
Linux Audio(philes) after Logitech - andrewcooke
http://acooke.org/cute/LinuxAudio0.html
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ilikejam
I use a Raspberry Pi with a USB sound card attached to a DAC (just a hi-fi CD
recorder) as a Pulseaudio sink, and an NFS server for the media. Then any old
Linux laptop can play audio through the main stereo over the network.

Dirt cheap and works really well.

~~~
andrewcooke
thanks for the comment - could you give more details? i guess you're using
ethernet, but that could be replaced with a usb wifi dongle? what interface
are you using from the laptop? just vnc?

~~~
ilikejam
Hi. My Pi is hooked up to a powerline network thing just through the RJ45 on
the Pi, but I suppose you could use a wifi dongle if you want. On the laptop,
you just set the pulse sink to be the Pi's pulseaudio (need avahi running on
both to see the Pi in the audio preferences pane on the laptop). You can play
whatever you like on the laptop itself and the audio is routed through the Pi,
so there's no need to log into the Pi itself once it's set up.

~~~
andrewcooke
that sounds really cool. thanks very much - will investigate further.

~~~
ilikejam
For all of the slagging Pulseaudio gets, built in network transparency is very
cool. The client does all of the resampling and rate conversion, so you can
ramp up the conversion quality to max on your relatively powerful laptop and
the Pi just shunts the bits onto the sound card.

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cdibona
What I'm getting from this is that Logitech has cancelled the Sqeezebox line,
which is too bad, they were nice devices, though admittedly once Logitech took
over, I stopped caring as much (they were a local firm in Mountain View across
the highway from Google).

The streaming software was pretty good stuff at the time, and open source,
hosted here:

<http://svn.slimdevices.com/>

Someone who cares should fork the software into another repo and look after
the project, assuming Logitech isn't interested in maintaining it..

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rhizome
I apologize for going meta on this, but I literally cannot make heads or tails
of his writing, which I'm pretty sure is about something that I'm interested.
With a name like "Andrew Cooke" I'm inclined to think English is his first
language, but...wow. Is this a style thing? Can someone summarize?

~~~
andrewcooke
_article summary_

logitech made hardware and software that allowed you to stream music from a
linux computer to elsewhere in the house. they have stopped making the
hardware and the software appears to be "decaying".

forking and fixing the software sounds like the obvious short-term solution,
but it's not so easy - it's fairly opaque perl, and despite various interested
people and an open bug report, nothing has happened so far. also, it's not a
good long-term solution, since the hardware will fail eventually, too (the
hardware was pretty dumb; a lot is done by the software/firmware).

the best alternative i have found is the audio engine d2. that works at a
lower level than the existing logitech devices - it looks like a USB sound
card to the computer. that means that it works with a variety of different
music players (avoiding the trap i fell into with logitech's software; on the
other hand, that also makes it less flexible, so the kind of setup buro9
describes above is harder).

does that help?

one piece of context that may be missing is exactly what this hardware does /
did. typically in a "computer audiophile" setup music starts in a digital file
on a disk, is sent somewhere, converted from digitial to analogue, amplified,
and fed to a speaker. what logitech did was the "send somewhere" part (plus,
optionally, conversion to analogue). so you could keep your music in one
place, but listen to things elsewhere (or in multiple places - maybe your main
speakers in the living room; a headphone amp in the bedroom; monitors in the
office). effectively it was a "wireless digital cable" (plus software router).

it was also useful that the logitech devices could work with a purely digital
signal. that let people use other (typically more expensive, better sounding)
hardware to do the digital to analogue conversion.

~~~
colomon
That is a distinct improvement over the original article, yup.

Why not just use perlbrew to make a 5.14 available? <http://perlbrew.pl/>

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TinyBig
I use a playGo usb (playgo.us). It fills a similar niche as the Audioengine
product mentioned in the OP's link. Not a ton of features on top of 24/96
streaming, but to it's credit, it just works when you plug it in.

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mturmon
Too bad, thanks for the heads up. They were great gizmos, and the original
company was cool. I had (and still use) all generations of the squeezeboxes.
They have been quite reliable.

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buro9
I'm in the same boat as the author, and am currently just waiting to see what
might emerge as a solution.

My existing solution involves a Squeezebox Transporter [1] connected to a QNAP
TurboStation 669 Pro [2] which in turn runs SSOTS [3] and the PERL source of
Squeezecenter [4].

It's a really nice solution, allowing me to remotely access and play my music
from anywhere in the world.

In fact, I've had what I consider to be a personal version of Spotify for the
best part of a decade, whilst at the same time enjoying a superlative system
at home.

I do have concerns about what will happen now that Logitech has abandoned the
range. At the moment everything is working fine.

A remote failed on me a while ago (my own fault) but I was able to use
Net::UDAP [5] to work around it and an Android app on the Nexus 7 to act as a
convenient remote.

But... what happens when the QNAP requires an update that shifts the version
of PERL? What happens when the libraries for Squeezecenter are no longer
supported and later versions don't work with Squeezecenter?

It's all fine saying that we could just use a hardware DAC and wireless
streaming. But that doesn't give remote access, an indexed and searchable
library, local remotes, etc... and suddenly you need to solve all of these
things from scratch again whilst still keeping yourself out of walled gardens.

As for other solutions, I have 91,000 FLAC files. Some of which are 24bit
(rips of the vinyl I own). I also use MusicIP to create dynamic mixes of music
along a theme... like Apple Genius stuff but far better and more interesting
to listen to.

I've always felt that the problem Squeezebox had was that the quality was too
high, it worked too well. In over a decade, the only thing that has failed has
been the screen on the remote, and that was my own fault for kicking it across
the room (accidentally I might add).

How do you make a sustainable revenue stream when your key customers never
need to buy from you again?

I'll be watching music/audio/tech forums keenly for a similarly capable system
to emerge.

[1] [http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/07/hands-on-with-the-slim-
de...](http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/07/hands-on-with-the-slim-devices-
transporter/)

[2]
[http://www.qnap.com/en/index.php?lang=en&sn=822&c=35...](http://www.qnap.com/en/index.php?lang=en&sn=822&c=351&sc=513&t=518&n=9788)

[3] <http://oinkzwurgl.org/ssods>

[4] <http://www.mysqueezebox.com/download>

[5] <http://projects.robinbowes.com/Net-UDAP/trac>

~~~
gnaffle
For the time being, I think there are enough Squeezebox users out there that
will be able to fix the Perl problems. After all, the Squeezebox server is
Open Source, and you're not dependent on any online services from Logitech to
make it work.

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polshaw
How does the logitech system work? it just flings files over a network??

Can it do multiroom? (same music many places at once) if so, how? (mainly a
question re: non-insignificant data multicast and syncing with low latency, i
guess?)

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andrewcooke
yes, it _could_ do multiroom (although i never tried it - it allowed you to
synch streams for multiple devices). no idea how it works at a low level -
similar to airplay, i would guess.

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andrewcooke
Update: I bought a D2 and posted about my experience at
<http://acooke.org/cute/AudioEngin0.html> (am very happy with it).

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cocoflunchy
The only reason why I don't switch to linux is that my external soundcard
(Roland Quad-Capture) doesn't have linux drivers. Even just playback would
suit me...

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wazoox
You could switch for any RME model, they all work fine under Linux.

~~~
DiabloD3
I can second this. If you're doing any pro audio under Linux, use RME.

If you're not, almost anything with a digital out so you can plug into an
external DAC+Amp or DAC+Decoder+Surround unit.

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nikicat
why not just use pulseaudio for network streaming?

