Musicserver4lox and Spotify

[tkn]

Been paging through translations and still not sure.

Let's say I get a small NUC and run an Ubuntu VM on it with Musicserver4lox... Can it be a Spotify Connect client? Can it support multiple different Spotify Connect streams?

Or would I be better off trying to use multiple Chromecasts?

[Duncan]

there is a squeezebox plugin for spotify family which in efffect gives you upto 6 spotify plugins each able to play different music - any squeezebox player (virtual or real) then has access to spotify

thats not the same as spotify connect, but the whole point of musicserver4lox is it turns a cheap usb sound card into a number of central wired players, and lets you use squeezebox hardware, upnp, chromecast and airplay players as part of the same multi-room setup as well

[tkn]

Hi Duncan,

This sounds pretty perfect. So how does the control interface work then for Spotify?

Do I use the Loxone app? The Spotify app?

How do I group and I group zones?

The demo miniserver app isn't setup very well for evaluating this.

[tkn]

Also. Isn't Logitech Music Server GPL?

[Duncan]

logitech server is gpl and well maintained by a development group

spotify works by using a plugin for lms, which appears on the lms interface/remotes/wide range of remote control apps of logitech but not loxone
ive bought a number of the logitech duet devices from ebay, which gives a physical candy bar remote for logitech with a touch screen colour screen and a full spotify interface - we tend to use that for complex music selection, and use wall buttons for play/pause/vol/favourites

you could embed the link to the spotify app into your loxone interface to make it a little easier

there is some grouping facility coming or already there in musicserver4lox, but its probably best done through the logitech interface, and once set up its quite rare to change sync groups

there are a wide range of controls for lms available already in loxone config via network controls, but the musicserver4lox adds an additional layer of controls for things like text to speech, and some feedback elements back to loxone config, such as player status, whats currently playing, current volume

[tkn]

Thanks again!

I am going to do a PC build specifically for this: http://a.co/h7bsq3X. I might run the music server in a VM so I can use the PC for other automation tasks in which case I will add a regular HD for more space.

The only part I can't figure out are the voltage triggers that they have to turn off and on the amplifier. Probably figure out a way to send a 5V trigger voltage through the USB port whenever audio is being played.

[Duncan]

instead of a new build i just bought a recondition laptop from itzoo with a years warranty so it comes with keyboard, screen, mouse and ups by way of the battery - installed linux desktop version so i can open the lid and work on it if required and added rdp so i can remote in from my pc or mac

i think the trigger for the amp was designed to go from musicserver4lox to loxone then out via a digital output to switch the amp, assuming that you can physically connect a wire, else you could use a network relay or dmx relay driven by loxone for a remote install or if you have run out of loxone outputs

[tkn]

I am going to need 20 zones. So I was unsure if I could use that many USB audio hubs.

I plan on running the zones in mono. Can the server downmix to mono?

[seb303]

You could use 3 of these, giving 24 outputs:
http://www.esi-audio.com/products/gigaporthd+/

I use an instance of the Squeezelite (Windows) player for each zone.  These are set up to run as a service using NSSM (using a batch file to launch each instance with the correct parameters).

As far as I can see, Squeezelite can only address each output as the audio card presents them, so you'd probably need some kind of virtual(software) interface in between to present each stereo output as 2 mono.

I also have an extra zone running from standalone hardware (Raspberry Pi + HiFiBerry audio interface).  This is in a location where I didn't run speaker cables, but did have Ethernet.

Seb

[Duncan]

Using the musicserver4lox under Linux automatically turns your cheap usb sound cards into a single multichannel card with each zone having between 1 and 4 channels so you can have any mix of mono and stereo zones. Each internal zone uses a squeezelite instance but it's all configured through a browser instance so no knowledge or complex setup required. 3 8channel sound cards are around £60 in total and would give you 24 mono zones

[Duncan]

Muicserver4lox will do the downmixing automatically and gives you equalization on a per zone basis so you tweak each zones sound to suit. You can do it with windows but the whole point of the musicserver4lox software is that it does it all for you using ordinary sound cards. once you have linux and musicserver installed on a machine, all the rest of the configuration is done via a web browser either through the musicserver4lox interface or the logitech media server interface.

the recommended card is:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/CSL-8-channel-simultaneous-recording-equipment/dp/B01HM5KP5A/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1495797553&sr=8-4&keywords=usb+sound+card around £18 each for 8 channels

the internal zones are set up using sound cards, then you can use logitech music server to add physical external zones such as real squeezebox players or raspberry pi players etc,  or depending on which plugin you add to the logitech music server, you can then add other external hardware players such as upnp (sonos, demon etc) and apple speakers.

