UPnP Cast?

[DryTortuga]

My understanding is native squeezelite support is required for proper sync across players using LMS.

 

[d6jg]

The UPnP bridge doesn’t provide Replay Gain or Crossfade in pass thru mode.

I’ve only got one WiiM so can’t comment on how well the UPnP bridge control’s synchronisation in real use.

Native Squeezelite would allow the former and make the sync perfect.

 

[DryTortuga]

Native support would also mean one less thing (the plug-in) for normal mortals to deal with. The LMS server has been the only server solution that happily deals with my 5,000 single file flac/cue rips. Can’t do it with Roon.

 

[d6jg]

Native support would also mean one less thing (the plug-in) for normal mortals to deal with. The LMS server has been the only server solution that happily deals with my 5,000 single file flac/cue rips. Can’t do it with Roon.

That is very true. Although the WiiM runs with default settings the 3 bridge plugins are, let’s say, a little counter intuitive.

When you really get down to it LMS beats Roon in a number of key areas. It’s only the extended metadata where arguably Roon wins but with Material and the Music & Artist Info plugins LMS is so close now.

 

[bcretty]

Thank you for further explaining this to me.

 

[DryTortuga]

And I’d rather have 2 beers at my local brewery than pay Roon $10/month for me being too lazy to tag my files

 

[Samazar]

Hi @DryTortuga and @d6jg - I see the both of you are quite knowledgeable. I am new here and was wondering if you could kindly guide me. I am interested in the Wiim Mini but have come to learn that one cannot attach a USB hard drive or Flash Drive to it to access local music content which is exactly what I want. I could either invest in a a dedicated NAS drive which is expensive or get a reasonably priced router (tp-Link) that is specified to share a USB drive on the network but I'm not sure if it will work with the Mini. All I need is a simple way to play my music files that are categorised in folders: Pop, Rock, Instrumental, Vocals etc. It would be nice to dynamically choose and que-up songs while listening to music but I presume that the Wiim app probably has that feature. Happy with a list format, graphics are not mandatory.

The both of you talk about LMS and Squeezelite, could you kindly explain this to me in a little detail. Is this software that requires hardware? can it run on a Raspberry PI with an attached flash drive or HD via the USB3 interface?

All I need is a simple and reliable way of playing my local music content on the Mini. However, I don't shy away from technical stuff as long as their is a guide that explains the process in a step by step format. I do enjoy figuring things out unless there is a simple and straight forward solution that works.

I've noticed the Mini is DLNA specified, I'm looking further into this. At the moment, just interested in a single system although multi-room would be nice in the future.

 

[d6jg]

Hi Samazar

Reading files straight from a USB drive isn't currently possible with either the WiiM Mini or Pro. It will become possible in the future when they implement Samba connectivity. That also applies to a USB drive attached to a Router unless the Router has built in media server software (unlikely).

So you will need a media server running somewhere on your Network. The dilemma is which software to use and where to run it but you have asked specifically about a Raspberry Pi which is a good choice hardware wise.

The job of the media server software is to periodically scan the files on your USB and index them in such a way that the WiiM can see them and then make them available for streaming using a supported tcp protocol.

Media server software falls into 2 categories.

UPnP/DLNA
Other

There are numerous UPnP/DLNA servers available some of which will run on a Pi but the general consensus of opinion amongst those with a lot of experience is that no one example of UPnP/DLNA software provides a sufficiently detailed interface for music lovers. Most of them are fine from an audio point of view but it is the control interface that is lacking.

The "Other" category probably only contains 3 pieces of software. Roon, LMS and Plex but you can discount Plex for use with a WiiM as it is only supported via a UPnP/DLNA interface that you have to enable inside the server software and it only then gives you broadly the same as any other UPnP/DLNA sofware. In normal operation Plex uses a native client which provides feature rich information and quality audio but is as much a Video server as it is an audio server.

