mpd VS owntone-server

Last week I released v1.0.0 of MphpD - a fully-featured, dependency-free PHP library for the Music Player Daemon. It's my first take on a library so feedback and suggestions is very much welcome and appreciated.

Eventually I'd like to continue with the other frontends I have planned, starting with festivald which will be a music daemon, similar to mpd.

Well, it’s a slightly odd use case in that normally the server would just be the server and not also the player, but given the kit you’ve got it makes sense. Probably what you want is MPD plus one of the MPD web clients.

You want SnapCast. You'd run snapserver on your Linux box and snapclient on your Pi's. Snapserver has support for Airplay (via shairport-sync) and Spotify (via librespot). I recommend using MPD for your music library, as I don't think PlexAmp can output audio in a way that's useful for snapserver.

MPD (version 0.23.12): A flexible, powerful, server-side application for playing music

I love to listen to music when I work, here are some projects I'm a big fan of : mpd and mopidy.

Source code for CoReadTextFile() which is also a coroutine: https://github.com/CM4all/libcommon/blob/master/src/io/uring...

Sample code for libpq: https://github.com/CM4all/libcommon/blob/master/test/co/RunC... and c_ares https://github.com/CM4all/libcommon/blob/master/test/co/RunC... and libcurl https://github.com/CM4all/libcommon/blob/master/test/curl/Ru...

I wrote all of this for proprietary applications at dayjob, but the core library is open source, as is much of my dayjob code. The I/O event loop this integrates with is also used by several open source projects I maintain, e.g. the Music Player Daemon (https://github.com/MusicPlayerDaemon/MPD/tree/master/src/eve...) which can also take advantage of io_uring, though not (yet) with coroutines, only "classic" non-blocking I/O.

My code is optimized for low-overhead; the very core doesn't even use std::function because I fear its implicit heap allocations. Long ago, I used boost::asio (which also integrates well with coroutines) but didn't like it because it was too bloated for me.

I've rarely seen other nerds talk about C++ coroutines, and never about integrating them with io_uring, made me thinking I'm the only one. But maybe all the others just don't write/blog about it - I never did either...

If you want a music player that you can control from another room, you can do that by installing a very small distro such as the x86 Alpine Linux image (https://alpinelinux.org/downloads/) then the mpd daemon (https://www.musicpd.org/ - it's in standard repositories install it with "apk add mpd" from root shell) which can work headless, therefore requiring very few resources, then a suitable control app for your phone or tablet (search for mpd control app), so that you can do pretty much everything through your home WiFi from any room, basement, backyard, etc.

Should you experience noises, cracks, hum and static when connecting the netbook to an amplifier and to a mains adapter, that is a common problem of ground loops and not of that particular netbook, that will be easily solved by adding a small audio transformer in between.

mmtc is a minimal mpd terminal client that aims to be simple yet highly configurable

There are a few dockers that seem to be able to do what you want. Some can stream local audio to airplay devices what might work with a bit of scripting for your white noise and others might work as a Chromecast to Airplay bridge https://github.com/philippe44/AirConnect https://github.com/1activegeek/docker-airconnect

Check it out; https://github.com/owntone/owntone-server

Check out Owntone, it supports MPD. https://owntone.github.io/owntone-server/

I used something different. Basic details for your entertainment/edification/comedy source material follow mostly so you can shortcut a comparison if you're building something at your place.

1) Pi-zero running shairport-sync (couldn't get them, got orange-pi zero 2 which works great) https://github.com/mikebrady/shairporait-sync. I have a few of these.

2) Class D amp, Aiyima, Fosi, Loxjie etc Aliexpress is one place to get these. I've used and like Aiyima A03 and their ali store delivers fast.

3) Some nice, high-quality, 2nd hand speakers you like. Wharfedale, JBL, B&W, Acoustic Research, Yamaha. (Or get some active speakers you like and skip #2, eg B&O beolab 6000)

4) owntone (formerly known as forked-daapd) https://owntone.github.io/owntone-server/

5) configure owntone with your spotify premium, takes less than a minute. (And with your music that you own - takes longer because you take more care).

You now have a multiroom setup with fantastic sound that you can control with http://owntone.local:3689/ including with your phone. And/or you can use the "Retune" app on droid and apple's "itunes remote" app on ios. Better sound than most alternatives for less dollars.

All integrates well with Homeasistant because of course it does.

I really like how mine turned out. Having half a dozen sets of speakers all playing the same music in perfect sync as you move from one room to another while doing chores on the weekend fills me with more joy that I would have guessed. YMMV.

Which is especially nice if you install Owntone ( https://github.com/owntone/owntone-server/ ) -- now you have a nice web interface for playing music to any or all of your systems.

Yes, you wouldn't get this running on an existing smart speaker (without first rooting it and some serious hacking).

If you'r in the Apple ecosystem and are using AirPlay with your smart speaker(s), it's however possible to also play synchronized audio across to your own DIY speaker setup, using another open source project.

https://github.com/mikebrady/shairport-sync

Or you could of course choose to only use your old dumb speakers with this, and they will pop up as easily selectable sound output devices on all Apple devices connected to your network.

Or combine it (and librespot[2], owntone[3]...) with Snapcast to create a virtual speaker for your whole house that shows up everywhere.

[2] https://github.com/librespot-org/librespot

[3] https://github.com/owntone/owntone-server

I have a working setup using an USB audio grabber and a Raspberry Pi running OwnTone (for AirPlay output) and cpiped (for automatic playback).