Multichannel FLAC and Rasberry Pi Player

[GeezerB]

I'm new to the forum and relatively new to audio. I have a Marantz 4300 that I use with JBL L112 and L100 along with an Oppo BDP to play SACD multichannel music. WOW! Cant even describe how much better it is than what i had listened to for years, a modern Denon AVR receiver. Night and day, even with the same speakers hooked up. The 4300 is powerful and sounds incredible in Stereo or Quad mode.

I have been trying and failing to find a way to make a FLAC player solution out of a Rasberry Pi. Fine with stereo output to my Topping DAC, but multichannel DAC seem very hard to come by. I would like to have a way to output the Rasberry mulltichannel RCA outputs to send to my 4300.

Has anyone done this successfully?

 

[stereoptic]

As far as I know, multichannel files cannot be played through a Raspberry Pi or any of the HATs.
You might find more information over on the Squeezebox forum - Squeezebox : Community : Forums

 

[zcftr29]

You can run Kodi on an RPi and output multichannel flacs over HDMI to your receiver

 

[johnbs]

You can run Kodi on an RPi and output multichannel flacs over HDMI to your receiver

I believe RPi only supports 16 bit files, so you may not be happy with the result.

I chose a cheap mini Win box in the end as my Roon endpoint for this reason.

John

 

[zcftr29]

I believe RPi only supports 16 bit files, so you may not be happy with the result.

I've not found this... I have a ton of hi-res Flacs stored on my NAS which I stream via HDMI using Kodi on the RPi. I now have a RPi4, but previously used an RPi 2 which also worked ok. You can also bitstream lossy formats, eg DD, DD+, DTS with passthrough and let the AVR do the decoding.

 

[atrocity]

I believe RPi only supports 16 bit files, so you may not be happy with the result.

I don't fully understand (i.e., I could be full of something unpleasant), but I believe this is a driver deficiency with one or more Pi-compatible operating systems and not a hardware limitation. I'm pretty sure it's not an issue when using something like LibreELEC that provides an entire operating system to run Kodi.

The only trouble I've ever had trying to play multichannel FLAC using Kodi on a Pi is that there seems to be an incompatibility between every Pi version up through 3 and Onkyo's cruddy HDMI implementation. I didn't have a problem with an Odroid C2 (now obsolete) or a Pi 4.

Though it sounds like the OP is actually looking for a multichannel *analog* hookup and I don't have a good answer for that.

 

[Sonik Wiz]

I'm new to the forum and relatively new to audio. I have a Marantz 4300 that I use with JBL L112 and L100 along with an Oppo BDP to play SACD multichannel music. WOW! Cant even describe how much better it is than what i had listened to for years, a modern Denon AVR receiver. Night and day, even with the same speakers hooked up. The 4300 is powerful and sounds incredible in Stereo or Quad mode.

I have been trying and failing to find a way to make a FLAC player solution out of a Rasberry Pi. Fine with stereo output to my Topping DAC, but multichannel DAC seem very hard to come by. I would like to have a way to output the Rasberry mulltichannel RCA outputs to send to my 4300.

Has anyone done this successfully?

I don't know what Oppo model you have but mine is a 105 & plays stereo/MCH FLAC files through the USB just fine. Some people will have elaborate variations on this such as NAS RAID set ups but mine is pretty simple, just HDD with files on it plugged into the Oppo. Then analog outs to the analog ins on my Anthem pre-pro.

The Oppo file player GUI draws a lot of criticism here because it's considered clunky & slow. Of course a lot depends on how your folders/files are organized, how many gazzilion files you have to play and the Oppo remote phone app works much better than physically punching buttons.

BTW, there's a spot in your user profile to list all your audio gear. Strictly optional but it comes in handy at times like this.

 

[AJCxZ0]

You can run Kodi on an RPi and output multichannel flacs over HDMI to your receiver

I run and recommend the OSMC platform which provides a full Kodi on Debian platform. It plays my multi-channel FLAC, DSD, Dolby Atmos MP4, MKV and everything else I've tried to play over HDMI to my AVR which powers my 5.2.4 home theater.

