCorePlayer. I also have a second Raspberry Pi running Squeezeplug, which has its own instance of LMS (not shown in the diagram). I've summarised the usage cases of the three setups I have tried in the table below. My opinion can be summarised as:

• If all you want to do is run a media player connected to an existing LMS, choose the piCorePlayer option.
• If you need to set up a media server as well as a player, choose the Squeezeplug option.
• By far the most versatile of the two DAC cards I've tried is the Wolfson DAC - if you want to use this, then Squeezeplug or the custom Wolfson kernel options are best.
• Both Squeezeplug and piCorePlayer work well with USB DACs

	Squeezeplug	piCorePlayer	Wolfson kernel
URL	website	website	website
Usage	Convenient low cost LMS server and player	Low cost and easy to use player. Configured via web interface.	Wolfson supply a patched image supporting the DAC. Squeezelite can easily be installed and configured
LMS	yes	no	no
Guide	Squeezeplug wiki	I also described this installation here. Instructions at the piCorePlayer website	I described this here
Wolfson DAC	supported	not supported	supported
HiFiBerry	supported	supported
Notes	1, 4	2, 3

1. May require powered USB hub if a USB-powered hard drive is used with LMS
2. piCorePlayer is run solely from RAM. The Pi can be powered off without corrupting the SD card
3. Also supports the Sabre DAC and the HiFiBerryDigi card though I’ve not tried these
4. I set up a script for a button press to shutdown the Squeezeplug (and the Wolfson kernel) systems so the Pi can be safely powered down. See here.

For both the Raspberry Pi based devices I use, you do need to think about how you interact with them. I use the LMS web interface (usually found at http://IPaddress:9000) with a laptop, or one of the many tablet or smartphone apps that are available (such as the afore-mentioned SqueezePad and iPeng). Installing any of these devices is much easier if you have a reasonable amount of experience with the Linux command line. On the other hand, a Raspberry Pi is a pretty good way to learn the Linux command line!