SqueezeBox support : as mentioned elsewhere, and by a growing number of people, I think it would be well worth your while to add the “Squeeze” products to the list of supported endpoints.
Roon seems to be an ideal successor to the now-forum-only-supported Logitech MediaServer software and you immediately (potentially) add a huge user-base to your customers.
Roon Core running headless on a NAS is also implicit in this suggestion / request - I’d like to run my 5 endpoints from my x86 ReadyNAS as I’m doing now - with control from phone / tablet / laptop / desktop…
i have 2 Transporters, a touch, 2 booms, and 2 radios. would love to use Roon with all of them. my kids already have squeezeboxen in their rooms, and roon would be a great entry drug to a world of great music and info.
+1. We have three Squeezeboxen in our household. They may be discontinued, but people are still building new versions with touchscreen computers and an image file.
I did a little bit of research into what would be involved in Squeezebox support last night, and I ran into a wrinkle, and need some input.
In the Squeezebox architecture, Squeezeboxes discover a media server on the network and then initiate a connection to the media server. Once connected they say “Server, control me”.
This is the opposite of just about every other streaming mechanism out there (AirPlay, UPnP, et al) where the media server discovers and initiates a connection to the audio devices and says “I will control you now”.
The issue is: it’s unclear how Roon could coexist with LMS in the same install, since (presumably), the Squeezeboxes are only connecting to one server at a time (correct me if I’m wrong here–I couldn’t find a clear answer on this).
It’s fairly likely that LMS, especially in its current community-maintained form, does many, many things that Roon does not aspire to do. Is Roon really a viable LMS replacement? Or are multi-server use cases something well handled in the LMS community currently?
Some input from people who are more experienced with this stuff would be a big help here.
hi @brian. Squeezeboxen will only connect to one server at a time, but can easily switch between servers, or between servers and my squeezebox.com. you’re correct that LMS does many things that Roon does not, but for many of us, the Roon feature set is compelling enough to make the switch, or at least have it as an option.
and most importantly, since we have many squeeze devices already deployed, we would not have to make a significant new investment in endpoints to join the Roon world. it’s one thing to replace a server, and quite another to buy multiple new endpoints, particularly for something like a radio or boom, which are affordable all-in-one devices, tough to replicate in the room world.
@brian : Who mentioned anything about LMS co-existing with Roon ?!
Personally, I’d disable LMS & use Roon exclusively, connecting it to all of my “Squeeze” endpoints in my various rooms.
Personally, I would still use one of my Squeezeboxes with LMS, but as @woodford pointed out, it’s a breeze to switch which server you point a Squeezebox at.
We’re going to take a stab at supporting Squeezebox hardware. It’s too early to make a hard promise that we’ll succeed, or to put a timeframe on it, but on the surface it doesn’t look too bad.
Given the situation with new squeezebox hardware, it’s likely that most of the development work will be done against software implementations, and we’ll need some beta testing help to make it mature with the variety of stuff out there.
At the heart of LMS is a robust, fast interface to your music collection delivered via a headless server that has a Web UI and can be controlled via a tablet or smartphone using an appropriate app or browser. Whilst there are many plugins available for LMS that significantly expand its functionality and sophistication re playlists etc. I think Roon already offers the core capabilities of LMS plus the key thing all other music servers I’ve come across lack - a metadata rich environment that enables you to explore/ discover and play your music in a way that reconnects you with the artists and their work. Yes, there are some nice LMS features enabled via plugin like a more sophisticated random playback which allows you to stipulate things like not repeating an artist and/or album for xx tracks, another that keeps tabs of what was played on each endpoint (great for when you’ve had friends over and spent an evening listening to music and you rediscover stuff you’d forgotten about) etc. but these things can come in time if it makes commercial sense and sees sufficient demand through feature requests.
Will also gladly test as all my current endpoints are either Squeezebox Touch hardware or Squeezelite running on an Arm based device.
I’ve no Squeezebox kit left anymore. Sold it to make way for Sooloos.
However I think if Roon can make those old 24/96 capable Squeezebox Touches and Transporters work with their server there ought to be a lot of potential new subscribers to Roon.
Much better than Sonos who still think hirez is a dirty word.
I am holding off trying out Roon because I use a squeezebox touch exclusively. I am however waiting until the release of the LHLabs “source” a crowdfunded streamer like the auralic aeries and others. I will continue to use squeezebox in our bakery located near our house so please count me on a beta testing program.
Paul
I would love you to support Squeezeboxes. I’ve been selling mine, but there is currently nothing like the Squeezebox Boom on the market, so I’m keeping mine for the kitchen and bedroom (use cases are primarily Internet radio, and an alarm clock in the bedroom).
Production of Squeezebox hardware may be over, but there is a huge community of Squeezebox owners who would love to move to a currently developed server solution (now that Logitech has formally dropped Logitech Media Server development to “best efforts maintenance”). Currently, the only new potential solution is ickStream which I’m certain will be nowhere near the Roon experience. There is a captive Squeezebox market out there…
