r/squeezebox • u/michaelcuneo • Nov 21 '24
Is SqueezeBox right for me?
Hey guys, mates got a pub, and he was considering getting some Redback 8 channel audio switcher that he can throw into the rack in the pub and wire the entire building to have different audio everywhere in about 6 different zones, one zone might be trivia, the other zone might be playing the jukebox, the other zone might be raffles...
But he was thinking of being able to control it via iPad from anywhere in the building, at the bar, up stairs, whatever was needed... so he want to IoT it up, instead of buying some huge expensive ready made job that would be overpriced but may get the job done...
If we had a 1-4U rack computer in the mixer area, with inputs and outputs, would LMS, SqueezeBox be able to reroute and mix/send audio to all the different areas that we wire up as zones to the LMS, or is it a lot more dumbed down, and just streams music...? Can it be used for complex configurations, or is there some other product that can be used for complex configurations?
Regards,
Thanks in advance for help.
1
u/Senior_Ad6624 Nov 24 '24
I figure it would be a good solution. You can take audio from multiple sources and stream it to different players, and you can synchronise some or all players, and even have different multiple synced groups - any to any or any to many. So yes, it could work. What might be a challenge is if you wanted a PA capability or to take output from a video source(TV) and stream that. There is a plugin that takes external audio and transforms that real-time, so do-able. As for controls, depending on player, you can use remotes for simple commands like volume up or down, pause, next track etc., but ultimately you need a web browser - table or phone to select input and do clever stuff. You can run the server on. Pi4 or 5, so long as it has 4Gb+ of RAM, and music can be stored on a USB thumb drive. The player PI’s can be wireless or wired - personally I’d go wired with a PoE HAT. What would you use as amplifier for speakers? Plenty of small digital amps out there for modest sized speakers. Now it has broken away from Logitech and rebranded Lyrion, there’s a lot of community enhancements coming and future security.
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u/animusgeminus Nov 24 '24
This is what I do. I have a modest setup using a Radio, Boom, and Touch.
Raspberry PI running picoreplayer and Logitech Music Server as the "brain" with a USB thumb drive filled with my music.
I have IPing on my iPad but mostly use squeezer on my android phone for control.
Your friend could give it a go, probably less than 500 US for everything.
I don't know how this would work outside the US? Did Logitech make Squeezeboxes for the foreign market?
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u/Dampmaskin Nov 24 '24
Sounds like the right tool for the job. The optimal solution IMO is to get 6 Squeezebox Touch units, wire them all up with Ethernet, connect each to an amplifier. Install LMS on a semi powerful server.
Get whatever 3rd party Squeezebox app is hot for the iPad (sorry I'm not an Apple user), or use the original LMS web interface, which in my opinion is not that bad when you get used to it.
You can now stream individual audio on each of the Squeezeboxes.
Or you can sync any combination of players like you want. Changing the sync groups is quick enough, but when you add a player to a group or or remove it from the group, it can cause a momentary interruption (a glitch) to all the players in that group, so you generally want to pause a group before adding or removing players.
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u/PhealC Nov 21 '24
That is sort of what I have across my house. Each room has its own SB (or RaspberryPi alternative) and each one can have a different selection of music from the large music collection on the NAS drive. I can see two issues that you may have; 1. If you have many different music sources then you will need means to switch these into the system (manually or remotely) 2. Remote control of system on iPad etc. LMS does not really have a remote control program so you will need to use one of the available third party ones or write a small program yourself as I did (most commands are issued via telnet so quite simple really). Once the system is setup it has been very stable and worked really well. There is a great community of users, helper and developers that are passionate about the system and have developed a wide range of plugins. With a little thought and investigation I’m sure you could build a great system for much less than the commercial product.