SqueezeBox Support [SOLVED]

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

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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…

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Wait until we port RoonSpeakers to the Raspberry Pi. Then you can put a Dragonfly or Explorer on it and have it destroy that ancient SqueezeBox.

I’m trying to get this on the roadmap … Maybe later in the year :wink:

I’d you need the speakers that the SqueezeBox Boom gives you, then you just should get an B&W A5/A7 or a Libratone. The quality of both is limited by Airplay to 44.1khz/16bit, but then again, you won’t hear above that with the speakers built-in. Both work flawlessly.

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Here’s what the Boom gives me: all-in-one networked audio endpoint with DISPLAY and BUTTONS (Internet radio presets)! Never underestimate the requirements of your significant other…

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Having read the post entitled What a Journey a lot of what you’ve said about how music should be experienced music resonates very strongly with what I’ve wanted for as long as I can remember, so the prospect of being able to interact with my (very large) music collection in the ways you describe is very appealing and frankly all that’s been missing from the Squeezebox ecosystem.

The discontinuance of Squeezebox hardware has, however, been completely irrelevant to the ongoing viability and robustness of the platform as a music server that handles massive libraries with ease, coupled with decent tablet/phone apps providing a means of interacting with a music library. The advent of Squeezelite has made this even more so as Squeezelite and something like a Wandboard or Raspberry Pi effectively fulfil the role of transport feeding a user’s DAC of choice located anywhere on a premises via USB. Logitechmediaserver is still actively developed, albeit only notionally by Logitech. The non Logitech dev community is strong and I would be very surprised if LMS was abandoned in the forseeable future…albeit Roon could be the trigger.

To my way of thinking it’d be great if your software adopted some of the key strengths of Logitechmediaserver (if not already on the cards):

  • networked, so music can be housed on a pc/server far away from the listening area
  • separation between server and transport, albeit transport can house server and thus act as standaone ecosystem
  • ability for user to choose own transport/hardware end point so long as it speaks the protocols of the server
  • multi OS. Logitechmediaserver runs on just about any hardware platform. If forced to use Windows as a platform for the server it’d be a complete non-starter for me no matter how good the software.
  • separation of server and hardware, leaving the consumer free to use DAC, PC hardware and operating system etc. of choice.
  • API for 3rd party developers to add plugins enhancing core capability

My music library is rich with album related metadata such as allmusic.com’s composer, genre, style, mood & theme classifications, and it’s somewhat leveraged using plugins that enable me to browse and/or filter using that metadata. I’m able to access album reviews and artist biographies online whilst listening, and to the extent my tagging allows I can explore an artist’s work with other artists, but it’s a long, long way from what it could and should be.

I’m excited by the prospect of being able to experience/ interact with my music collection in a richer manner than I’m able to at present. Wishing you great success in the next chapter of your story.

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Thanks @audiomuze for your kind words.

You may have interested in this post @brian made. It directly answers the question about Meridian Sooloos collections, but it also talks a lot about our new metadata handling, which is well beyond what anything on the market provides.

In your list of key strengths, we nail all of them, except for the API. We love extensibility, and once we are launched, we will look into determining how people want to extend our system.

I hope you do try out our software when we are released, and if for some reason it fails to meet your needs, I want to hear what we can do to fix it! In the What a Journey post, @enno alludes to the music lover we always wanted to build a system for… I can tell that you are indeed that person. :smiley:

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@danny, I’ll definitely try the software. As I’ve been a Linux user for the better part of 20 years and don’t own any servers/pc’s running iOS or Windows, I’m really hoping you build the software to run under Linux also.

Two strengths of Logitechmediaserver I failed to mention are the ability to dynamically browse your library by clicking on any metadata element that’s exposed directly or via a plugin e.g. genre, year, composer, artist, albumartist etc. (makes for a great dynamic way to explore an album collection) and ability to run headless.

One shortcoming/ failure of Logitechmediaserver is inability (read unwillingness on part of developers) to list an artist’s albums distinguishing between their albums (i.e. they’re the albumartist), albums they’ve participated on (i.e. someone else is the albumartist) and compilations separately when viewing albums with which the artist is associated. Makes for browsing a mess when they’re collaborative or popular thus appearing on many compilations.

I had a read of the post you pointed me to - sounds great. I’m really looking forward to trying your software. Properly implemented, music lovers should be able to relive the experience I had as a kid and take it to a new level…rushing home excited by the prospect of listening to the albums you’ve just bought, lying back on the sofa and pressing play, listening whilst reading the liner notes. who else participated on the album and perhaps, if you’re lucky, the story of its making. Only now you’d have the ability to see the whole discography, know which are in your collection, view coverart, read reviews, biographies, etc. browse associated artists/ bands, genre’s, styles etc. as well as produce some magic perpetual playlists based on metadata (crucial) or technology like echonest (nice to have).

