squeezelite-esp32 VS Navidrome Music Server

I built an Airplay receiver with RPi (+SPDIF out) using Volumio but it takes for ever to boot and often does not work, the mpd daemon crashes somehow (it reindex all the audio files on boot) I read about https://github.com/sle118/squeezelite-esp32 but I don't know about boot times.

and apparently an esp32! https://github.com/sle118/squeezelite-esp32

...and so on. I've completely erased the device before attempting to write flash memory, and have confirmed that it's 100% written. Have tried at low baud rate, with multiple micro-USB cables, and have tried using both windows PC and my macbook, all with the same results. I've also tried the whole gamut of possible firmwares from the repo. First board was a TTGO T8 V1.8 ESP32 board, second one a generic ESP32-WRover Dev board from amazon. Any tips on flashing with this firmware? Or any recommendations of a wrover dev board that may give me less trouble?

I got one of the AI thinker esp32-A1S audio kits (https://docs.ai-thinker.com/en/esp32-audio-kit) which I was hoping to run as a DAC for a logitech media server using squeezelite-esp32. Apparently these boards are quite finicky and a bit challenging to flash, but having tried all the obvious fixes and various ideas that duckduckgo had to offer, I'm still stuck in a boot loop. I've got dedicated power going into USB1 and connected to a USB-C port on my MacBook via USB2. I've tried with the dip switches all up, all down, and in the default 3 up / 2 down configuration, each time erasing the flash memory completely before trying to load the squeezelite-esp32 binary. Using ESPHome-Flasher, I get the following dialogue:

In theory yes, but it is more of a 'whole summer project' than 'one evening project'. There are small ESP32 Wi-Fi modules that could be connected to small I2S headphones amplifier. Both should fit inside bigger cups like DT770 has if you remove acoustic padding. You also would have to build custom dock for mixing audio inputs, converting them to digital and pushing data through Wi-FI, possibly also ESP32 based with external ADCs. The hardest part will be writing custom code to glue it all together. There are some ESP32 Wi-Fi streaming libs like: https://github.com/sle118/squeezelite-esp32 This would be a good starting point, but the amount of customisation to achieve what you described will be non-trivial. Battery life of headphones would not be stellar either, ESP modules are more suited to be used in smart home appliances powered from the grid. I'd guess about 3 hours with 750mAh battery while streaming over Wi-Fi.

Squeezelite has also been ported to the ESP32, so one could probably create (or recreate) the old Logitech/Slim Devices hardware clients, VFD displays and all.

Here's what I'm looking for: * Powered speaker of similar form factor/aesthetic as the (white) Sonos One. Must look nice (aesthetic is as important as sound quality). * Ideally would have an amp per speaker. Most bookshelf's have a single amp in one speaker with amplified sound run via speaker wire to the other. Would prefer to not have this. But, worst case, I could buy a couple sets and use the powered speakers where I can't run speaker wire, and have a pair of passive speakers for a room where I can. Not the end of the world. * Speakers that are better for sourceless, far-field listening. Most bookshelfs in this vein seem tailored to near field listening. * Have digital input so I can go cheap/small on the squeezeplayer setup (would love to use the ESP32 squeezelite) without worrying about audio quality (either DAC or amplification).

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.