This leaves Roon and LMS. Both can be run on a Pi and both are audio only. In the audiophile world Roon is favoured by a lot of people who review high end audio products largely because it moved ahead of LMS a few years ago (but LMS has now caught up) and because the $500 price ticket of Roon is insignificant to those that have golden ears and deep pockets. LMS on the other hand is Open Source.

If you have a Raspberry Pi 3B or above but preferably a 4 with at least 2Gb Ram then my advice is to investigate piCorePlayer. https://picoreplayer.org.

It it either a Raspberry Pi LMS player or player/server. You download it, burn it to SD card, insert into Pi and configure entirely by browser. It handles files stored on an attached USB device.

You will get loads of help on the LMS forums at https://forums.slimdevices.com

 

[Mr Ee]

I'm not very knowlegeble but I did have a HDD plugged into my router (ISP provided), which was able to share the files via an inbuilt media server.
The wiim saw them fine, but one issue I had was the media server only served up 10,000 files; seemed to be some sort of limit the isp config imposed,, so my tracks stopped part way iinto 'S".
i.e. don't buy someone's old isp router, you may regret it!

I bought a nas (for other reasons too) and now the wiim can see all my files via its media server.
If all you need a nas to do is serve up some music files then it'd probably be pretty cheap to get one 2nd hand with a drive in it.
Doesn't need lots of ram or cpu just for that.

For a while I also had Kodi running on an old laptop, with an attached HDD, and the wiim saw that no issues either.
Of course, the laptop had to be on to work whereas the nas just 'exists'.

 

[Brantome]

Coincidentally, I dug out an old 1GB Raspberry PI B that I had got 5 years ago but which I hadn’t used for ages and following the “how to” on this page, I set up piCorePlayer and LMS and pointed it at my Synology NAS more for fun than necessity tbh. I notice the page does have a section for usb drives (just had a quick read and not sure if the instructions were to access existing media on that drive or reformat it for LMS use).
After letting the setup scan my NAS for media and installing a few plugins for LMS (just browse the plugins tab and select those you fancy), I can now browse the 40k tracks on my NAS, with it displaying track, album and artist information much like reading sleeve notes I also was able to integrate Qobuz which I have on trial.
The process was fairly straightforward and took just a few hours.

 

[d6jg]

I notice the page does have a section for usb drives (just had a quick read and not sure if the instructions were to access existing media on that drive or reformat it for LMS use).

Pre-existing media on USB is generally OK.

Essential plugins
Material - provides the latest control interface
Music & Artist Information - provides lyrics, bios & reviews in conjunction with Material
LastMix - a "feed" for DSTM (Don't Stop The Music)
UPnP/DLNA Bridge for use with WiiM until such time as Squeezelite is provided natively on the WiiM

Recommended
BBC Sounds
Radio Paradise

Then whatever takes your fancy out of Spotify, Qobuz, Deezer, Tidal etc

 

[DryTortuga]

On the picoreplayer LMS tab you can install file system support for FAT, NTFS, and separately exFAT. Works great for me with a 2TB SSD on the pi 4 USB 3 port. I use exFAT to sneakernet the SSD to my main music archive on a Mac when I want to add a new rip. Quicker than Samba network copies. Add the file systems and mount the USB drive BEFORE you install LMS. LMS will also run well on older Windows, Mac, and Linux boxes. I was running LMS for years on a 2009 Mac mini with Linux. For you young pups that wonder what streaming was like in the “old days” check out the LMS history of Logitech Squeezebox, Slimp3, and even the original Roku product. They’re all in my closet of historical significance next to my TRS-80.

 

[d6jg]

On the picoreplayer LMS tab you can install file system support for FAT, NTFS, and separately exFAT. Works great for me with a 2TB SSD on the pi 4 USB 3 port. I use exFAT to sneakernet the SSD to my main music archive on a Mac when I want to add a new rip. Quicker than Samba network copies. Add the file systems and mount the USB drive BEFORE you install LMS. LMS will also run well on older Windows, Mac, and Linux boxes. I was running LMS for years on a 2009 Mac mini with Linux. For you young pups that wonder what streaming was like in the “old days” check out the LMS history of Logitech Squeezebox, Slimp3, and even the original Roku product. They’re all in my closet of historical significance next to my TRS-80.