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Wait until you see our Tidal integration :slight_smile:

@audiomuze 100% agree with your comments, my setup is similar (4,000+ 16/24bit FLAC albums) running LMS 7.9 with a 3 radios, a boom, 4 PCs running Squezelite, a duet slaved to a Linn Akurate DS player using Rockfather’s plugin, and Erland’s library management and metadata extensions. It is all controlled using iPeng from iPhones and iPads (also supporting playback on the iOS devices). Being somewhat retentive my flac library has lyrics, detailed genre/sub genre, correct high res artwork, etc. Roon is the first alternative to LMS that I am seriously considering primarily based on better metadata navigation (hopefully to include iTunes Genius type functionality as the LMS MusicIP plugin is pretty long in the tooth). Happy to see the Linn logo on the Roon homepage, which leaves the squeezebox issue.

@danny: as @audiomuze pointed out LMS has a very passionate userbase, many with large libraries who would move to the Roon platform if the transition was made easy (i.e. by supporting squeezebox endpoints). Take a look on Amazon and eBay where used squeezebox hardware is selling at 2x original list prices. As others have said the combination of WiFi/Ethernet network transport, d/a, amp, speakers, display and preset buttons/volume control in a single small box is highly compelling for the rest of the family.

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I would love to see the squeezebox/LMS endpoints supported. I started with those and know of so many people that still use them everyday.
Offering a lifeline to arguably one the first groups to do server music would be a big plus.
I for one would get some old SB+ Units out and put them in spare rooms.

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Agree Nick that Roon supporting Squeezeboxes as Endpoints would open up a very substantial market…one I’m sure Roon would be very interested in

Until that support is achieved though, just some food for thought…it’s been a long time since I played with the original SB’s, but IIRC, they have ‘Line-In’…and the SB’s can be linked???

Reason I ask is that since I switched to Roon 3 week ago, I’ve had 2 by MS200 feeding into 2 off my Sonos players…and then using these Sonos players to feed any of the other 18 Sonos players via their own mesh network…which basically allows me to play ANY music thru Roon and control it from my Phone

I tend to default to using Roon for all music formats, even though Sonos is pointed at the same Roon 16/44 folder and can play those files natively anyway…the advantages that the MS200 connectivity offers is that I can play all my High Res files thru the Sonos to wherever I want in the house…all while using the Roon app

Just wonder if something along those lines could be done with the SB’s until Roon supports them directly??

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Another +1
I have Meridian gear, but it’s all driven by LMS from a ReadyNAS and connected to Squeezebox endpoints, which are located all over my apartment.

I see Roon as a clear replacement for LogitechMediaServer (formerly SqueezeServer / SlimServer) and would adopt it in a heartbeat, but currently it seems like too much of an investment / tear-up to make the change.

If Roon were to be ported to support SqueezeBox endpoints, you open yourself up to an absolutely huge & passionate user-base…

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The Squeezebox protocol is open and well documented so implementing support for Squeezebox endpoints shouldn’t require massive investment or effort. Additionally, the advent of Squeezelite https://code.google.com/p/squeezelite/ means virtually any Intel or ARM based hardware can fulfill the role of a Squeezebox endpoint.

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The Squeezebox hardware has been working well without problems. LMS tends to be set-and-forget mostly. I’ve got a Squeezebox in every room, so being able to stream to those would be great.

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I have a Squeezebox Touch in every room and would love to be able too use Roon together with them. I have +20000 FLAC albums so the smart Roon database engine would be great!

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I also would love to see Squeezebox support. Roon would be a great way to replace Logitech Media Server! I have a SB radio, 2 Duets, a Bolder modded SB touch and an RWA modded SB 2. I have also set up several friends with squeezeboxes and they love them.

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+1 for Squeezebox integration! My fanless Intel netbook running Logitechmediaserver streaming to Squeezebox Touch driving a PS Audio Digital Link 3 and controlled by iPeng on various iOS devices is an absolute pleasure to use and is generally fuss free. Roon looks very intriguing and promising, but until there is Squeezebox support I have little reason to buy into it or change my setup. You guys should trust us that there us a large and dedicated Squeezebox user base that you might as well tap into.

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Yes and Yes. I would really like to see the squeezebox supported as I have three of those.

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I’m also a long-time Squeezebox (and Vortexbox) user. Many of us have spent countless hours learning it’s power, versatility, and value over the years.

I have a complete Meridian Digital Home Theater System and an F80 but was never comfortable with buying into the hardware complexity, expense, and perceived lack of user support of their Sooloos products.

I echo all of the interest here and encourage Roon to integrate into the Squeeze community. I think that getting us on board would be a huge boost to your development and market share. It’s hard to believe that wasn’t your plan for world domination from the get-go.

I’d be willing to beta test.

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I have a Squeezebox Touch using a Mac and am happy to help with Beta testing if needed.

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