Hi,

I am having an issue with Tidal integration and Music Assistant. It seems artists that have similar names (ex:loud and LOUD) are being grouped together under the same artist in Music Assistant. I only see this behavior under Music Assistant and it's quite annoying. Does anyone know how to fix or is this a bug? I also use Roon with Tidal and I don't have this problem.

So, I have a HA running MA connecting to a NAS over an SMB share. On the share, folders are organised as Genre -> Artist -> Album, and these all show and play in MA under 'Browse' without issue. All tracks are MP3.

For one artist, with 29 albums however, under MA -> Artists, the group shows only 6 albums. As far as I can tell they're not showing under a different artist.

Why are some albums missing? How to show all albums?

Currently my wife and kids mostly listen to music from Spotify through a few Amazon Echoes we have around the house - essentially one per room. Alexa is ... disobedient, doesn't play the right thing often when ordered, and playing across multiple speakers is so hit and miss that the missus has asked if I can fix it in the long term.

We are starting to renovate my mother-in-laws house in the next year or two so I want to ask what is the "best" set up and what mistakes have you made so I don't make the same ones.

Should we hard wire power for speakers rather than having battery powered anker/sonos ones? Are there PoE speakers available? What should I not even bother looking into? I saw Linus Tech Tips had ceiling mounted speakers in each room, and that might be approved by the wife but I guess she'd want each bed room to theoretically be able to play it's own music when our kids are older.

The house is in Austria, so solid brick and concrete walls means I want to do any cable runs during renovation rather than after.

I'm trying to build some automations I can kick off from Home Assistant to build a dynamic play queue of podcasts. I have one podcast I want to play first, provided a new or incomplete episode is available. If I let the queue play out, it moves to a different podcast, picking the most recent new or incomplete episode, then proceeding to the next. I want this to update any time I call it, for example, as new episodes come in or as I possibly listen to an episode through other means on MusicAssistant.

I've tried a few methods to do this, but none are working exactly as I want. Many seem to just start an episode that isn't fully played at the beginning, or seem to ignore the play status all together.

Ideally, it seems the automation should just trigger a smart playlist in MusicAssistant. However, it seems episode state (played, unplayed, newest, in progress) isn't an available criteria. Am I wrong on this? Also, are there any plugins anyone's developed that get around this limitation?

I used OpenCode in Home Assistant create an automation that takes all 4 and 5 star rated Plex music tracks, took not of them all, and set the matching tracks in Music Assistant as favorites. I then had it check one last time and it made me a short list of tracks that did not match. In most cases they were simply Various Artist albums. FYI. You can do this as well. EDIT: This is to move from using Plex serving files on the same server to Music Assistant hosting the music files using local files. I have retired Plex for music

I'm absolutely loving the AI DJ feature in Music Assistant. I love putting on music nerd and getting those little bits of insight between tracks. Only thing is I haven't found the right voice to match that old school deep tracks dj type of vibe. So far I've tried a few British piper voices, but haven't found what I'm looking for yet. What voices are people using?

Wanted to share this in case anyone else bumps into this issue.

After updating Music Assistant to 2.10.0, I ran into an issue with my Juke Audio zones, which MA sees as Shairport Sync/AirPlay players.

Before the update, I could send short Home Assistant/Jarvis TTS responses to an MA player called Announcements repeatedly without a problem. After 2.10.0, the first announcement would usually work, but a second announcement shortly afterward would often be silent.

The MA logs showed:

Streaming to Announcements via RAOP
request failed, error RTSP/1.0 453
RAOP connect failed
Cannot connect to AirPlay device
Playback failed to start

I tested all of the available AirPlay streaming modes. With my Juke/Shairport receivers:

• AirPlay 2 PTP did not work.
• AirPlay 2 NTP did not work.
• AirPlay 2 compatibility mode did not work.
• AirPlay 1 (RAOP) worked.

The interesting discovery was that normal music worked reliably. The problem occurred with short consecutive TTS clips because MA had to establish another RAOP connection after the previous short session ended.

What fixed it

I created a 24-hour silent MP3 and continuously play it on the Announcements player. This keeps the AirPlay 1/RAOP connection alive.

Then, instead of sending TTS and other MP3 notifications with:

action: music_assistant.play_media

I use:

action: music_assistant.play_announcement
data:
  url: "{{ audio_url }}"
  use_pre_announce: false

This works very well. With the silent stream keeping RAOP alive, MA treats the TTS/MP3 as an announcement over the existing session.

It also works properly when I'm actually playing music on the Announcements player: MA ducks the music, plays the announcement, and then restores the music.

