Well, very last thing to do I hope (with the hardware anyway) was to put antennas onto my M.2 Intel 9260 wifi card and install it instead of the USB thing I was using.

Dear God! Is there any reason at all that they make MHF4 connectors so damn nearly impossible to fit? They are seriously tiny, made of incredibly thin, soft metal, lacking in a nice positive click if you do eventually fit the buggers. Lining the little fuckers up needs three hands and a magnifying glass. Then you need nerves of steel, because you have to push really, really hard - preferably with something like a flat screwdriver blade. For the first few goes I was nowhere near and I was beginning to think I'd bought the wrong bloody antennas again. Then I examined the fittings with a jeweller's lens and I could see that they should fit together (after some micro-surgery to reshape the bits I'd squished with previous attempts). 

All done.

They are pretty shit to attach. And they're pretty much one time only.

That's good to know as I will likely try to avoid them.

This snippet isn't necessarily about a music player, but it could be. I know there are a few of teh people who play with the Raspberry Pi* sometimes. My son was running a Plex server from his laptop which wasn't especially convenient. He has an early Pi which definitely can't run Plex successfully, but was wondering whether the Pi4 was up to the task. He's been pretty low of late, so, being a kind dad I thought a little project might at least cheer him up a bit, so I bought him all the bits to give it a try.

Turns out that it works a treat. 

I'd read all kinds of reports that it runs hot when it idles, reaches horrific temperatures under load and can't manage really heavy lifting such as video transcoding. I know that recent firmware changes have tried to address the temperature issues, but again, reports I've seen have said that the difference is substantial, but maybe not enough to safely use the Pi4 for demanding roles. However, I did invest in one of these coolers to give him the best chance. I still thought it would have problems, especially doing something like streaming to a remote client.

It idles in the mid 30s Centigrade. I can direct stream from it at 1080P to my phone across t'web (he lives about 50 miles away) and it's incredibly smooth. Transcoding to 720P or lower is also perfectly acceptable without stutters of any kind. Temperatures when transcoding/streaming sit comfortably in the low 50s. That's better than my water-cooled desktop manages when transcoding.

So if you're wondering whether it's worthing trying the Pi4 for something demanding, there you go.

*I thought that suggesting teh peeps sometimes play with Raspberry Pis was taking the Pis a little.

So, how is the music player after a good number of months?
Still using it as you had envisioned?
Does the wife use it?
 

On an audio-related note, I've been taking zoom calls on my pc + cell phone, because my mic & headphone inputs are at the back of my own-build pc and my generic 'house brand' headset doesn't have a long enuf cord to reach ... long story even longer, I borrowed MrsD.s logitech usb headset, which has an improbably long cord (and apparently also has a built-in sound card in a lumpy bit on the cord), plugged it in, faffed around with sound settings in Fedora, and looks like that's going to work. It will get its first road text this afternoon.

How come this thread has 1286 views? What. The. Fuck.  8-O

Yes - still use it most days. My wife can use it - it isn't difficult - but she prefers not too. This is odd since about a third of the music on there is stuff she's bought. She's quite happy to listen and does ask me to put it on.  I've put a second cable to the aux input on the amp so she can attach her ipod straight to it.

It's set up in the worst possible place in the sitting room: pointing across an extension with plasterboard over block-work. On the left is either nothing (outside) or glass because of the bi-fold windows and on the right is a sitting room. Because of this the bass is a bit bloated and I've had to tone it down by stuffing the reflex ports (nj).

Otherwise great. 

my wife maddens me, I rig up nice interfaces so you can search and select and whatnot, she just wants my old iPod plugged into a portable speaker and anything else is not it.

it Just Works™

I should read back, but what are you using to control it?
What software for playback?

One of many projects on my mind, but I'm planning on making my front room into some sort of music listening room. No TV, comfy chair or two. Reasonable audio system.

I've got a Pi DAC that I may use. Have played with Volumio in the past, but was never sold on it. Also had a quick look at reasonable sized touchscreen, not ridiculously expensive.

