Navidrome Music Server VS Volumio

My primary way to play music is from my self-hosted navidrome[1] server with my collection of albums I've mostly purchased from bandcamp. I can stream it to many different devices at home or on the go.

But sitting next to my bed is a Walkman (actually a $10 Jensen version) with a few of my favorite cassettes in the nightstand drawer. Granted, I listen to raw black metal, so the format fits the music well, but I really enjoy just popping in a cassette and hitting play. When I "metaltate", I listen to full albums and do not want to ever be interrupted or have skipping audio due to bluetooth or anything else. It is a really simple and great experience.

Would I ever take my walkman with me or want to carry around a bunch of tapes on a trip? Of course not! But it does have a time and place that is valuable.

When friends come over, we use either vinyl or my custom built RFID cards. There is more of a ceremony to digging through a physical stack of albums and being forced to listen to the album front to back.

[1] https://www.navidrome.org/

Basically, you run a server on your Mac that scans your music collection and "broadcasts" it to the network (LAN or WAN) via either the venerable UPnP/DLNA[1] family of technologies or the newish Subsonic API[2]. Of course, there are others, like DAAP or AURA, etc..

From there, you need to point a compatible player to said server to play your music on any supported device.

If you want to listen to your music on the go, pairing a Subsonic-compatible server on your Mac and a Subsonic-compatible app on your iPhone is probably the way to go. On the server side, I have only used the original Subsonic[3], which was good, but Navidrome[4] seems to be OK. But be aware that the whole "scene" is super messy and fragmented, with the usual abandoned forks of open source alternatives of everything.

Note that this means opening your local network, which comes with its own complexity.

This r/selfhosted thread[5] should give you an idea.

My use case is slightly different. I only care about streaming to my Denon CEOL mini system, which only supports UPnP/DLNA, so my current setup is:

- All my music is stored on a 2011 Mac Mini,

- I use Kazoo Server[6] (not perfect but reliable) to stream it to my audio system,

- which I control via the HEOS app provided by Denon.

Whatever stack you choose, make sure your files are tagged correctly and consistently.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DLNA

[2] http://www.subsonic.org/pages/api.jsp

[3] http://www.subsonic.org/pages/index.jsp

[4] https://www.navidrome.org/

[5] https://old.reddit.com/r/selfhosted/comments/pz9dpb/lets_mak...

[6] https://docs.linn.co.uk/wiki/index.php/Kazoo_Server_setup_Ma...

[Scanner] Fix Windows scanner (#2633). Thanks @caiocotts

EDIT: This version has a bug when running on Windows that breaks your database! I deleted the Windows binary from the download page and will publish a fix very soon. For details see: https://github.com/navidrome/navidrome/issues/2630

Jellyfin is great for movies & shows. As an anecdote, it's not so good for music if you're a collector. I personally use Navidrome for that[0].

Anyway, Sonarr[1] makes use of .NET, too. Very reliable software, in my experience.

[0]: https://github.com/navidrome/navidrome

I am running ND via the docker container (deluan/navidrome:latest which is 0.49.3 (8b93962f) at the time of this writing) and interact with ND using the web interface.

Possibly volumio OS - found at volumio.org

You can find some ways to kind of hack something together. It's not as convenient as a ready-made consumer product, but you can get a Raspberry Pi and install something like Volumio on it. (I haven't personally used Volumio, so that's just an example more than a recommendation, although it's probably good.)

Haven't tried it myself but Volumio looks like a nice option.

For anyone else who wants to do this, just set up the absolutely amazing Volumio on your RPi or any other computer.

https://volumio.org/

The web app is great for use in your house, the Spotify plugin is first class - it's supported as a target in your Spotify app, or you can browse straight from the webapp, which means even a guest on your wifi can easily pop on and help pick the music.

If you're using Spotify, a Raspberry Pi 4 running Volumio (https://volumio.org/) is a sub-$100 setup (the Pi is cheap but you'll want a case and whanot) that works great. Volumio will turn it to a Spotify Connect endpoint that you can control via your phone/computer through the normal Spotify app. Use the Pi's USB out directly into the Bifrost (don't need to bother with any of the hats) and you're all set!

What I ended up doing is running Volumio on a raspberry pi hooked up to an AudioQuest Dragonfly USB DAC, which in turn outputs to one of the analogue inputs on my main amp. It's not as slick as a native Plex client, but it works well enough and (thanks to that DAC) sounds really good.

Buy a music streamer. Like iFi Audio Zen Stream, Bluesound. Or Raspberry PI running Volumio (https://volumio.org/). Or maybe a VM running Volumio, pass the USB to it?

If you just want to play music, look into Kodi-based distros like LibreElec or OSMC, or audio-only distros like Volumio. Failing that, antiX or Q4OS Trinity.

Also Before I used Plex I use to have a pi plugged into my home theatre system running volumio https://volumio.org