Squeezelite player standalone for Squeezebox

I uninstalled the previous one, reloaded the repo (just to be safe) and installed it. Everything is running again (just to confirm!). Again: thanks alot for all your work and time. I think it’s amazing how a question/status update on a three month old topic has led to a fully working squeezelite player on HA!

I just ordered a HifiBerry Digi+ Pro for my soundbar :smiley: The proces of moving to LMS from Google Cast speakers has begun!

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@large Great work on this!!! I’ve still to try this out but I was really hoping for an addon like this one.

@ASNNetworks Please let me know if the DAC will work out of the box.
I’ve an ALLO BOSS DAC that I already use with a rpi3 and squeezelite, and I would like to move it to the one that is running Hassio.
But if I remember correctly I had to install some libraries to make it work.
If that’s the case, I don’t know if it would be possible to install that stuff on Hassio. Maybe an USB soundcard would work more easily.
The standard Out of the rpi is really bad.

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Thank you for the kind words @infiniteloop

I have always used sound over hdmi and nobody have complained about the quality of the RPi sound.
Of cause the DAC is a better Yamaha receiver so that could be the reason for it :slight_smile:

It is possible to download the addon locally and modify the docker file to suit your needs for the DAC you are trying to use.

Yep, I was referring to the 3.5 mm out.
Probably an USB sound card is the simpler way to go. Usually they are recognized out of the box without any additional library. You just have to indicate to Squeezelite to use that card for output.
As soon as I can try I’ll let you know.

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So I receiver the HifiBerry Digi+ Pro and connected it to my RPI4. It does show up in my hardware panel:
msedge_NyuXtmgApF

When going in to the configuration of Squeezelite, I now see ‘Built-in Audio Digital Stereo’ twice. Also there now is an input, with also that name. I tried both the the outputs, but I get no audio.

I don’t know if the add-on doesn’t work with the board, or if my soundbar itself is not working as intended with the optical input (I haven’t used that before).

Also Squeelite log shows:

Output devices:
  null                           - Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
  pulse                          - PulseAudio Sound Server
  default                        - Default ALSA Output (Home Assistant PulseAudio Sound Server)

I’m not sure what to do now: get a different board (maybe DAC with RCA) or just get a separate Raspberry Pi if Home Assistant doesn’t support other audio outputs. Kind of a bummer this.

Edit: so I noticed when selecting the first output, my analog works. But selecting the second one, there is no analog audio. This should mean that the second one is the Hifiberry card. Still no audio though, hmm…

Also I have no audio with RPI4 over HDMI. Tried it with the Spotify Connect addon as well a while ago. I can’t select it (see only the Built-in Audio one) and there is no input/sound on my soundbar on the input where the RPI4 connects to. This was the reason I wanted to get a Hifiberry.

I am currently busy, but I think we can fix this by updating the addon.
Don’t give up the idea that the hifiberry could work in HA :+1:

If we force pulseaudio to select another sink as default it should work, but it theory of cause :slight_smile:
Since each of the addon is runned under a docker, we need to change these settings on each start, so my “run”-script could read a new parameter for sink. I never tried this since I only use HDMI on my NUC.

I’ll look into it on thursday/friday to see if we can get this running.

Edit:
There are integration that should handle this quite well in HA:


Little howto on Rpi4: https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/112954/how-to-restore-audio-output-after-updating-raspbian-buster-on-pi4

Edit2:
Someone with equal challenge as you: HiFiBerry with Spotify Connect on Hassio and they stated that it should be shown in: hw audio

If so it should be available as a output device
My guess here is that the ARM64 for RPi4 could be the reason atm.

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Thanks so much, you really are amazing for digging into this! I think you are right: 64bit Hassio is in beta, so chances are stuff won’t work properly yet. I think your guess is right. In the meantime, I restarted my RPI while having the HDMI plugged in. This made it work. I now have full audio through HDMI on my soundbar.

What’s your advice? Do you think it’s worth the time to work on the Hifiberry board and dig deeper? Or should I just stick to HDMI (which is fine for me, the only reason I got this board is because HDMI out didn’t work before).

I left a message on that thread just in case.

Edit: I don’t really like the lag HDMI brings compared to analog :confused: Have been fiddling all evening and it’s just not as tight as with analog. Maybe I’ll get the DAC+ and hope that one can work. I experience a lot of audio cutouts right now as well. Not sure if it’s the HDMI cable, the add-on, the RPI4 or something in between. I remember the analog worked very stable (though the sound sucked).

Edit: Could it be the power supply of the RPI4? I have a deCONZ Conbee II stick, ZWave stick and a ssd through sata > usb 3.0 connected. Does audio over HDMI draw out more power than analog? I have the standard Raspberry Pi 4 charger that you can purchase with it. I see it’s a 3.0A power supply.

Edit: I tried boosting HDMI by editing and commenting out a line in config.txt on boot drive. Seems to work for now (fingers crossed🤞🏼).

Sorry for these huge offtopic responses. I figured perhaps someone else runs into the same stuff and can maybe save some time.

I decided to keep HDMI for now on the player running on RPI4 through HA since it works fine (albeit more latency, which I think I have solved through the settings). I also noticed optical on my soundbar is kinda annoying to use/setup. Since HDMI has great sound anyway to me there is no reason to use the sound board on the RPI4 running HA.

