Audio Server

[Scrivs 78]

Hi, 

I have been running with SONOS for many years, but over the past 18months or so SONOS has very much begun to annoy me with devices failing and the software no where near what it was.

I have since tried using WiiM and its ok, not sure it quite gets the hype, but works better than my sonos gear thats still connected.

Before i make a full commitment, which will be a total of 15 zones over 2 buildings what are the real life experiences of using Loxone Audio Server?  We do have a couple of "musts"

- Ability to ask for music via Alexa, this is how most of the family ask for music, although they are all used to using Loxone app.  ( I do have 1home so not sure if this can be used to link them?)

- We currently have Amazon Music Family, is this supported or would i need to move to Spotify, (worries me i cant find a simple list of streaming services that it supports in the loxone documents!)

- How good is the AirPlay function, we all have iphones, so this could be the interface if reliable.

- Sound quality?  Is it as good, better than SONOS or WiiM.

- My Door bell and fire alarm are already connected to Loxone, so like the idea of integration to audio, presume this "just works"?

Interested to hear your thoughts and experiences.

Thanks

Andrew

[Scott F]

I installed the audioserver with a slightly smaller coverage for the moment than what you are looking at with the Audioserver and 5 extensions.I am absolutely loathe to spend money on a subscription service for music so refuse to use the spotify option and to my knowledge there is not another subscription service available on the Audioserver at present. What you do have is access to free internet radio via Loxone's agreement with InTune however this also has limitations because there are radio stations out there that broadcast on InTune but require a subscription to listen to them without constant adverts and there is no way at present to set up an account for that (that i am aware of). Primarily i got it because of the airplay support and after some initial teething problems it is working really well. In the beginning theree was a bug in the firmware that caused chanels to have no audio despite showing the data streaming to them and i did find that support were very helpful with it and even sent me a custom patched firmware to resolve my issues until they released the fix in a fill update. I do find i listen to a couple of the free rock stations quite a lot and also airplay from the phone a lot as well. I can either create any custom group over airplay to stream to multipe select locations at once or set it up easily from the loxone app by linking zones together: i find i link together the pubic spaces for general music around the house and leave bedrooms etc on their own. As i was a fairly early adopter i went with the earlier quadral in ceiling speakers and i find the audio quality really quite good but i am hardly an audiophile with a good ear for these things, it just sounds good to me and that is what matters. I went with just 2 of the 7" passive speakers for larger rooms for basic stereo sound and in smaller rooms like bathrooms and hallways went with single speakers. The audio quality remains good throughout the volume range with these and even with such small speakers the top volume is more than enough for me. What i have not implemented and tried yet is larger floor standing speakers or outputs to surround sound systems although i do have the cabling in place for it i just have not gotten around to finishing it off.

I flat out refuse to have any cloud devices connected on my network. I really don't like the cyber security risk they pose and all of the data mining they do. I also do not want to be reliant on cloud services for any of the functionality of my property as il leaves you at the mercy of the provider who can decide to cancel your account at any time or shut down the service with the loss of everything you thought you purchased. For streaming Amazon music you could look into Matter cast although the Matter integration into loxone is still in its infancy but i am sure it will improve in time.

I have never tried WiiM but have used Sonos before and found it to be pretty unreliable and extremely buggy with no real end user support.

I have doorbell and fire alarm integrated and it works well without issues. Configuring it was pretty simple, just needed to click the links for the fire alarm and bell onto the audioserver block for each room and you acan also create your own custom TTS messages and upload custom audio files to activate on inputs such as if you try to activate the security alarm and you still have windows or doors open or you wanted a custom alarm for carbon monoxide monitoring. I have  different inputs i get from my fire detection system with heat and smoke sensors, carbon monoxide sensors and also system fault.

[Trey Sheldon]

Apologies for the rambling reply, but I've actually been going through this exact exercise for a new build plan.

Requirements basically are:

1) some level of integration with Loxone for volume control/doorbell/alarm/etc.

2) per-room/zone streaming (Chromecast **strongly** preferred)

3) architectural install (not stand alone speaker devices)

Unfortunately the venn-diagrams of requirements for each solution don't really want to line up unless I go into seriously over-engineering mode.   I think if Loxone had supplied a line-in per stereo extension then there'd be no question that my new house would have a full Loxone audio system, but for now it's an afterthought.