I'm using a Dayton audio amp, the 60w version of the loxone amp with each of the 6 stereo channels serving 2 mono zones so 12 rooms for around £500

[tkn]

Hardware build

The build I posted was as close to the actual Loxone music server as possible with current equipment - the only difference was instead of using the Silverstone ML04 case they use, I put it in a rackmount since I plan on mounting mine. The specs I've seen for the box use an older Asus motherboard, and it is pretty difficult finding micro-atx motherboards with 4 PCIe slots.

I don't really have an old laptop lying around, so fundamentally I will end up buying everything from scratch and the incremental difference between 500 and 700 isn't so great that I want to deal with external sound cards.  Might as well have a clean rack install. I am still modifying the build to be cheaper and cheaper where I can.

The CSL card isn't available in the US as far as I can figure out. I need to do some more exploration. 

Software

I posted on the loxwiki site asking about the GPL compliance, and I am unsure how removed their software is from the GPL licensed software. If it is just a front-end, then they are probably okay. but if they modified the actual code or are using libraries, then they are in violation. Doesn't matter too much, but if they are going to use GPL software, I would prefer that they don't do their stupid MAC address lockdowns on updates. It reeks of hypocrisy and free-riding on other people's work and reflects very poorly on the company's ethics.

[tkn]

Been slowly reducing the build cost through substitution.

Will two cores be able to handle 20 zones? The Loxone server is using a Celeron with two cores so I think so... 

Anyway cost of build is about ~$625 right now with a G4600 Pentium processor and using a 1TB WD Red. That is almost overkill HD space for me since I intend to only use Spotify.

I could dump the Xonar cards for cheaper Creative SB1040s and probably shave off $80 but I don't think it is worth it. 

Still need to find a way to fire off a 3V+ trigger voltage for the amps.

[Duncan]

musicserver4lox sends a signal to a loxone virtual input when power to the amps is required so you can use anything that loxone can drive to switch the amps on:

loxone internal relay
dmx relay
network relay
loxone air device?

[tkn]

Awesome,

Can the trigger signal be tied to zones? I think I am going to end up having two amps to support the number of zones I have (19). So ideally I could set it up so that only the amp that is needed is on.

[Duncan]

you can set a global virtual input for all zones, or by zone, so you can create a virtual input in loxone for each amplifier and for each zone set the appropriate virtual input that its power amplifier is controlled by

[tkn]

Duncan - thanks so much for all the info.

Will the server software go past 20 zones? Right now my zone count is 23 which seems insane - hooking up every room possible though; i may have to do some combining if not.

[Duncan]

i know it will do at least 24 stereo zone - 6 x 8 channel sound cards so 48 mono zones - i think your requirements are modest by comparison!

for that spec the author recommends an i5 with 4 cores

the documentation is here:
http://music-server.net/help/
you will have to copy sections then paste into google translate, for some reason google chrome wont translate it directly

if you are trying to save cost, but use pci sound cards to put everything else inside, then there is a pci or pci-e version of the recommended usb card

its made by csl or logilink but im sure youll find a similar thing on ebay or amazon.com the main think it uses a Cmedia chipset which has native drivers in linux. Having said that im using a completely different card with an odd chipset, but ubuntu just loaded some drivers and it all works perfectly

[tkn]

Awesome - I think that is perfect. I will up my amazon build list to a 4 core.

I don't have to buy for a couple of months, so I will just keep the build updated until it is time to pull the trigger for anyone that is interested.

[tkn]

Additional question - does the software let you set up volume adjustment per zone? So if I use different speakers with differing sensitivities (and obviously different room shapes), I can normalize the volume numbers?

It'd be even better if I could apply REW profiles to each speaker. But I expect that might be going too far...

[tkn]

I also wonder if you could use a USB audio interface instead - like a Focusrite - to get 20+ channels. Probably be more of a pain to deal with than well-supported internal PCIe cards.

[Duncan]

each zone in the musicerserver has a graphical equaliser interface with some preset values and 2 user values which can be saved and recalled - but only for the internal zones using the sound cards - so you can add some room adjustment and adjust the levels if necessary

you have some gain control with the amp, but if you are using a stereo pair to provide 2 mono zones you would have to adjust the amp gain to be roughly correct between the 2 zones then fine tune using the musicservers graphic equaliser