How do Spotify and Tidal apps manage that?
They donāt.
They are not active in the background when they are not playing audio, you canāt remotely control them from another device.
Note that what we are discussing above is about Apps that are NOT open (in the foreground) and NOT playing audio
I am not asking about control from another device. Nobody is asking for the iPad in that role.
What I want is to have music playing, in ipeng, while Iām looking at another app. It may be the Roon app, to choose my next album. Or Wikipedia to read about the artist. Or the New York Times to read about Brexit.
Spotify certainly supports that. Iām playing Spotify as I type this.
But that works. It has always worked.
As long as iPeng is playing music it will always stay active in the background and play on.
What does not work ist starting music in the App while itās not in the foreground and that means remotely controlling it, in this case from the Roon server.
Ok, as long as that works, thatās what I wanted to ensure.
Doesnāt work with Squeezepad.
Well, wait - the iPeng app will not be in the foreground, the Roon app will be in the foreground. I will be in Roon, select Play, the request is sent to the server which starts streaming to ipeng.
But it isnāt necessary to start ipeng from the server. Roon already has the concept of a private zone, one that you can play to only from the Roon app on that same device (although behind the scenes, the playback involves the server).
It will be a little clumsy if I have to start ipeng from the iPad instead of having Roon start it. But acceptable if necessary.
Well, she I said: it works if Roon starts streaming within 5 minutes since you closed iPeng (and you need to enable the āpreserve connectionā setting in iPeng).
The iPeng needs to suspend itself or iOS will kill it in the background, if itās not playing music.
But first, letās make sure the integration with iPeng and Roon works, maybe weāll find a better way to do this then.
I think I need to know what to do but Iād like to get some feedback from Roon on whether thatās OK/correct and whether the will then also support all formats, especially HD and stuff and not limit streaming to 44.1/16
Just a small update: Iāve been working on this with Brian from Roon over the last week and I think I do now understand most aspects of how Roon works with the Squeezeboxes and I plan to include Roon support with the āaudiophileā option I plan to introduce in the next major iPeng update.
There are still a few things to do because I want this to work well and for example the synchronization with other Squeezeboxes is still a bit shaky right now (could someone report how well this works with other Squeezeboxes and software players?).
The idea will be to detect Roon servers as such and allow iPeng Playback to connect to Roon and Roon is bringing out an update to help with that.
Also, iPeng should show NowPlaying information and a reduced mein menu reflecting the functionality available directly through iPeng (essentially volume and direct playback controls).
I also want to offer a way to switch to the Roon App from iPeng when connected to a Roon server and hopefully it will then also be possible to switch back to iPeng from Roon which could help if the App goes to sleep in the background.
It will take a few weeks until we are ready for a release but I just wanted to let you know itās in the making.
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This just may get me back to using iPhone again. I used Android due to the playback feature with the roon app but this may become a better solution. Thank you for looking into this.
Excellent, thank you.
I have paid no attention to Squeezebox previously; can somebody educate me on what quality streams it supports?
SB Touch - 24/96, unless using the EDO applet then it can stream 24/192
Transporter - 24/96
SB3/SB Classic (and I think SB2) - 24/48
SB duet receiver - 24/48
SB Radio - 24/48
edit. ipeng iphone app can act as a virtual squeezebox in terms of being a player (in addition to controlling squeezeboxes). Not sure what the playback is on ipeng. I would guess 24/96.
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That depends on the specific device, there are different models.
The original ones from Logitech are all 24Bit on PCM (OK, all from Squeezebox 2 on, which is like 10 years old) and support between 48 and 96 kHz sample rate, for the Squeezebox Touch there is a mod for up to 192kHz.
Some software player solutions using SqueezeLite (thatās the software) on Raspberry Pi and similar devices or PC hardware go up to 384kHz sample rate and can support DSD output over USB. Not sure about 32Bit sample size.
iPeng supports up to 96kHz sample rate and 24 bit sample size natively right now but we are working on the audiophile upgrade mentioned above that will go to 384kHz/24bit and also support DSD playback both through transcoding (filtering) and DoP.
What you can output physically will then depend a lot on the hardware you use.
USB DACs connected through the Lightning port of an iOS device can support the full 384kHz sample rate@24 bit and DoP up to DSD128.
If you play analog audio or something like AirPlay this will be downsampled, the DAC in all iThingies is 44.1/16 and AirPlay supports 48/16 albeit with full 16 bit resolution because volume information is sent separately (so you donāt lose any resolution when lowering the volume).
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Thank you. Sounds great.
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Looking forward to this! 
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@Joerg_Schwieder This is what I call entrepreneurial spirit! Thank you very very much! I know you donāt do this for me 
but it sure feels like that
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Just to keep you updated, we are still working on this. Wanted to do it right
I now do hopefully have synchronization working sufficiently (itās not as good as with LMS but much better than in my first versions) and also some integration work to make interaction with Roon a bit smoother.
Roon has also been helpful in making some changes on their side to help with the adaption.
So itās coming ā¦!
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Thank you for the update!
I have been using iPeng happily, for a very long time. Adding the ability to work with Roon will be great!
Thanks again
Thanks for the update.
Any progress to report?
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contact the ipeng developer (?)