Music Assistant or LMS Lyrion Music Server(Formerly Logitech Media Server) integration?

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Hi, Hope someone can clear something up for me. :grinning:

I have different zones in the house with ceiling speakers that are connected up with different RaspberryPi’s that have a Squeezebox lite player installed on them. These in turn are receiving the music from an older logitech media server installed on a Ubuntu Server LTS VM.

What I like to do is upgrade the old Logitech Media Server with the new LMS Lyrion Music Server, and then integrate into HA to control all these RaspberryPi’s so that they can easily be managed and be playing in Sync.

Investigating the options, I am getting confused on the right installation and integration to follow. I see people are suggesting to use Music Assistant, which I really like, but then there is also a LMS Lyrion Music Server integration option.

So my question, what is the best path to take? Would you recommend me to do the following:

  1. updating the Ubuntu Logitech Media Server to the latest Lyrion Music Server.
  2. Install Music Assistant on HA
  3. Integrate the different Sqeezebox RaspberryPi’s into HA?

If this is the recommended approach, can someone also explain what I need to do next in the Music Assistant to get the Ubuntu Lyrion Music Server and the Squeezebox RaspberryPi’s correctly integrated?

Thanks so much for clearing this up!

I

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Hello xbmcgotham,

You might want to ask here…
Music assistant
The people that are watching that thread are all either interested. users of, or authors of Music Assistant.
They are likely your best resource.
Also there is a Discord: Music Assistant

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If your entire world on the player side is squeezelite, IMHO there’s little to be gained using MA vs lyrion. I’m probably biased since I help maintain the Squeexebox HA integration though … I’ve looked at MA, but there’s just too many things in the Lyrion world - e.g. all the various radio plugins - that I’d miss too much.

In terms of your options, you’re always going to need an instance of LMS unless you use MA (which implements a cut down version of the protocol LMS uses). So, your option 1 is fine. Option 3 doesn’t exist - you integrate HA to LMS and LMS talks to your squeezelite players. You do have the option of installing LMS as an addon to HA (basically the same way that MA is intalled on HA). Home assistant community addons : LMS the Lyrion Music Server Formerly the Logitech Media Server or SqueezeBox Server. Squeezelite Player - Installation / Home Assistant OS - Home Assistant Community If you’re running HA anyway, that’s a nice route, but depends of course where your music library is stored.

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Thanks for the tip and link!

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Thanks for the additional details!

So am I correct in saying that like HA integrates into LMS and LMS talks to the squeezelite players; MA integrates into LMS and LMS talks to the squeezelite players, but will have some limitation if it comes to Internet radio compared to the LMS integration into HA? :slight_smile:

In other words HA (using MA or Lyrion add-on) integrates both into LMS server but using MA will have some limitations if it comes to Internet radio.

Have a nice day.

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No. MA implements a limited version of the slimproto protocol - in effect, MA contains a cut down version of LMS. So, if you use MA, your squeezelite players connect to MA. The main use of MA for me is that it does a great job if you have lots of different types of players. If you have just squeezelite, and you have the bandwidth on your HA hardware, I’d look at running the LMS addon on HA. Architecturally, that’s the same as MA pretty much, but just a pure LMS/squeezebox setup.

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ahh, so you would bypass the LMS server completely (option 1 in my previous post) and the raspberry’s with squeezelite connected directly to MA.

Then if I install the LMS add-on, it will function as the LMS server and I can switch off the current LMS server (option 1). Correct?

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Yes. Think of it this way … MA contains an LMS-Lite server, so you don’t need another LMS. The LMS add-on is a full LMS server - just wrapped up so that you can install it as an LMS addon - so you also don’t need another LMS server.

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Thanks for confirming this! Have a great evening.

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This is one of those questions with lots of answers, so I will explain my setup and why.

I have both MA and LMS installed. The local music source is a samba share on the same TrueNAS Scale server on which HA is installed in a VM. As much as I have tried to get MA to be useful, I cannot get to the point where it is as flexible, intuitive, controllable and comparable with LMS, nor can is it as useful in music file/folder management as using Windows file explorer directly.

LMS is, obviously, the music server and the renderers are Raspberry Pis on which PiCorePlayer is installed. My main player has a digital hat connected to a digital crossover (miniDSP Flex Eight) by optical fibre to exclude any possibility of an earth loop. All music playing control is by Squeezer, an open source Android app specifically for the purpose. I cannot get the same ease of use and control from MA no matter what I do. (My speakers are DIY four ways with separate bass cabinets and very high quality drivers. They are the best speakers I have ever heard, including some big brand names.)

On a side note, I use Media in HA to play web radio through a Chromecast, with the HDMI output into a HDMI to RAC converter, to a Class D amp and speakers are mounted on the bedroom wall above the closet doors. All controlled by HA, of course, on my phone.