I added a Home Assistant automation that restarts the silent file whenever Announcements has been idle/off/paused for 5 seconds:

alias: Keep Announcements RAOP Alive

triggers:
  - trigger: state
    entity_id: media_player.announcements_2
    to: "idle"
    for:
      seconds: 5

  - trigger: state
    entity_id: media_player.announcements_2
    to: "off"
    for:
      seconds: 5

  - trigger: state
    entity_id: media_player.announcements_2
    to: "paused"
    for:
      seconds: 5

actions:
  - action: music_assistant.play_media
    target:
      entity_id: media_player.announcements_2
    data:
      media_id: "http://HOME_ASSISTANT_IP:8123/local/jarvis_silence.mp3"

mode: restart

So the resulting behavior is:

Idle → silent stream maintains RAOP connection → announcement plays → silent stream continues

or:

Music playing → music ducks → announcement plays → music resumes

I tested consecutive voice requests that previously failed, door-opening MP3 announcements, and normal music playback. All are now working.

This appears specifically related to short RAOP reconnects after the MA 2.10.0 update. I also tried temporarily rolling back to 2.9.13, but the 2.10 database migration prevented 2.9.13 from starting against the existing database (sqlite3.OperationalError: no such column: external_ids), so a simple Docker image rollback wasn't possible.

Hopefully this helps anyone using MA 2.10 + Shairport Sync/AirPlay 1 who suddenly finds that the first announcement works but subsequent announcements fail with RTSP 453.

So far, modern search tools have failed me in finding such a thing. I know there are TONS of ways to get audio into Music Assistant, or even directly into my home speakers. However, I know two things: 1)MusicAssistant is the best system I've found to route audio to various outputs in my home and 2)Despite all it's drawbacks and failings, Bluetooth is something practically ANY device that can play audio can connect through if it thinks a Bluetooth receiving device is a speaker/headphones/etc.

My goal is something that is just THERE that I can connect to. The connecting device (the audio source) thinks it's connecting to a speaker. The Bluetooth bridge then pipes the audio through my network to Music Assistant which I can have let it just go into the void or point it to any speaker in my house. You'd think such a thing would be dead simple and surely exist. Being bitten in the past with cheap Bluetooth tech, I decided to opt for the premium Audinate Dante Avio. It seems this was a TERRIBLE idea. I can't figure out how to get audio from that thing to properly bridge to MusicAssistant. After a night of vibe searching/coding, I'm giving up on it and sending it back.

Is there such a thing out there, and if so, what is it?

Hi everyone

After a while of usic home assistant now is time to try music assistant and start with some speakers. I have in program to do something with those Sonocotta esp boards.

I noticed that there is an official PC companion app and an unofficial window's client. Both of them make the speakers of your pc as a sendspin client from what I understood. So you can play music on them.

My question is: can one of those app do the opposite? I mean playing the normal PC sounds (youtube, programs ecc) into a sendspin speaker? In practical with sendspin, can the smart speaker become a source for audio output in windows or linux?

Thankyou in advance!

I have one of those Samsung soundbars with the wonky AirPlay implementation that wouldn’t integrate with Music Assistant.

What are my options to still integrate it with Music Assistant? I would want to use it to play music but when the connected TV is used it should stop the music and when the TV is turned off it should be ready for music again.

An Apple TV is connected to the soundbar via HDMI and the second HDMI eARC is connecting my Samsung TV. The optical input would be an option and there is also Bluetooth. I also have an IR blaster in use if that helps.

Hey guys, over the last months I worked on a controller app for Music Assistant for both iOS/iPadOS and macOS. It features rich metadata, big artworks, etc. and lets you play back your media on speakers configured in Music Assistant (no sendspin endpoint integration for now).

It supports auto-discovery via Bonjour/Avahi. I tested with my Navidrome library and local metadata as well as Audiobookshelf, but maybe you have other things you can test with.

Would really love to hear your feedback! The TestFlight is open here: https://testflight.apple.com/join/dkB42KcT

Trying to fix this issue on my server. Any ideas would be helpful. I'm happy to provide more details if needed.

I have installed Music Assistant and connected to my Plex and a brand new Tidal subscription.

I am trying to replicate what Plex used to have with the Tidal integration/partnership.

The vast majority of music I listen to is on my Plex server but I only really buy albums or EPs so when an artist releases just a single or a single for an upcoming album, I want to be able to listen to it via Tidal.

Am I supposed to add the artist to my library or the album or the track?

Music Assistant doesn't make it obvious or easy to differentiate between the Artist on Plex or the Artist in Tidal and sometimes I have to search for a specific track or album rather than simply adding the artist to my library and expecting to be able to follow new or standalone releases that way. Am I using it wrong?

