raspberry pi 2 as media player

[sam9s]

Now have to decide between Spotify and tidal

Tidal for CD 1500kbps 44 Khz quality charges 20 USD a month a bit too much for me atleast as on my gear even Spotify sounds almost same. Spotify uses enhanced coded Ogg Vorbis 320kbps, which is much much better than MP3. Spotify also sounds amazing. Personally compared side by side, but yes thats on my gear. (Moode on Rpi connected to FiiO E10 USB DAC to my Audio Engine A5+ Speakers)
The difference was almost negligible, tidal sounded a bit better but not like day and night difference ....

 

[sunilmani]

Hello,

I am in the process of building a good sounding media player that can be controlled using iPad/phone. The hardware i have is Raspi2 and Hifiberry Dac+ for the media player. This would be coupled with a 3886T amp.

Now, the need is to be able to play audio and video, from the web and from my local network (movies and audio in HDD) using my ipad/mobile phone.

I have tried out OSMC/Kodi/Volumio/OpenElec for the same; but none meet all my requirement. I am looking for something which provides me UI like Volumio and features like Kodi along with ability to play offline media content.

Appreciate any suggestions in this matter.

 

[sam9s]

There is nothing better than Kodi (openELEC) for video and Moode/Volumio for Audio, so if that did not rock your boat, you are out of luck my friend ..

BTW what exactly "did not meet your requirements" ..?

 

[Kushanava]

I raised this question before but didn't get an answer.
Can CD player (USB) me attached to rpi3 and player through moode/others ?

 

[MaSh]

I raised this question before but didn't get an answer.
Can CD player (USB) me attached to rpi3 and player through moode/others ?

Did you check this link? https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=35&t=105433

MaSh

Sent from my Redmi Note 3

 

[hydra]

^^ I remember seeing this being asked on the Moode DIYAudio support thread. Moode does not have the capability to use an attached CD Player. I don't think any of the other Music-OS have this facility.

MPD does (technically) have the ability to use a USB CD Drive and play from it, if you have the tech chops to set it up. How to play an audio cdrom | Music Player Daemon Community Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia

 

[Kushanava]

For Tidal , are u using VPN to connect ? If so , how are u able to have client and server on the same network ?

 

[sunilmani]

sam9s - Thanks for a response. By "did not meet your requirements" -i meant I was looking at something which played audio and video , online and offline using ipad/mobile. Could not find something which did all the three.

 

[rikhav]

For Tidal , are u using VPN to connect ? If so , how are u able to have client and server on the same network ?

Hi
I feel tidal is not worth all the trouble and certainly not worth the money they are asking for hifi subscription

Its no where close to the local file playback. One would be even happy if it was 95 percent quality of local file playback. Also i did not find everything i was looking for so in that aspect also did not meet my expectations

 

[sam9s]

I raised this question before but didn't get an answer.
Can CD player (USB) me attached to rpi3 and player through moode/others ?

Not via Moode AFAIK, but via Kodi u might as Kodi supports external DVD drive.

 

[sam9s]

For Tidal , are u using VPN to connect ? If so , how are u able to have client and server on the same network ?

Tidal does not work on client-server model, its exactly like spotify, and yes it works on VPN, however once it starts working on VPN for the first time, it continues to work even if you are not connected to VPN

 

[sam9s]

sam9s - Thanks for a response. By "did not meet your requirements" -i meant I was looking at something which played audio and video , online and offline using ipad/mobile. Could not find something which did all the three.

You need to be a bit more specific, Kodi can play both Audio and Video from media present locally and on the same network. When you say online music I believe music stored on cloud like Google Drive, DropBox or Amazon Cloud, in that case as well you can play music on Kodi using UPnP protocol via any UpnP player like BubbleUPnP. All this can be done via Mobile (Android).

Same goes with Moode but only for Audio.(no video) Moode can play Audio both locally stored and on the network, plus from Cloud using the same UPnP technique.

 

[sam9s]

Hi
I feel tidal is not worth all the trouble and certainly not worth the money they are asking for hifi subscription

Its no where close to the local file playback. One would be even happy if it was 95 percent quality of local file playback. Also i did not find everything i was looking for so in that aspect also did not meet my expectations

Did you compare it with Spotify? did you feel any difference major difference I mean..

