I don’t know if this should apply to Raspberry Pis in general, but the Yellow is designed to host HA, it also has a headphone jack. It’s not a far stretch to imagine that the Yellow would commonly be located in a network/AV closet close to a whole home audio setup.
Maybe it’s a slim use case, but right now the best solution to play audio locally out of the headhpone jack seems to be to add the VLC addon, and then a VLC telnet integration to send audio data to the addon to play out of the headphone jack.
Is it possible to get “line out” to appear as a media player? Or is it much harder than I imagine?
Generally speaking RPi analogue audio out is crap. If you want whole home audio based on that, your standards aren’t too high.
If I were to take a guess I think you’re echoing what you’ve heard and don’t know what you’re talking about.
I have the HiFiBerry hats that I’ve used with Pi Zero and 3’s using Squeezelite, then switched to the analog output of the Pis when I got a server rack holder that wasn’t able to fit the hats, and I couldn’t tell a difference. I bet you’d be hard pressed to tell a difference when the rubber meets the road too.
Not sure if I’d play the audiophile card for WHA: the speakers are right above your head usually in a silly stereo image, sometimes mono. I’m not really trying to enjoy the crisp dynamics of a Jazz ensemble, but rather listen to something while I do the dishes
You know what, that concise response actually makes sense. I don’t think my feature request is the stupidest idea of all time, and even though the Yellow - which is a hardware platform provisioned by Nabu Casa themselves - has a headphone jack, I do understand that it would break a larger paradigm for the sake of 1 hardware setup.
Maybe a solution that would work and still follow the “HA is not a media player” paradigm would be for this squeezelite addon to have a configurable port so that you can run it concurrently with the SlimProto HA Integration. Or maybe if the integration had a configurable port, I’m not sure.
I think your main roadblock here is that there don’t seem to be active devs with your usecase…
I agree it would be nice to have the Pi jack be useable, but unfortunately not very popular as the most common setup is HA as a server with satellite devices for audio/video etc. Most people install HA into an existing half-smart setup with audio devices already in place
Except the HA Yellow hardware includes a dedicated extra I2S audio DAC IC, the PCM5121PW. The audio quality will be completely different than other Pis. Being an I2C device, it will also need slightly different drivers.
I also have my HA in a “smart shelf” with other audio device in place (WiiM Pro, separate Linux box, all mixed with an XR16). I can make HA play audio on other devices - but that causes other problems. I don’t want my music interrupted, just want it to be paused/turned down during announcements. If I use HA to stream to those devices, I can’t restart my music after.
I have no interest in installing/using another proprietary music server, especially one created by Logitech’s venerable software department.
Not sure how you’re getting the conclusion that “most use and want satellite devices”, nor how that is relevant here. The hardware included dedicated audio parts.
Music Assistant has some appeal but, getting back on topic, the main point of this thread remains - why isn’t the audio port on first party hardware more automatically supported?
No one suggested for you to install LMS. I suggested squeezelite, which you can use with slimproto. No Logitech or LMS at all.
And to correct you, LMS is not proprietary. It is an open source program. While I can’t recall the exact history, slim devices originally developed the software, so it wasn’t even designed in the first place by Logitech. In fact Logitech is not even in the name any more, it is Lyrion Media Server.
Squeezelite is also open source.
If squeezelite works on the yellow, you have your complete open source solution.
In no case, afaik, do you have much by way of audio support in HAOS. You need to install, guess what, squeezelite. It’s what open source is all about, linking open. Open standards, open source, open apis.
I did miss that LMS is no longer supported by Logitech and has a new name, thank you for the correction.
I appreciate the alternatives to consider. Yes, I could install Squeezelite to get another “player”, and then use some other integration/addon to “play” to that entity, but that seems like a remarkably fraught and convoluted way to achieve the goal. It means other servers on the network could control it, which I don’t want. I suspect there is a way to lock it down but, again, that’s getting convoluted.
I’ve also played with the VLC Addon some, but it has it’s own issues and headaches to get it working.
Doesn’t change the point of this feature request.
The HA Yellow, a first party product, has dedicated audio hardware that clearly wasn’t included by mistake. Why isn’t it easier to use? Where should we look to see if we can contribute to the code that would make it easier to use? Is anyone already working on this?
In my opinion, it should just appear as a media player on the Yellow, e.g. “Yellow” or “HA Audio” or something. From a UI/UX standpoint, it’s pretty simple.
I understand the argument that there might not be devs who have this usecase. But I don’t understand the “HA is not a media player” argument.
The Yellow has a 3.5mm headphone jack and external DAC. If you have a Yellow AND a e.g. WHA audio setup (which might be rare, that I would agree with) they’re almost certainly going to be located geographically close to eachother.
You can install that Squeezelite player addon, and use the SlimProto integration. If you like Music Assistant (which I do), you can only run the integration OR MA, not both at the same time.
And anyway, that’s not what I would consider a “first class citizen” sort of solution, though. Which was the point of my whole original post.
How do you imagine it should work? Not necessarily at a technical level, but from a UX/ui perspective.
When you’re selecting a “Media player entity” from the drop down, there should be a permanently installed entity for “local output” or “local pulse audio” - this would apply to other HA installations that have system audio, not just the HA Yellow. That you currently need to install an add on and a integration, in the right order, is remarkably complex and fraught with issues for what should be 2 clicks.
Why won’t anyone tell me whether squeezelite does it doesn’t work?
It does “work” - that was never the debate. It takes a surprising amount of set up to make it “work” for standard hardware. Additionally, it is not secure as anyone on the network could just start playing audio. I don’t see any way to easily lock it down. With that large security flaw in mind, it doesn’t “work”.
So, again, this feature request was never about the existence of a way to do it - it’s about it being easy for anyone.
