I’ve been using RoPieee for a few weeks now with a Pi3 and HFBerry HAT DAC. It is very, very good but there are two things that would make it much better at least for me.
Some radio streams like to change the url slightly every day. RoPieee can play these streams if it knows the current one. Unfortunately, it can’t download the pointer file first to work out today’s path. Here is a one of many examples:
The stream path is given as: http://www.radiofeeds.net/playlists/bauerflash.pls?station=absolute80shigh.aac
If you download from that url you get a file which cantains the path for today’s stream.
My other pi streamer uses mpd and mpd can and does download the pointer file and then connect with today’s current url. Please can we make Ropieee able to do this too please.
Startup volume. I can find no way to stop RoPieee starting up at 100% volume. As I connect directly into a power amp this is dangerous. I don’t mind if it remembers the volume from last time, starts at zero / very low volume or has a start up setting any of those would be fine. Please add this,
With those two additions, this would make a very goog player the best.
Hello,
I’m sorry, I don’t understand. I’m not using Roon and don’t intend to, I’m only using RoPieee.
Why should I ask Roon to do any of this if I’m not using their code?
Thanks Greg but you stay when playing from Roon. I’m not using Roon at all, I don’t have it in my home. Are you saying that RoPieee is actually Roon code?
Thanks
Bob.
If you don’t have a Roon Server / Core - then you’re not using any roon code.
I think it’s unusual to be using Ropieee without Roon - but no issue.
@spockfish integrates a number of other mostly open source audio output packages. He does an amazing job making these work together - but the actual packages that play the music are not written by him.
You might want to be more precise about how you’re getting your radio / music into Ropieee and then someone might be about to help work out which of these is messing up the volume etc.
Not at all, it can be used as endpoint for:
Upnp ()
Squeezelite ()
HQPlayer NAA ()
AirPlay
Spotify
Plex
…….
() these are the services I use, no Roon at all
Thank you Greg, that sort of makes sense.
I’m using Minimserver running on a synology NAS. RoPieee works very well with Minimserver. I use the Linn App on an iPad for control. Radio streams are presented by Minimserver from a play list stored within. That’s it, no other software.
If the volume control issue and the streams issue are really Roon issues, how do I raise those issues with them when I’m not a customer?
If you set Volume Control to Software in UPNP RoPieee configuration then Linn app can control it and it remember the previous volume too, even if you swipe off the app and restart it
Thank you Stefano for trying to help me.
Unfortunately, I have two problems with this.
Software volume controls work by changing the music stream data going into the dac and as you turn down the volume you also turn down the resolution of the audio. The lower the volume the worse the quality gets.
Hardware volume controls work by adjusting the gain of the dac and lowering the volume does not worsen the quality. Using software volume control is not a good idea if quality is of any interest.
Because of that I had never been near software volume control and had been using hardware volume which resets to 100 at each power up of the pi when using RoPieee software. It’s not the case with mpd based players.
I tried the software volume control as you suggested and dropped the volume to 87%, played music and then switched off the pi. Waited a while and then powered the pi back up. It came on at 87%. Okay, that looks good. Then I dropped the volume to 44%, played music and switched off the pi. Waited and then powered it back up, it was again set to 87%. I repeated this again and again, it always powered back up at 87%. I have no idea why it was doing that.
An interesting expeiment but I was unable to reproduce good preservation of the volume control over a powercycle and with the idea of software volume control worsening the quality, I don’t think there is a solution there for me.
The question of software volume controls is a bit fraught - but generally DAC hardware volume controls are doing bit manipulation in a similar way to what a software volume control does.
Well I don’t wish to argue just to say that many things I’ve read over many years tell me that software volume is inferior to hardware. That’s all I have to say on the matter, I’ll quietly go away.
Hi @Bob_Latham,
the idea behind software volume control ist that Redbook supports 16 Bit only and modern DACs virtually support 24Bit but effectively about 20 to 22Bit at the analog output. For example this inexpensive DAC delivers 22.5 Bit at its analog output.
So playing Redbook CDs with such a DAC you can loose 6 Bit (which is factor 64) by software volume before you loose resolution. This means you have a headroom of approx. 36 dB that you can decrease volume until you loose bits. This is a lot
To my understanding, RoPieee is meant to be a thin client to Roon, with other features that are nice to have. Its main use case is to be a Roon client.
Did you try any of the other audio distributions for the Pi? Volumio, for example?
