hifiberry-os VS rpi-audio-receiver

*** OR .. you could just throw docker on the hifiberry os and pull down an image and forgo all that configuring in the back end. **even better.. docker is already installed in hifiberry os .. you simply just need to pull in a container: https://github.com/binhex/arch-airsonic

I once installed raspberry pi’s with a Bluetooth audio receiver config. These got installed in a professional football club with each receiver having a name like ‘changing room’ , ‘bar’, ‘manager’. They gave an open connection without PIN codes and lost the active connection as soon as the current device went out of range. We tried a number of ‘real’ Bluetooth devices from Denon and similar but none offered the configurable parts of the raspberrypi’s.

Check this out, it may help you - seems to be describing close to what you're after

When I play a song on my phone/computer that is played on my speaker via bluetooth, I want the lights to be synced to music, where the ceiling and wall lights will each have different effects. I’m thinking of installing LedFx on a Raspberry Pi 4 for music syncing. Do I need https://github.com/nicokaiser/rpi-audio-receiver for this?

This may be linked to be an ongoing conflict between WiFi and Bluetooth. I bought a Hifiberry amp to explore turning a raspberry pi into a receiver, and this GitHub project is amazing for that purpose, but suggests that the RasPi's onboard bluetooth and wifi interfere with each other. I'm intending to try a USB bluetooth dongle to see if it will fix but I'm encouraged by u/AlienMajik 's post above.

Not sure if this works for you https://github.com/nicokaiser/rpi-audio-receiver

I've seen https://github.com/nicokaiser/rpi-audio-receiver but not sure how to get the input from airplay and have it pair and output to the speaker.

I do this currently with spotify, as the rpi runs rpi-audio-receiver with the spotifyd daemon. I like this because from any spotify app I can switch the device over to the rpi and the music comes out of the speakers. I don't need to access any web server running on the pi or have a separate app for playing the music there.