The Roku soundbridge! Never had one but always wished I had.

I really don’t think WiiM have realised quite what they have created (internal DAC aside) in relation to LMS usage or how many disciples Herr Herger actually has in his flock!

 

[DryTortuga]

The Roku Soundbridge was quite a feat of industrial design. Hey, let’s put the optical and network ports on the side with a plastic cap to make them crimp at severe angles. Oh, and we’ll make the whole thing a round tube so if you lose the stand it will just roll around on your desk.

 

[Samazar]

Thank you @d6jg, @Brantome and @Mr Ee - for steering me in the right direction.

 

[Samazar]

I use exFAT to sneakernet the SSD to my main music archive on a Mac when I want to add a new rip

@DryTortuga - So if you format the shared drive as exFAT, one can access it (mount on the desktop) on an Apple Mac laptop?

 

[DryTortuga]

ExFAT can be installed on the picoreplayer LMS settings page and is supported by Mac OS out of the box. Works great for copying large amounts of files. If you’re going to use a Pi 4 - use 64 bit picoreplayer, shoot for as much ram as you can (4 or 8 GB) - choose largest ram setting in LMS settings in the LMS web ui. Best to disable Squeezelite in the picoreplayer setup if you’re not going to use the Pi as a player too. You can use the material browser UI on both a computer and (at least on iOS) save it as a home screen web app.

 

[DryTortuga]

I should’ve mentioned this about setting up LMS with picoreplayer on a Pi. Whether you use local storage or a NAS - you should use the one click button on the picoreplayer LMS settings page to move the LMS cache off the SD card (by default) to either a mounted USB stick or SSD (or plain ole HD). Repeated cache writes to the SD card by LMS can shorten the life of the card - some say pretty drastically.

 

[shinedou]

Success.

Confirmed - WiiM Mini with latest dev UPnP/DLNA bridge 2.1.1 for LMS allows gapless without any transcoding or flow involved i.e. out of the box settings. The bridge also passes metadata and cover art successfully.

I'm not sure where it got broken then fixed as there have been many changes to the plugin in last week or so but I have played some 24/96 stuff from Qobuz, some Radio Paradise (FLAC) and listened to a local 16/44.1 rip of DSOTM all via my LMS server and all work.

I'd say that the WiiM Mini is 98% compatible with LMS out of the box in this pass through mode - it still misses replaygain and crossfade so I can't say its 100%. My testing is via Optical out to an external DAC. I still can't say that the onboard DAC is anything other than OK. However, as this is so close to being a perfect LMS player when used with an external DAC I'd encourage anyone who currently uses their WiiM with a UPnP server to try it with LMS. The LMS ecosystem is so much better than any UPnP server I have ever tried (and there have been many) and there is a very active community forum at https://forums.slimdevices.com/ where lots of help is at hand.

Squeezelite on board would make it a game changer for the LMS community (who probably outnumber the Roon community) so come on WiiM get it done!

@d6jg are you still getting gapless playback using UPnP/DLNA bridge. I have tried with both the 2.1.1 version and the newest dev version and I still get a gap between gapless tracks. I have used the same settings as you show on the LMS forums. Other than that everything else is working.

 

[d6jg]

@d6jg are you still getting gapless playback using UPnP/DLNA bridge. I have tried with both the 2.1.1 version and the newest dev version and I still get a gap between gapless tracks. I have used the same settings as you show on the LMS forums. Other than that everything else is working.

My WiiM Mini is located in my office and I won’t be going there until tomorrow (Fri). Last time I played DSOTM I’m sure it played correctly but I’ll play it again tomorrow and confirm.
I am using Optical Out. If you are using the internal DAC it wouldn’t surprise me if there was an audible gap.