Ideal:

Over-engineered and unproven -- paging controller allows a device to override the speaker level output and auto switch.

Without support for additional Loxone level line-ins, it almost starts to feel like I need to have one speaker system for Loxone, and a second for media which is a huge turnoff. 

 

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[Scrivs 78]

Thanks all for your comments.  It appears, as usual with Loxone, it does its thing very well and reliably, but doesnt quite cover the functionality  of other options.

Trey, this is exactly what i am struggling with too.  The SONOS does this so well, one set of speakers in the room, and then the ability to connect local, specifically for me it was HDMI TV sound in each room, alexa music integration (easy for WAF), and airplay sources, plus centralisation in a rack, the SONOS amp really is great product for this, also the soundbar was ok too.  

The only room i needed a 2nd set of speakers was where the projector is for cinema and local record player setup (even this can be integrated into SONOS)

But, i cant go with SONOS now, they really have lost my confidence, and dont come anywhere near Loxone in the reliability front.

I will continue with WiiM at the moment, and go back to drawing board with Loxone Audio server to see if i can make it work.

Trey, on your ideal, what about connecting WiiM into the Audio Server, can that be shared across multiple extensions, ie all of downstairs and outside, and then kids can airplay into their bedrooms with there own music?  Still need a solution for the local TVs though.

Andrew 

[Trey Sheldon]

On Tue, Jan 21, 2025 at 11:29 PM Scrivs 78 <scri...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks all for your comments.  It appears, as usual with Loxone, it does its thing very well and reliably, but doesnt quite cover the functionality  of other options.

I somewhat understand where Loxone was going with this -- in commercial environments, one source to many outputs is the way to go.  Being able to matrix that plus a few streaming things in software is likely way easier (and saves on the cost) than including a line-in on every stereo extension.  I don't fault them for this decision, but I'd *love* to see a second generation stereo extension with a line/spdif in...

 

Trey, this is exactly what i am struggling with too.  The SONOS does this so well, one set of speakers in the room, and then the ability to connect local, specifically for me it was HDMI TV sound in each room, alexa music integration (easy for WAF), and airplay sources, plus centralisation in a rack, the SONOS amp really is great product for this, also the soundbar was ok too.  

The only room i needed a 2nd set of speakers was where the projector is for cinema and local record player setup (even this can be integrated into SONOS)

I've unfortunately got a couple different rooms that would could potentially require different sets of speakers:

• Cinema.  It'll have its own dedicated AVR and I'd honestly not have a problem adding "one more speaker" in the ceiling dedicated to Loxone -- it would basically fit in. 
• Casual seating space (lounge/gaming area) that will probably also have its own dedicated AVR but it's on the smaller side and "one more speaker" is going to get crowded.   I'd likely have to go the priority paging controller route here to have the speakers do double duty.
• Living room area that also joins the dining room & kitchen open spaces.. I'm leaning towards either a sound bar or just the architectural speakers there, but the significant other is leaning towards a lower end AVR... Not a fan of crowding the walls / ceiling here with speakers as it will detract from the overall look. 

But, i cant go with SONOS now, they really have lost my confidence, and dont come anywhere near Loxone in the reliability front.

For me SONOS is absolutely ruled out - chromecast isn't supported, the price point is too high, and as you said, the confidence was lost not only with the recent app snafus, but with the recent exodus of execs, something is probably going on internally. 

 

I will continue with WiiM at the moment, and go back to drawing board with Loxone Audio server to see if i can make it work.

Trey, on your ideal, what about connecting WiiM into the Audio Server, can that be shared across multiple extensions, ie all of downstairs and outside, and then kids can airplay into their bedrooms with there own music?  Still need a solution for the local TVs though.

Unfortunately, the single line-in on the audio server is the blocker.  In the proposed build (my own) we regularly have multiple sources streaming in different rooms, so using the audioserver to distribute that is effectively a non-starter, plus we'd lose the ability to use voice to do: "Hey G, play X in the Y (room)" as there would only be a single Wiim exposed as the target to G and selecting the room would require negotiating with Loxone to route to the correct output.

There are actually slight variations to my over-engineered solution that would simplify things *slightly* but the caveat is that the WiiM will only autodetect (and auto-switch) if it's not actively streaming, so would block doorbell / Loxone announcements:

<Wiim streamer + 3rd party amp>

<WiiM amp>

 

 

 

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[Jonathan Dixon]

Interesting thread, in general agree with all said, a few things to add

I'm using AudioServer for 3 months now - full setup info below. Mostly use for Spotify, some internet radio, plus spoken announcements/warning paging (slowly building these up). 