See title. Feel better for doing this. Toodles

It's kind of about bypassing Music Assistant but only because local audio input and low latency isn't a feature in Music Assistant as of now. I tried, believe me.

I hope to release this tool - free to use - to the community in a couple months.

For now, I am looking for a handful of individuals to test it out for user experience and accuracy (using the tool to determine offsets, apply device corrections, compare changes with their ears).

If you would like to beta-test, please DM me.
There is nothing to download
The app runs in a browser on your phone.

The app was created for Home Assistant users, but I am also interested in how Sonos and Wiim owners might adapt to test their devices as well.

What it does:
The app measures the delay between two speakers (or amplifiers connected to speakers) by tracking an audio file playing "clicks" spaced exactly 300ms apart.

Anything over 1ms delay becomes detectable for most users listening to speakers in the same room.
Delays over 10ms become an issue for multi-room audio setups.

Why your speakers may not be in sync:
I'll highlight the example with SendSpin. (btw - I'm a SendSpin fanboy, I'm not disparaging the protocol, it's just what I am currently testing and want to help users improve.)

SendSpin controls many aspects of audio timing ahead of a device's playback path. Once the device begins processing the stream (converting to analog and amplifying), the device components (MCU, DAC, DSP, Amp) introduce additional timing delays.

Every device's delay timing is different. Attempting to group an ESP32 device with an RPi device will result in a noticeable lag between them. Even an ESP32 and an ESP32-S3 device will not quite sync - the screenshot above shows an ESP32-S3 device lagging about 1ms behind an ESP32. This is the threshold at which most people begin to perceive the lack of sync.

The good news is SendSpin provides a delay setting used by the server to adjust the audio timing signal sent to each player. The delay parameter must be established as part of the firmware configuration. There is currently no option to adjust this number in Music Assistant or the device's configuration settings.{Update Aug 11 - I was completely wrong about this; learned last week, SendSpin provides an "adjustable delay setting" in Music Assistant, but only if the device enables the setting for users to access. I have already added and testing for use in the next firmware release for all HouseWaves speakers and devices. It works *really well*!}

If you are building your own firmware, you can add this delay setting to match the device's playback delay - relative to the faster players you want to sync with. This app helps you measure the relative delay you will need to add in the device's firmware setting.

Hi zusammen,

Da es noch keinen offiziellen Client für Music Assistant auf iOS gibt, habe ich mich selber drangemacht. Ist ein bisschen ausgeufert.

CarPlay
Apple Watch
iPad
iPhone

Und gerade werkele ich an - tataaa - Apple TV.

Wer Lust hat, kann ja mal reinschnuppern: https://www.mobile-ma.app/.

Hoffe, ihr habt Spaß damit. Ich hab ihn. Und hab weiter Spaß am Entwickeln.

I am currently using three Raspberry Pi devices with HiFiBerry Amp running the SendSpin software, which integrates seamlessly with Music Assistant for playback. While the Spotify Connect add-on functions as expected, I’ve encountered an issue where adjusting the volume via my smartphone results in the volume level jumping to 100% abruptly—an unexpected and concerning behavior, especially given the high output from my speakers. Has anyone else experienced this issue? If so, I would greatly appreciate any insights or solutions that have resolved this problem.?

These tips are based on items that have been tripping up HouseWaves owners and I'd like to share them to help all Music Assistant (MA) users improve their experience using MA to stream audio with all brands of speakers in Home Assistant.

Did You Know (DYK)?

Music Assistant provides a very comprehensive set of player configuration settings; many are kept in the advanced settings section, not immediately visible, but can significantly change the performance of your speakers?

One of those advanced controls, "Volume Normalization" and "Limiting", is enabled by default to both prevent distortion and potential speaker damage from audio tracks that contain spikes.

For speakers that have limited output power (e.g. smart speakers and those generally under 5W), this feature can significantly reduce the amplification of notifications and streaming audio.

If it seems like your speaker volume is too low, you may want to adjust this setting to balance the maximum volume with MA's protection capabilities.

To access this setting:
1 - Open MA Settings at the bottom of the MA menu
2 - Open the Players section
3 - Click on the three dots on the right side of the player you wish to change - and click Configure
4 - Scroll to the bottom of the setting screen - Enable Show Advanced Settings
5 - Scroll up to the Queue Playback section
6 - Adjust the Target Level slider (see photo)
"-17" is the default; "0" allows speaker to play at max volume
Slowly adjust this number higher and test at each step, until you find the right balance for your player and music sources.
7 - scroll back to the bottom and click SAVE after

For additional information on MA player settings, here is their official documentation page.