I've just released a first version of a new bridge that allows airplay devices to be used as is they were regular LMS players. Compared to my other bridges, it brings replaygain, gapless, fading (in/out/cross) and ... what was the most important for me: synchronization with other LMS players.
Please be aware of the following at this point
Only use this if you are want to do some test and tinkering. If you don't know how to edit your custom-convert file, please wait till it's more mature. If it works well, I will add support for more codecs (mp3, flac at least) as well as re-sampling, but currently my objective is stability of the main features. The link to the repo is here http://sourceforge.net/projects/lms-...ev/repo-sf.xml.
Once you have started the plugin, allow 15-60s for players to appear. For synchronisation, you need to adjust once your player delay in the LMS player settings (not in the plugin setting page). Once you have found the right delay, it should be pretty stable (I never had to adjust mine on my 2 players, they are 375ms) - I've added a quick manual ... have a look at it
To transcode mp3 to pcm, add the following to custom-convert.xml (needs lame as well) (you could/should replace "*" by the mac address of the player to avoid systematic transcoding for all squeezelite players - this mac address can be found in the plugin setting page)
other notes :
- the log file can grow very quickly when something wrong happen, be careful, you can erase/disable it in the plugin settings
- if the player seems to be un-responsive, before de-activating/re-activating the plugin, you can try to switch it off/on in LMS
- one of my player takes a lot of time to start playing (>5s and volume changes interrupt playback - itunes gives the same result, so I assume this is a player problem, so I've added this digital volume option to avoid using the player's volume command, but it adds to CPU consumption as every sample must be scaled up/down)
- one oddity for synchronisation when you do mp3 transcoding: you have to start the airplay player(s) not synchronized first, then you can add LMS native players to the group and play different tracks like that for hours, but if you have sync'd players when you start the plugin, LMS will refuse to play mp3 to that group, failing to find a rule for the group. I'm sure the LMS experts will be able to tell why
Please be aware of the following at this point
- it is experimental, so expect (a lot of) issues
- it consumes a bit too much CPU (3~10% on my raspi 2B) - I have a lots of optimisations in mind
- being an airplay system, it uses 1.4Mbits/s of network bandwidth per active player (44.1*16*2)
- IT ONLY SUPPORTS PCM AND AIFF, ALL OTHER FORMATS MUST BE TRANSCODED BY LMS (you need to edit your custom-convert.conf, see below)
- IT ONLY SUPPORTS 44.1 kHz, ALL OTHER SAMPLE RATE MUST BE RESAMPLED BY LMS
- THERE ARE ONLY WINDOWS, LINUX (x86 and x86_64 and armv6hf) - I WON'T DO ANOTHER VERSION SOON
- my test environment is Windows, so Linux versions are much less tested
- it can run on LMS or another computer
Only use this if you are want to do some test and tinkering. If you don't know how to edit your custom-convert file, please wait till it's more mature. If it works well, I will add support for more codecs (mp3, flac at least) as well as re-sampling, but currently my objective is stability of the main features. The link to the repo is here http://sourceforge.net/projects/lms-...ev/repo-sf.xml.
Once you have started the plugin, allow 15-60s for players to appear. For synchronisation, you need to adjust once your player delay in the LMS player settings (not in the plugin setting page). Once you have found the right delay, it should be pretty stable (I never had to adjust mine on my 2 players, they are 375ms) - I've added a quick manual ... have a look at it
To transcode mp3 to pcm, add the following to custom-convert.xml (needs lame as well) (you could/should replace "*" by the mac address of the player to avoid systematic transcoding for all squeezelite players - this mac address can be found in the plugin setting page)
Code:
mp3 pcm squeezelite *
# FT
[lame] --mp3input --decode -t --silent $FILE$ -- the log file can grow very quickly when something wrong happen, be careful, you can erase/disable it in the plugin settings
- if the player seems to be un-responsive, before de-activating/re-activating the plugin, you can try to switch it off/on in LMS
- one of my player takes a lot of time to start playing (>5s and volume changes interrupt playback - itunes gives the same result, so I assume this is a player problem, so I've added this digital volume option to avoid using the player's volume command, but it adds to CPU consumption as every sample must be scaled up/down)
- one oddity for synchronisation when you do mp3 transcoding: you have to start the airplay player(s) not synchronized first, then you can add LMS native players to the group and play different tracks like that for hours, but if you have sync'd players when you start the plugin, LMS will refuse to play mp3 to that group, failing to find a rule for the group. I'm sure the LMS experts will be able to tell why