I do want to get Hifiberry DAC’s for my PiCoreplayers. But those support them anyway from what I read.

Btw: A tip for people who are new to LMS. Make sure you change the mac address in the configuration settings. If you use the highly recommended Material skin and use mysqueezebox.com for apps (like Tidal and Deezer) then the squeelite player will not show there. This will result in empty app lists when Material skin refreshes.

I changed it to the mac address of the RPI4 the add-on runs on. The player shows on mysqueezebox.com and the apps work as it should :smiley:

@large Hi, I sometimes notice some audio dropouts with the player running on HA. This happens also when the speaker is not playing in sync (so only solo). I’m using it through HDMI btw.

I tried different combinations of my players and it seems only this one has dropouts. The PiCoreplayer running standalone and Squeelite player on PC don’t have this behaviour.

Is this a known issue? I don’t see high CPU usage with my RPI4 while running this addon.

Having only recently setup Home Assistant on a Raspberry Pi3 from the hassos_rpi3-64-5.9.img.xz image, I was delighted to learn that I might also be able to use this unit as a squeezebox player for my extensive LMS system. I run piCoreplayer on multiple RasPi units without any issues but sadly I’m running into many problems with this implentation on HA.

The RasPi3 has a FiiO USB DAC K1 and I’m seeing problems very much like “ASNNetworks”. I’ve tried every permutation of input and output, with or without the Anodev’s Hass.IO Addons (not sure if appropriate or not). I get brief, random bursts of quality sound from the DAC then it stops. Analogue sound out directly from the Pi is more stable but not the quality I need. In all my other Pi/Squeeze implementations I’ve never come across “Pulse Audio” so not sure where this fits in. Logs show that stable connections for audio out are not being made

I will continue to persevere, but I’m running out of ideas right now and would welcome any insights or hints.

Chip

A further word on the above. Today, for unknown reasons, I have a stable squeezelite on HA. It’s visible from the LMS server, I can play anything from my system and watch prgress of track and album cover. There’s only one problem - there’s no sound whatsoever from either the USB DAC or the RasPi analogue sound out. Is it playing to HMDI? I can’t test this since I don’t have an HDMI to ausio out adapter.

I’m guessing that the problems arise from the linux implementation in the HA package - I’ve never had any problems like this on Ubuntu, Raspian or the piCorePlayer systems on Raspberry Pi’s 1-4.

Ho hum…it started off so well!

Chip

Hi,
I am very interested in the sqeezelite project. Have been using LMS on a synology for years and operate via the squeeze app on an android device.

I’ve gone through all the steps, but can’t figure out how to get sqeezelite on home screen.
Maybe some tips?

thank you for all your help.
Ingo

I am using this addon with Music Assistant 2.0 (still in beta) acting as LMS. It found two squeezelite players. One is my Raspberry Pi4 from which i get music (also if the volume is really too low). How to know which is the second player?
And more, is there a good amplifier to use with Rpi running HAOS?

I add repository , restart all but still can’t find the add-on to install.
messageImage_1685524296062

I forgot about this little plugin made 3 years ago :slight_smile:
Do not use it anymore (went for Sonos), but a tip is to wait some time.
In my HA it came up after 5 minutes:
image

ah thank you, get it to work and was seen by LMS server now. there is “home assistant squeezelite” in player list now.
one more problem is I can’t hear any sound or music play from device.
I run HAOS on mini PC and just want the connect audio out to the speaker to play music. (I checked sound both from HDMI TV and Audio Jack but no sound)
what I have done.

  • VLC lan telnet, can play song but no sound.

  • Music Assistant not work on new HAOS update

  • mopidy not work as well

  • squeezelite client, I believe it’d work. ( I have tried manually install squeezelite client on RP 1b and it works with LMS but not for my mini PC that run HAOS on.

Hey,
I can see that “Home Assistant Community Add-on: Squeezelite player standalone” is tagged as “maintained no!”, but until now it has being working perfect on my system.
But maybe somebody can help me…
I run it on a rpi4, and it is not playing the music anymore, it plays a 1/4 of a second of music, and then no sound in 5 second, and then again 1/4 of a second of music. And so on.
I have tested the output of rpi with Spotify connect addon and that is working fine.
I have also tested with spotify via spotty, and I have tested with local music from the squeezebox server.
Anyone have any clue to my problem?

Thanks,
Kim

I have not tested the Squeezeslave for several years now, but it did work on first try, running Squeezebox server 8.4.0. HA and SB server running on Intel Nuc i3 machine.

In the squeezelite setup you have an ip for the squeezebox server, try to connect to it using a browser on http://ip:9000/ to see if there are any updates available. It could be something like that or the server needs to be rebooted.

Other plugins like Spotify Connect connects directly to Spotify servers and are a better option if you only use Spotify. Spotty will do the same as Spotify Connect, but with the SB server as proxy.

I recommend looking into the logs tab in squeezelite too, it could show you something.

Thanks for reacting on my post.

nice to hear it still works, then I just need to get mine working…

i have tested the reboot no luck.
With Spotify Connect I can conclude that it is not the hardware and speaker not working.
The SB server is working fine with the others players (Radios and booms). But it is only a 8.2 server.
the log do not show any errors in SqueezeLite logs, but i’m not 100% master in reading it’s logfile.

I have also tried to reinstall the addon, but no luck there.

For a supported and reasonably uptodate squeezelite addon.