Avid Contributor I

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What alternative methods can we use to listen to our music library

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Good morning

Many thanks to all that helped on my previous question regarding the SMB V1.0 issue. I like most of you have not been able to play my music library since the May update. I have now had 4 months playing around with various fixes / updates / experiments to no avail.

I have therefore decided to try an alternative method of playing my music library on my Sonos system.

I am aware that there are a number of ways to do this, some might be very easy to implement, but cost a large sum of money. Others may be very cost effective, but require extensive knowledge in software systems.

So, with this in mind could I ask what options are out there with a brief synopsis of what would be required to get my music library up and running. I will start….

Get a NAS with SMB3 – May be costly and could be a pain to get up and running.
Raspberry PI – Low cost – will be difficult for the layman to get up and running
Copy my music to Windows media player – PC must always be switched on.
Please add your thoughts below

Many thanks

SMB

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106rallyeAnswer

Use iBroadcast, use Plex.

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Stanley_4

Grand Maestro

A Pi Zero is overkill but after a few minutes setup it just works.

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GMRAuthor

Avid Contributor I

@Stanley_4

Any guidance would be appreciated now the dark nights are moving in. Plenty of time to “tinker”.

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healthily_skeptical

Lyricist III

A Pi Zero is overkill but after a few minutes setup it just works.

Overkill in what way? Power consumption at 2W. Cost less than $60. Smaller than a credit card and less than 1cm high. I’m keen to hear what’s cheaper to buy and/or run that that.

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Stanley_4

Grand Maestro

$60 for a Pi Zero? A Zero W (with WiFi) is about $15. Add a spare USB power brick and SD card and you are at about $20. Even the original Pi is more than enough.

As I said (in relation to the mention of overkill in the post above mine) the Zero is overkill, it has more RAM and CPU than is needed to stream music. I haven’t tested above four FLAC CD quality streams, that with the PI OS GUI running was using about 10% of the CPU for the Samba share options. Media Vault would likely be a few percent higher.

mini Lenovo PC, but people say its a bit overkill

I did a couple options for using a Pi a while back, they are not updated recently but should still be pretty close.

Live Journal: Stan https://stan-miller.livejournal.com/

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healthily_skeptical

Lyricist III

A Pi Zero 2 W + card is £20 in the UK plus a power supply at £8, a case and a micro-to-USBA shim for the existing USB card you get to £45 with VAT (sales tax).

I’m not too fussed about under-using the processor at that price. I mainly care about size and power consumption as it will be on all the time.

I’ll look up your lower power options.

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MoPac

Headliner III

I did use Bubble UPnP Server on my Windows PC to make my Sonos Port an Open Home player. Now I can use the Linn controller to access my library via MinimServer.

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Stanley_4

Grand Maestro

The 2 W has some nice specs so it should do fine. Hate the prices/tax you have though.

If you have spare bits laying around a USB to SATA cable and an old SATA SSD makes a nice upgrade. Put the music on the SSD and the OS and stuff can live on the SD card making updates easier. A copy of all edited configuration files stuck on the SSD is handy too. If not then a thumb drive for the music is a decent option.

The Media Vault option looks a lot easier than the straight Samba option so I wouldn’t rule it out for folks looking for simple.

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GMRAuthor

Avid Contributor I

@Stanley_4

Plenty of stuff lying around, cables, hard drives, thumb drives, SD Cards etc.

I like the idea of only being 2W as it would be powered up 24/7.

It’s the what do I need and how do I do it that I am struggling with.

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