The quality of the analog speaker driving section is excellent, far better than I would expect for a low power device (as in, genuinely draws very little power) device that's just fed by CAT6 gauge wire.

I do have issues with it though

1/ Poor digital streaming quality. For the large part it's OK but occasionally it glitches - a clicking /popping noise, typically comes in a succession of 3-5 pops. Sometimes goes hours without, sometimes comes in a storm throughout a track. Definitely more noticeable on quiet tracks (e.g. soft classical / evening piano etc). Possibly actually occurs more on quiet tracks - but I think it's just more obvious.

Happens whether with linked groups or with a single zone playing alone. Happens on spdif output and direct speaker output.  I need to test built in mp3 from USB/sd card sometime for comparison. 

Doesn't happen with Spotify via other sources (e.g. chromecast) to my amp.

2/ Flaky streaming. Once or twice a week spotify just stops playing - error reason "because Spotify stopped providing data". Press resume and it's fine. I feel it could auto retry a bit before crapping out.

It also went through a phase of complaining the account was already in use on another device (when switching who was pushing music to it via Spotify connect) but it seems to have stopped doing that again.

3/ Local SMB network file streaming is a faff. I tried a few times and never got it to connect. I setup my first Samba file server over for 25 years ago so not exactly a novice - just need to find some time to work through it methodically, but it definitely isn't a simple setup

4/ The AudioPlayer is a bit limiting to use in Config - in particular it has no function outputs to give a clue what it's currently playing - I find there's a huge difference between automatically played music, user-initiated music, and paging (at various levels of priority from "put the rubbish bins out" to "the house  is on fire") and I'd like to differentiate these states in downstream automation logic e.g. on sound routing and volume, so I had to invent workarounds using other state as a proxy for this information

Now here's the rambling bit about how exactly I'm using it...

My setup is a hybrid of Trey's options. I already had an excellent Anthem MDX16 multi room amplifier, so using this for most of the house, but have setup a Stereo extension for the office speaker (partly because TreeTurbo routing was easier to there, partly as I wanted to get experience with multiroom audio the Loxone way, and partly as that's a sufficiently distinct space that it doesn't alway want to participate in the multiroom audio of the rest of the house.)

For the most part audio server streams digital output to MDX16 and that powers the rooms (inc a Sub for in the Living Rm). If the Chromecast or Nvidia Shield turn on/play they take priority over the Audio server music streaming... HOWEVER if the audio server has a priority announcement to make then this takes precedence over everything - at least that's the idea I'm trying to work towards, it's not reliable yet due to issue #4 above.

The good thing supporting this though is MDX16 has a comprehensive api easy to poke over TCP, to control input selection volume and power all from the miniserver (The Chromecast & nvidia are not so simple, but I have helper scripts in Home Assistant for them which have become very robust in the last year or so)

I'm now leaning towards just use Chromecast Audio (or something like it)  for user music streaming, and keep the Audio server just for paging announcements. This is fine, except for the Office that has to rely on Loxone for everything. I could try and route the aux output of MDX16 back into the Audio server input, I need to use a D2A converter (why oh why no digital input, Loxone) and then over treeturbo to the office stereo extension, but so far my brief attempt didn't actually get this to work. I'm also nervous about the high chance of feedback loops this introduces. Also I've become increasingly unhappy with Chromecast stability (high latency and failure rate when trying to connect app to start playing);  in comparison the AudioServer is a delight in e.g. triggering a favourite ID from app/ config, it immediately starts playing. So automations triggering music is far better via Audio Server.

One thing to note is the Loxone active speaker range ("Master-client" devices) have Bluetooth inputs, which I believe can be routed over  TreeTurbo - so this does open up another way to get more sources into Loxone domain. I would never use Bluetooth by choice though, definitely not for sound for TV (lip sync) or multiroom (sync) use cases. But it maybe useful to others

So anyway, tldr if doing multiroom routing outside of the Loxone ecosystem I'd suggest doing everything outside of it, just use Audio Server for occasional paging purposes, and don't try and mix the two or use TreeTurbo as your PCM audio distribution network.