 

[HomerJAU]

LibreElec is another open source (free) Linux distribution with Kodi included and has builds for all RPi models. This supports just about every video file and audio file including multichannel FLAC, Atmos etc.

https://libreelec.tv/

 

[marcb]

I don't know what Oppo model you have but mine is a 105 & plays stereo/MCH FLAC files through the USB just fine. Some people will have elaborate variations on this such as NAS RAID set ups but mine is pretty simple, just HDD with files on it plugged into the Oppo. Then analog outs to the analog ins on my Anthem pre-pro.

The Oppo file player GUI draws a lot of criticism here because it's considered clunky & slow. Of course a lot depends on how your folders/files are organized, how many gazzilion files you have to play and the Oppo remote phone app works much better than physically punching buttons.

BTW, there's a spot in your user profile to list all your audio gear. Strictly optional but it comes in handy at times like this.

But unfortunately the Oppo doesn't do gapless through USB. Which is an annoyance with live albums or continuous tracks.

 

[HomerJAU]

You could probably use the ‘one large file + cue’ trick to get gapless from a USB?

 

[marcb]

I’ve tried it. Still not gapless. But maybe I’m doing something wrong.

 

[HomerJAU]

Thanks for confirming.

 

[atrocity]

I’ve tried it. Still not gapless. But maybe I’m doing something wrong.

I've had good luck with the Big File + Cue Sheet method using both a 103 and 203, so I'd definitely double-check.

 

[Deek57]

But unfortunately the Oppo doesn't do gapless through USB. Which is an annoyance with live albums or continuous tracks.

My 103 does, press the options button and select gapless play.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

I've had good luck with the Big File + Cue Sheet method using both a 103 and 203, so I'd definitely double-check.

Agreed... With regard to my OPPO's, I exclusively use cue sheet navigation files with my FLAC encodes. I use the same method with BRD-A, DVD-A and DTS-CD back-ups too...

Cue sheet navigation works perfectly for me, when both the audio and cue files are stored on USB connected HDD's. Or network connected HDD's accessed via SMB (v1.0) or NFS file serving protocols. Please note: UPnP/DLNA file serving will not work with .cue files!

 

[marcb]

You could probably use the ‘one large file + cue’ trick to get gapless from a USB?

Sorry. Brain cramp. I use USB for stereo files (incl hi-rez) from my squeezebox. That's gapless - w/ individual files or single files w/ cue. I use ethernet for surround files....not gapless. Even with a single file + cue.

 

[atrocity]

Sorry. Brain cramp. I use USB for stereo files (incl hi-rez) from my squeezebox. That's gapless - w/ individual files or single files w/ cue. I use ethernet for surround files....not gapless. Even with a single file + cue.

What model is your Oppo? I do ethernet exclusively and have gapless playback of both FLAC and DSF as long as I use the cue sheet method. This is with both a 103 and 203. Maybe it didn't work with prior models?

Also, when you say "ethernet", do you mean just a straight file serving method like SMB and/or NFS? That's what I use and it works, but if I try to use an actual media server, it won't. I assume it's because a media server uses the deliberately-crippled UPNP/DLNA method. In that case, I believe the tracks are being served up individually to the player even if the actual stored file is a single big one with a cue sheet.

I hope I'm making sense, the whole thing can be more than a little confusing.

 

[marcb]

What model is your Oppo? I do ethernet exclusively and have gapless playback of both FLAC and DSF as long as I use the cue sheet method. This is with both a 103 and 203. Maybe it didn't work with prior models?

Also, when you say "ethernet", do you mean just a straight file serving method like SMB and/or NFS? That's what I use and it works, but if I try to use an actual media server, it won't. I assume it's because a media server uses the deliberately-crippled UPNP/DLNA method. In that case, I believe the tracks are being served up individually to the player even if the actual stored file is a single big one with a cue sheet.

I hope I'm making sense, the whole thing can be more than a little confusing.

Thanks. Oppo 105D.

I’m using JRiver, so UPNP/DLNA.

 

[atrocity]

Thanks. Oppo 105D.

I’m using JRiver, so UPNP/DLNA.

Ah, that would explain it. JRiver is gapless when you're playing directly through it, but pretty much all UPNP/DLNA is going to be a problem thanks to (as I understand it) Intel deprecating the gapless code for some reason.

Depending on your storage, you may be able to get it to work via simple file sharing, though the interface won't be anywhere near as nice and friendly as JRiver or its competitors.