As I stated in the post. I have the integration installed. I’m currently using the beta.
You say
MA is not an option to choose
You won’t see MA as a player, you will see all the MA players. To see what players have been created go to the integration on the HA settings and look at the entities there.
I think there is a miscommunication. When I click on browse media in a media control card, there should be an option to choose from music assistant (as I have seen in YT tutorials), yet I do not have that option.
Ahh… I see what you mean. I did not pay attention to the speaker names being different, and by different it was just as an example: man_cave_speaker vs man_cave_speaker2. Thank you for your help!
@OzGav - In the Music Assistant UI, there is a way to power off the players. Is there an HA service call I can use to do the same thing?
Basically, if the squeeze player has been directly streamed to via bluetooth, unless that persons (typically phone), disconnects from that player, I can’t use it, even if that person is idle. The way I have found to get around this is to power off and on the player via the UI, but doing it via an automation would be perfect.
Try
- action: media_player.turn_off
data:
entity_id: media_player.your_player_id
# and/or
- action: media_player.turn_off
data:
entity_id: media_player.your_player_id
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I used to have MA installed and must have removed it at some stage. I decided to start using it properly and now when I attempt to add it, I get this - any tips?
Thank you!
I posted this on Home Assistant, but it was suggested that I cross-post here:
I’ve been reading through various threads here and on Reddit but haven’t found discussion of this, so any suggestions much appreciated. I have a 12-zone audio system (with a couple of additional zones taken up by line-level subwoofer feeds) that Control4 has done a generally good job of managing for 15 years, but I’m ready to move on from C4. Currently I have an EA5 at the heart of that sending streams to a Triad 16x16 matrix, which in turn sends the audio to two Triad 8-zone amps. All speakers have home runs to the rack where these amps are located.
I want to replace C4 with Music Assistant to manage the streams (and some local CD rips), with the ability to play any source to one or more zones. Two simultaneous sources is adequate, but I want the ability to play at least two different sources to various zones simultaneously. I understand that I can’t play two streams from, say, Spotify simultaneously (absent multiple accounts or a family account); I’m really talking about playing, say, SiriusXM and Pandora at the same time to different zones.
I have looked at using the HA automation for controlling the Triad matrix and thought about trying to use it with MA, but that’s more pioneering than I want to be. I’ll mess with automations for lights and whatnot all day long, but music needs to work reliably when I want it without continual tinkering.
It would make a lot of sense, though, to keep using my two Triad multi-zone amps. So my question is what hardware I need to use MA as my interface for selecting and playing music sources across all these zones. I have considered a rack full of Sonos amps, which reportedly work great with MA, but that’s crazy expensive and I already have capable amplification. What I need (I think) is either a device or a bunch of devices that can receive streams directed by MA (by DLNA?) and send them to the appropriate zone inputs on my Triad amps.
In any case, one of my key objectives is to add Apple Music as a source because C4 doesn’t support it without one of the more modern Core devices, and before I fork out the price for to replace my EA5 when it otherwise works fine, it seems like I could solve this more efficiently (I have considered adding a C4 Core 1 to my setup, as the system just needs a Core processor somewhere to unencrypt the Apple Music stream, but even that’s a good bit of money).
Related to that objective, a key criterion is support for 24-bit/192 kHz for the Apple Music stream (and whatever other streams eventually get on the bus for lossless audio).
Is there an RPi solution to this? Or does someone manufacture a device that I haven’t found in my searching? I believe that I need something like a Sonos amp without the amp, basically a preamp that takes as its source a stream (or, ideally, two or more streams) from Music Assistant and outputs the audio to my multi-zone amps.
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I have a similar need using a Monoprice 6X6 multizone audio amp. I don’t have a full solution in place yet but a positive direction using a picore player on a raspberry pi. There are pi hats that can improve the output quality. My thought is to spin up a few of these and add them as separate sources for my amp, controllable through MA.
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Keep in mind the current implementation of Apple Music is unofficial and thus only supports the 16b/44.1Khz AAC 256Kbps stream provided by Apple Music.
AirPlay itself is also limited to 16b/44.1Khz LPCM or ALAC (lossless) so there is nothing lost there compared to the source.
For me it sounds great and the sound quality is actually higher to me than it was when streamed from a HomePod which officially did support ALAC 24b/48Khz but not 24b/96Khz.
I am using it with 5x KEF LSX II and 1x KEF LSX II LT across my house and it works great with Music Assistant through AirPlay.
What kind of Streaming protocols does the system support that you are using? My speakers support AirPlay2, ChromeCast, DLNA and more protocols. But to me the AirPlay implementation works best and easiest as everything can be done in Music Assistant including Dynamic Groups which play in sync in all rooms.
I posted this in the Config section, but it was suggested to post in here (although a single, 1300+ post thread doesn’t make sense to me, I’d think a MA category would make a lot more sense, but hey ho…):
In Music Assistant, the Home Assistant Player Providers are not working correctly for me. All the speakers in the system are Sonos, and while they appear available in the config (and indeed all work from HA as media players), only two of them will appear as players in MA - regardless of the number of them I try to configure (it’s not as simple as two is the limit, the non-working ones just don’t appear).
I’ve tried setting the log level to verbose, but nothing appears in there. I’ve removed and reinstalled MA from scratch to see if that was the issue (no change - behaviour is identical), and changing the player provider config multiple times.
Sometimes the same speaker that does work will appear twice in the players sidebar.
Any ideas?
You should not be using the HA players as there is a native Sonos player provider
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2.4.0 IS RELEASED!
The 2.4 release is packed with new features, new providers and loads a huge amount of bugfixes and all kind of improvements overall.
Streaming should be better, smoother and more stable than ever!
Thanks to all contributors, beta testers and everyone else involved with this release!
Some highlights:
- Music Assistant now has native support for Podcasts and Audiobooks.
- Various new providers have been added to support podcasts and/or audiobooks including Audible and Audiobookshelf
- Existing providers that now have support for Podcasts and/or Audiobooks are Subsonic, YouTube and the local files provider.
- Music Assistant now has a built-in, sophisticated DSP, which you can configure per player.
- Music Assistant now has native support for “external audio sources”, which can be provided either by players themselves (source control) or by plugins. The first plugin to deliver this functionality is Spotify Connect.
- Music Assistant now has support for “Player Controls” which let you outsource e.g. the volume or power control for a player to a Home Assistant entity.
- New Player Provider - iBroadcast
- Audio Pipeline view shows the path the audio takes from source to player
Bugfixes
There have been countless bugfixes and (performance) improvements. Most important being that the streaming is now more robust in all kinds of scenarios.
For a complete overview of all fixes in this release, click here
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Has not been discussed yet but I don’t see why not at this moment.
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Best practice for Sonos and HomePods?
After release 2.4 I would like to get into MA again.
What is the adviced setup: Setting up the players in HA and import them into MA or the other way round (setup players in MA and import these into HA)?
For my player combination what is the best setup: AirPlay or native Sonos and HomePod?
For Setuup in MA I cannot get AirPlay working with Sonos (AirPlay Player and AirPlay-Mode are activated)
Please ask these questions (that require lengthy or multiple responses) in discord or GitHub. Also look at the docs which have been expanded in the stream to section as well as the player provider pages themselves.