This is much easier if you already have a streaming source you're happy with, and especially if you only stream local files (I might yet go back to my Squeezebox as the main streaming source, lol.  I should probably give a WiiM a go  too - been looking at it since before I got the Audioserver, tbh)

Sorry that was a ramble but hope some of it is of some use!
 

 

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[Trey Sheldon]

I think these conversations are super useful - and not just for those participating.

To be honest, I was one-offing those diagrams earlier in the thread to help communicate the concepts.

Jonathan - I'm super interested in any solutions for #4 for detecting active sources & triggering overrides.  I was looking at the AVPro Edge AC-MAX-24 to handle any sort of priority overrides as you can configure multiple "chime" input/output combinations and trigger them via API which would override any current outputs for a predetermined amount of time.   The biggest step right now would be for Loxone to identify when it's getting ready to announce something so that the audio matrix can kick in *before* the announcement.

My way over-engineered screenshot (and wish list) is below...(it's a work in progress don't judge too harshly 😆)

[Scrivs 78]

Agree, this is super useful to hear what challenges these systems have in the real world. All to easy to just get the gloss, or the awful experiences, rarely useful in between information.

I am also pleased to see i am not the only one drawing over engineered diagrams in visio!!

[Aaron]

I ran an upgraded Casa Tunes Loxone Audiosever for around 5 years and found it fine - until one day it would not boot anymore. I refused to buy another after a debacle with Loxone's customer service when my miniserver (gen 1) failed and thus, went down the Echo/Alexa route.

While I know Jeff's little spies are not for everyone, but I've found echo's around the house very convenient - especially with young children. They integrate with many music services, specialist radio apps and things like audible.

With the miniserver gen2, I've also leveraged matter integration and use Alexa to controls lights. I've not got the integration to work on anything other than lighting blocks but its been pretty robust for the last year or so.

In addition to this, I have a yamaha AV system controlled via loxone over IP.

My set-up is far less sophisticated than those detailed on her but its cheap, flexible and not locked into Loxone.

[Paul Watkin]

I am just starting to play with the Audio Server and a mixture of passive and Master / Client speakers that I have purchased for my yet to be finished self build and some of what is being discussed below has me a bit confused.

I am a Loxone partner in the UK but my Audio training isn't until June but my understanding / expectation based on previous discussions with Loxone was that the audioserver is capable of playing multiple sources different in different rooms simultaneously - not sure if there is a maximum limit on the number of sources before the processor gives up?

The way I am partitioning things is 

Audio server output 1 - Study Quadral passive speakers

Audio Server output 2  SPDIF and split and into two AV amplifiers - 1 AV amp will cover surround sound in Snug  + a zone 2 in dining area via  quadral passive speakers, 2nd AV amp covers lounge / home theatre on the first floorwith a mixture of KEF and Artcoustic passive speakers

Loxone Master speaker in Hall, Client Speaker on 1st landing, Client speaker on 2nd Landing

Loxone Master Client pair in Master bedroom

Loxone Outdoor Master Client pair in garden

The idea is that the speakers in the stairwell will pretty much get used for anouncements / doorbell etc and occasional use as infill sound when we have people over

From my initial playing I have used Airplay to play music from Amazon, Apple Music, BBC Sounds etc. I have to admit that I haven't looked at the loxone app at this point to see what shows up on it but I have full control including volume from my phone.

Airplay was rock solid for me but then I was using a test network with not much going on.

I have also got a huge amount of audio files on a UNAS which I will be looking to play over the audio server which I understand can be done either via the Lxone app or via my phone.

I also plan to have a record player attached to the Line in on the Audioserver.

The missing piece of the puzzle so far is if I will be able to introduce a delay on the audio being played on the speakers attached to the Audio server or Master Client speakers to compensate for any delay introduced by the AV amps

My understanding is that the doorbell / intercom and Alarm fucntionality is already in the Audio player function block - there are inputs for Alarm, Fire Alarm, Bell and Buzzer and I believe custom audio clips can be assigned to these or there is a Text to speech block that can read out announcements 

I have apple Home units for most rooms in the house and I am hoping i will be able to get some integration for voice control via Siri with these but haven't played with that yet as the only customers who have been interested in voice control wanted Amazon support and that only comes via 1Home to the best of my knowledge

I would be interested if anyone is finding the real world experience differs from any of the above

Paul