mellomoyo
New Head-Fier
- Joined
- Oct 11, 2012
- Posts
- 8
- Likes
- 10
I know that there's been a lot of buzz around the Internet about the Raspberry Pi and all the cool things people are doing with it. I wanted to share what I've been doing with mine, making it a headless audio player.
I consume music from three main sources:
1) Purchased audio, either downloaded digitally or bought on media then ripped to my computer. All of these audio files (mp3, FLAC) exist on my home server. It's served up by samba.
2) Spotify. I'm a premium subscriber (mobile devices + higher quality audio is excellent).
3) Pandora - mostly for background music situations (parties, etc).
Right now, I usually go iPhone > Fiio E7 DAC > Headphones or Computer > Fiio E7 DAC > Headphones or stereo. This works ok, but then I'm shuffling around devices a lot. I want one device with low power consumption that can just stay on and play music when I want to. I don't need it necessarily, but it would be nice to have a little monitor showing the time and what's now playing.
Enter the Raspberry Pi.
I got my in the mail a few months ago. I just recently got around to this project (had other, non-audio-related projects to fool around with first).
First task: get the DAC working. The Raspberry Pi by default uses ALSA, so I just add this to .asoundrc:
...and it worked like a charm. I could play mp3s no problem through the DAC and they're sounding good!
Next, I need to access my files. I installed cifs to access my samba share and mounted it. I can now play audio files with mplayer and hear them through the DAC. However, I really need a better music player.
Enter mpd.
There are a TON of guides online on how to make a killer mpd setup. I personally use ncmpcpp as the client. The Raspberry Pi specific part of the setup is this:
Make sure that is in your mpd.conf, otherwise it will play out through the onboard audio, which isn't the greatest.
So now we've got mpd playing the media on my home server. What about Spotify? Pandora?
For Spotify, I'm using Despotify (http://despotify.sourceforge.net/). I just cloned the most recent version with SVN and followed the instructions on their site to install all the correct dependencies. It works great and sound coming from it sounds decent (I think it's probably 128 or 192 kbps).
For Pandora, pianobar (http://6xq.net/projects/pianobar/) is in the Raspbian repository, so after a simple apt-get install pianobar, you're off and running. This works well, too.
Coming in the mail today will be my 3.5" monitor to display a clock and what's currently playing (hopefully without X? We'll see...) Any questions? Let me know. I'd love to help any fellow Raspberry Pi-ers where I can. I can also take and post pictures if anyone is interested.
I consume music from three main sources:
1) Purchased audio, either downloaded digitally or bought on media then ripped to my computer. All of these audio files (mp3, FLAC) exist on my home server. It's served up by samba.
2) Spotify. I'm a premium subscriber (mobile devices + higher quality audio is excellent).
3) Pandora - mostly for background music situations (parties, etc).
Right now, I usually go iPhone > Fiio E7 DAC > Headphones or Computer > Fiio E7 DAC > Headphones or stereo. This works ok, but then I'm shuffling around devices a lot. I want one device with low power consumption that can just stay on and play music when I want to. I don't need it necessarily, but it would be nice to have a little monitor showing the time and what's now playing.
Enter the Raspberry Pi.
I got my in the mail a few months ago. I just recently got around to this project (had other, non-audio-related projects to fool around with first).
First task: get the DAC working. The Raspberry Pi by default uses ALSA, so I just add this to .asoundrc:
pcm.!default {
type plug
slave {
pcm "hw:1"
channels 2
}
}
...and it worked like a charm. I could play mp3s no problem through the DAC and they're sounding good!
Next, I need to access my files. I installed cifs to access my samba share and mounted it. I can now play audio files with mplayer and hear them through the DAC. However, I really need a better music player.
Enter mpd.
There are a TON of guides online on how to make a killer mpd setup. I personally use ncmpcpp as the client. The Raspberry Pi specific part of the setup is this:
audio_output {
type "alsa"
name "default"
device "hw:1"
}
Make sure that is in your mpd.conf, otherwise it will play out through the onboard audio, which isn't the greatest.
So now we've got mpd playing the media on my home server. What about Spotify? Pandora?
For Spotify, I'm using Despotify (http://despotify.sourceforge.net/). I just cloned the most recent version with SVN and followed the instructions on their site to install all the correct dependencies. It works great and sound coming from it sounds decent (I think it's probably 128 or 192 kbps).
For Pandora, pianobar (http://6xq.net/projects/pianobar/) is in the Raspbian repository, so after a simple apt-get install pianobar, you're off and running. This works well, too.
Coming in the mail today will be my 3.5" monitor to display a clock and what's currently playing (hopefully without X? We'll see...) Any questions? Let me know. I'd love to help any fellow Raspberry Pi-ers where I can. I can also take and post pictures if anyone is interested.