Started using Music Assistant recently and love it.
I know this is somewhat personal preference, but what is the better protocol for sync’d music, slimproto or airplay?
I have outdoor speakers in my deck ceiling and would like to also install similar speakers in my barn and sync these two outdoor speaker sets and maybe also a set of indoor speakers.
There are some reasonably priced amplifiers with Airplay 1 built in that I could use for the outdoor speakers. Or just buy regular amplifiers and connect a pi or something to them for squeezelite. I think by time you add the price of the pi and the hassle to set it up, the built in Airplay amplifiers sound like a nice option. But, squeezelite players seem better for adding on to existing receivers/amplifiers.
Currently I have squeezelite running on an old surface pro connected to a small amplifier for my deck ceiling speakers.
I believe sync’d playback does not work if using multiple player types, so I would like to standardize my players going forward.
We don’t believe most people can hear the difference in sample rates above CD quality (please don’t start a flame war if you disagree with that statement!) so AirPlay is highly recommended. It has a good sync protocol and is widely implemented in consumer devices. For most people they should consider what they already have and fit in with that (unless it’s DLNA then they should change! ) and their budget.
Edit: Bluesound is shown in the table as not supporting sync. That is with the current MA implementation which should change in the future. For clarity, Bluesound devices do support sync
Edit2: also note that many Sonos devices can be synced with AirPlay devices which is another plus for AirPlay
Thanks for the great work on this. Recently made the switch from using a HomePod (2023) as ‘Music Controller’ with Apple Music.
I can now use Music Assistant and directly play to my 5x KEF LSX II and 1x KEF LSX II LT with AirPlay across my house and even the Sony TA-AN1000 receiver in my living room. All in sync. It’s more stable than the HomePod (2023) ever was.
And I’m still using Apple Music as the music source. Only downside is, all playback is now as if I played it myself. So it will skew my year in rewind stats. But that was also randomly tracked with the HomePod, even though that used a ‘sepearate’ user specifically for the HomePod.
The KEF’s support all kinds of different protocols, but since Apple Music itself is also limited to 16/44.1 through Music Assistant there’s no point in testing the rest and it’s rock solid for me over AirPlay. The join/unjoining of speakers also works great.
The sound quality is actually higher as the dynamics sound a lot better with the volume normalization method used by Music Assistant compared to Sound Check from Apple. It’s also more effective imho, more stable volume across different music.
The crossfade also works solid 99% of the time so it’s a great improvement over the HomePods implementation.
I searched this post and couldn’t find my answer. Possibly I overlooked it if it was already asked…
I currently can use the Amazon music player app, or the Wiim Pro app, or Plexamp app to cast/play music (Plex or Amazon) to an Alexa speaker group, which consists of three Echo devices and a WiiM pro device connected to a outdoor speakers.
My music sources are Plex and Amazon music.
I’d love to unify and standardize on just using Music Assistant as my interface/player instead to do the same?
I currently have a speaker group in Alexa, that includes a WiiM pro device with Chromecast enabled. How can I create a speaker group in Music assistant that will target my Amazon Echo speakers and the WiiM Pro device.
When I try to add the Chromecast player for the Wiim pro device, it doesn’t show up in music assistant either.
@Gurulee Sorry Alexa is not supported by MA. The WiiM should work fine so if not there is some network issue preventing discovery. Refer to the troubleshooting page in the docs.
Thanks for request finaly found cookie and it star work awesome BIG LOVE 4 HA.
Finaly My Music works but dont have any covers for YT Music. Just added API for fanart.tv but nothing happend. Haw can I fix it to get for all Media covers from Fanart.tv ??
I currently have Home Assistant set up with my Sonos speakers using the standard Home Assistant integration. I use them mostly for announcements.
Am I right that the intended way of using Music Assistant is to delete the native Sonos integration in Home Assistant, and switch over to Music Assistant to provide access to all of the speakers?
I tried googling and searching here but couldn’t find anything. The new unifi Poweramp was recently released. Has anyone been able to integrate this with HA to be used with MA as a player provider? I’m looking for an amp and this looks like it has more umph than the Sonos amp.
I have integrated my HomePod mini pair via AirPlay for testing purposes. Now when I start music via MA, my HomePod is shown as not playing on the iPhone. No information about the track or the ability to control it via the iPhone. Is this a mistake or simply a problem with AirPlay1?
This has been discussed in the GitHub repository discussions a couple of times and it seems like a limitation. When using AirPlay it looks like Music Assistant simply streams the audio to the HomePods so no metadata etc is available. I think I’ll be able to work around this by consciously only using the home assistant companion app for control. I agree it would be really nice if you could also control via the OS/siri though. I’m working on migrating my use of Siri over to Assist too though so maybe it won’t be an issue long term.
I did think of another drawback however as I’m assuming handoff from an iPhone to a HomePod will be out of sync with music assistant too.
Oh, that’s a shame, I thought so. With the HomePod, it would be easy for MA to see what is being played when you start something on the iPhone. The information is visible in the HomePod integration.
But I have another problem. I have connected 2 HomePod minis to form a stereo pair in MA and created an AirPlay speaker group.
But when I play music on them, I can’t group other AirPlay speakers via the user interface.
2025-01-03 12:40:24.888 ERROR (MainThread) [music_assistant.webserver] Error handling message: players/cmd/group_many: 'set' object has no attribute 'set'
) and their budget.