Or I just go for bluetooth and using my phone or tablet  (erm)

You thought about using one of the derivatives of Kodi? You could just use it for a local collection of files and play it through that if you wanted to keep it all offline.

I've got a few Pis setup in the house as media centres on OSMC and libreelec, albeit connected to a screen in some way. But if you're wanting to do it headless, for the control you could setup a tablet/phone as a remote.

Yeah, I use Kodi/Libreelec/Coreelec on a day-to-day basis so it's definitely an option.

Was wondering if there's something a bit more music based, but Kodi could well be the easiest and most consistent option.

I've been using something Kodi-based for music since the days when you needed to use a doctored James Bond savegame to convince it onto an original XBox. After the XBox became too old to justify, I went through a couple of little black boxes, and I've currently got a Vero 4K which has been doing all my media stuff for the last couple of years with relatively few complaints.

It's tiny, not too expensive, and for storage I've just got an external USB hard drive which is slowly filling up. Never quite got round to getting an assbox. Or Spotify, for that matter. I can usually convince it to stream stuff from YouTube though, unless the plugin's broken (which happens annoyingly often).

It's connected to the TV, but I've also got it and my record player into a wee mixer, which outputs to my hi-fi in the living room and an old ghetto blaster in the kitchen. I use Yatse remote on my tablet/phone to control it. Multi-room audio for a fraction of the cost of anything Sonos, only downside (if it is a downside) is I'm the only one who knows how it all works (when it works).

I remember those days, soft mods and hard mods (yj).
Probably got a modded Xbox in an attic at my parents.

I'm using Kodi/Coreelec on a few 4K Android TV boxes around the house that can be modded (stick a microSD card in) to run Coreelec (branch of Libreelec for Amlogic SOCs). Had my TV watching and general media stuff going through those for a while.

Kodi may well be the answer for me. But for some reason feel there's probably a better audio-specific option around, probably not as well established and stable as Kodi though.

I used Rune for a bit for music only shenanigans, that was ok, no idea about remote control support though. 

Ah yes, I think Rune and Volumio were branches of each other at one point.
 

I'm using AnyDesk for the front end. It's on all the PCs in the house, laptop or desktop. VNC would have been fine as well. 

I think the main problem my wife has is that she is used to "a box that does the music" and when you turn it on you choose the music "on the box" not from some remote location. That's been the model for ever, from record players, tape decks, CD players, mp3 players, ipods, everything. The little PC is on 24x7 but she can't seem to get the hang of turning on the amplifier and then using her laptop to pick music. 

Ideally, I would have a dedicated tablet or whatever just to control the music PC, so that it's physically all in one place. But that's when it starts to get complicated. You have to pair up a screen and computer and a media player that work well without a mouse or keyboard. That might be achievable, but then I want to control Spotify as well (and get at online radio stations). If I could find an all-in-one screen, keyboard, touchpad of a reasonable size, quality and price, I would be happy. I have seen one on AliExpress a while back but it had the look and build quality of Matel toys and users reported it had the speed, accuracy and reliability of Amstrad from the 80s. I also thought about using a tablet as a display with something like Twomon, having the virtual keyboard and touchpad up (Windows in tablet mode is just a mess). I may still try this but it would take a decent sized tablet.

The Raspberry Pi DAC is probably essential. Output from the headphone sockets is OK but inclined to sound transistor radio-ish if you feed it to a worthwhile sound system. HDMI is probably better, but then you're mucking around with an odd audio out unless your amp (or whatever the target is) has an HDMI input. I'm told that the big problem with the Pi is the USB power, which is supposedly noisy and not designed for audio. then again, others disagree. So...

Bloody lockdown. 25 replies since I started typing mine.

Ah yes, the USB power/noise issue was possibly why I ditched my last Pi/DACHat setup. Think I ended up using a ground loop isolator and it still wasn't great so went for a Chromecast Audio for that application.

Feel like I want something to physically go and use, select. Like putting on a CD or record. Maybe that's all just wishful thinking and I'll quickly get bored of getting off my backside to change the music and just want to use my phone anyway.