Multichannel FLAC and Rasberry Pi Player

[Owen Smith]

I wonder if the Receiver was actually the culprit. I've never owned a Duet/Receiver/Controller, but when I first got into that ecosystem long ago I read the forums religiously. It seemed to me that there were a LOT of complaints about the Duet. It's really too bad because it seemed like an excellent idea.

That's partly because a lot of people were trying to use the Receiver on wifi and it has crap wifi. Admittedly the Boom has the same crap wifi. I used the Receiver on wired ethernet. Also the DAC in the Receiver was pretty poor, I used it with an external DAC. Then people tried to configure the Receiver without using the Controller and it really wasn't designed for that. Finally people tried to use the Receiver as a wifi to ethernet bridge and that was disastrous as it uses the same MAC address on both interfaces (barking mad decision by someone) which caused no end of DHCP problems which varied depending on your broadband router. I didn't fall into any of the above traps and the Receiver worked fine for me, except I can't know if it was the cause of my sync problems.

It was heartbreaking when Logitech dumped the product line, but all these years later they're still supporting it, which is nicer than I ever would have expected. And I'm really grateful that it all works so well on the Raspberry Pi. I used to worry that once the official Logitech hardware died I'd have no replacement.

It was clear to me that the product line was a poor match for Logitech and they should never have bought it. As for still supporting it, Logitech haven't pulled the plug on any of the servers for the forums etc but they haven't paid any developers to work on it for nearly a decade I thought, it's all just public domain. Still, not pulling the plug on the servers is pretty good given how long its been.

 

[atrocity]

As for still supporting it, Logitech haven't pulled the plug on any of the servers for the forums etc but they haven't paid any developers to work on it for nearly a decade I thought, it's all just public domain. Still, not pulling the plug on the servers is pretty good given how long its been.

I haven't checked the forums in weeks, but as of not that long ago there was still a Logitech employee in Switzerland named Michael Herger working on the code. I'm sure that isn't his full time or even primary job, but he does answer questions there are still regular updates to the server software, people are still writing and updating plugins, etc.

It will be interesting to see what happens if and when Logitech really does fully abandon the whole thing. I suspect that there will still be those working on it. There's just too much that LMS does that others don't. Well, except for Roon, which by all accounts is absolutely spectacular, but the price is absurd.

 

[stereoptic]

I haven't checked the forums in weeks, but as of not that long ago there was still a Logitech employee in Switzerland named Michael Herger working on the code. I'm sure that isn't his full time or even primary job, but he does answer questions there are still regular updates to the server software, people are still writing and updating plugins, etc.

It will be interesting to see what happens if and when Logitech really does fully abandon the whole thing. I suspect that there will still be those working on it. There's just too much that LMS does that others don't. Well, except for Roon, which by all accounts is absolutely spectacular, but the price is absurd.

Yes, he is still very active responding to all kinds of queries. At one time he did mention that Logitech is still interested in keeping the software running. It is often updated, and the forum recently had an entire over haul.

 

[Owen Smith]

Can the Raspberry Pi output multi channel PCM audio over HDMI? If so it may not be difficult to get LMS on the Pi directly playing multi channel FLACs, given it can cast them over upnp to the Oppo players.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

Can the Raspberry Pi output multi channel PCM audio over HDMI?

Good question...

If so it may not be difficult to get LMS on the Pi directly playing multi channel FLACs, given it can cast them over upnp to the Oppo players.

Would there be any reason why you wouldn't directly connect the Raspberry Pi to an AVR via HDMI?!

 

[Owen Smith]

Would there be any reason why you wouldn't directly connect the Raspberry Pi to an AVR via HDMI?!

That's exactly what I'm suggesting might be possible. But it needs the Pi to be able to output multi channel PCM over HDMI, and for LMS use it needs the player on the Pi to decode multi channel FLACs and output them to HDMI.

Even if I where doing stereo with LMS on a Pi player I'd want to use HDMI, optical or coax to my AVR. I can't see why I'd want a DAC on the Pi when I already have one in the AVR that I use for all other sources.

 

[stereoptic]

Can the Raspberry Pi output multi channel PCM audio over HDMI? If so it may not be difficult to get LMS on the Pi directly playing multi channel FLACs, given it can cast them over upnp to the Oppo players.

I haven't had any success with that going straight into my AVR with HDMI. Maybe if I tried the Oppo? There is discussion about it over on the forum. RIght now I use a hifiberry HAT using an optical cable into the AVR and it plays all resolutions and .dsf files (stereo).

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

I haven't had any success with that going straight into my AVR with HDMI...

Out of interest what multi-channel audio formats have you tried?

 

[stereoptic]

Out of interest what multi-channel audio formats have you tried?

It was awhile ago, but as I recall 6 channel FLACs on a USB stick.
Multichannels are not included in the filetypes.
Marantz SR7013

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

It was awhile ago, but as I recall 6 channel FLACs on a USB stick.
Multichannels are not included in the filetypes.
View attachment 97654

Eh... What device is that graphic from/for?

 

[stereoptic]

Eh... What device is that graphic from/for?

Sorry, I should have detailed; I edited my post. Marantz SR7013.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

Sorry, I should have detailed; I edited my post. Marantz SR7013.

Just-so-you-know... Most AVR's only support 2 channel (stereo) playback via USB and network connected drives.

I'm confused, I thought you were using a Raspberry Pi to access your surround sound music and using it's HDMI output?!

 

[stereoptic]

Most AVR's only support 2 channel (stereo) playback via USB and network connected drives. I'm confused, I thought you were using a Raspberry Pi to access your surround sound music and using it's HDMI output?!

My initial post was just a report that I was able to successfully play multichannel FLAC files using the UPNP/DLNA Media Bridge Plug-In on a piCorePlayer which is a Raspberry pi. PiCoreplayer uses a tiny distro with options to use it as a server, or a player, or player/server.
The player can output through:
HDMI output
standard 1/8" audio plug (not recommended)
USB out to a DACor 3rd party HATs which plug onto the board and can have USB output, analog, digital output.

The UPNP/DLNA plug-in gathers all of the other UPNP players on my home network, one of which is the Oppo 203.
I normally play multichannel FLACs, .dsf, and .mkv files on the Oppo using a USB connected 4TB drive, and the Oppo menu to play.

I discovered that I can use the media interface on the piCoreplayer to select the Oppo through the UPNP network connection to play multichannel files, making selections much easier and no need to keep the TV on to search.

 

[atrocity]

Can the Raspberry Pi output multi channel PCM audio over HDMI?

Yes. I do it all the time using LibreELEC/Kodi.