 

[rikhav]

Did you compare it with Spotify? did you feel any difference major difference I mean..

Am not able to do that due to work and home commitments
Will do it as soon as I get some free time
Will surely post my views

Tried qobuz also but that was also nothing great

 

[sunilmani]

You need to be a bit more specific, Kodi can play both Audio and Video from media present locally and on the same network. When you say online music I believe music stored on cloud like Google Drive, DropBox or Amazon Cloud, in that case as well you can play music on Kodi using UPnP protocol via any UpnP player like BubbleUPnP. All this can be done via Mobile (Android).....

Kodi can play audio + Video but does not have a decent UI which can be used for controlling it from mobile devices.
Volumio can play audio from net + HDD on Network, has a good UI but does not play movies.

I have not tried the UPnP player + Kodi combination. This is something which i have not checked. Thanks for pointing out. Will check on this and let you know.

 

[hydra]

I'm not sure if this is a weird query.

My Mom and Dad use a WDTV (and an old CRT TV) to watch backed up movies/mini series. Quite a few of the codec combinations that I have with me don't work with it. I typically convert what I give them into avi/mp3 before I copy it into the drive they use with the WDTV. (Most of the source media files are 720p, and not at all high bitrate files).

Is it possible for me to set up a Raspberry Pi with any sort of software such that the media is transcoded on the fly and served to the WDTV over the network?

Or is it better to run Kodi or something like that on a Rasp Pi3, feed HDMI output into a device that will convert it to YUV and L+R (analog) so as to use that with the CRT TV? (I don;t know of such a device as yet, but there probably is something like that out there, heh heh)

They are not so tech savvy, but I guess I can get them to learn how to control a Pi on their phones. The CRT TV is a major bottleneck, but since it is working very well, they don't want an LCD TV (to allow HDMI input).

 

[sam9s]

I'm not sure if this is a weird query.

My Mom and Dad use a WDTV (and an old CRT TV) to watch backed up movies/mini series. Quite a few of the codec combinations that I have with me don't work with it. I typically convert what I give them into avi/mp3 before I copy it into the drive they use with the WDTV.

Is it possible for me to set up a Raspberry Pi with any sort of software such that the media is transcoded on the fly and served to the WDTV over the network?

Or is it better to run Kodi or something like that on a Rasp Pi3, feed HDMI output into a device that will convert it to YUV and L+R (analog) so as to use that with the CRT TV? (I don;t know of such a device as yet, but there probably is something like that out there, heh heh)

They are not so tech savvy, but I guess I can get them to learn how to control a Pi on their phones. The CRT TV is a major bottleneck, but since it is working very well, they don't want an LCD TV (to allow HDMI input).

Hi.

Well the easiest option and workable solution will be to run kodi and get an HDMI to rca to connect to crt. Kodi on Rpi 3 (openELEC) to be precise will take care of all formats u throw at it.
The other route, transcoding one is difficult and would need a lot of planning and resource. Running a Plex server is THE best option if you wanna take the transcoding route. In that case you will have to have an hardware to run the server. For client nothing comes close to PHT on rpi3. So if u do decide to take plex route, you can opt PHT on rpi3 for client.

Sent from my Moto G (4) Plus using Tapatalk

 

[hydra]

Thanks, Sam! I think the Kodi + HDMI to RCA converter is the best option too. I'll give this a spin.

 

[sam9s]

Kodi can play audio + Video but does not have a decent UI which can be used for controlling it from mobile devices..

What!!! . Have you ever heard of YATSE. Android remote for kodi, I guess not else you wouldn't have said "it doesn't have decent UI for controlling on mobile" [emoji4] [emoji4] . Try yatse and then come[emoji4]



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[sunilmani]

What!!! . Have you ever heard of YATSE. Android remote for kodi, I guess not else you wouldn't have said "it doesn't have decent UI for controlling on mobile" [emoji4] [emoji4] . Try yatse and then come[emoji4]



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Exactly the input i was looking for. Let me try and get back.