Whole house audio

[Pocster]

Been doing this with 5 raspberry pi’s . But it’s a pita to mange with sd card failures etc 

 

So !

Another project !

 

nuc i3 + hdmi touch screen ( just because it’s spare ) , usb powered hub . Cheap dacs into cheap amp boards apart from ‘ proper audio ‘ via smsl .

All in 1 case ; just 1 plug . 
Here’s the bits ! 

[ProDave]

Interesting about SD card failures.  I have just reinstalled my Pi Music box on a new SD card, second failure in 5 years.  That does seem to be a weakness of the Pi that they do not seem to be up to the job of being the boot disk and OS disk.

 

 

[MikeSharp01]

1 hour ago, Pocster said:

Been doing this with 5 raspberry pi’s .

Whole house Audio one presumes, is that for making sure the same music is everywhere.

[-rick-]

54 minutes ago, ProDave said:

Interesting about SD card failures.  I have just reinstalled my Pi Music box on a new SD card, second failure in 5 years.  That does seem to be a weakness of the Pi that they do not seem to be up to the job of being the boot disk and OS disk.

 

Not exactly. I've got a Pi 2 still chugging along, though admittedly it doesn't do that much just run some audio passthrough stuff (keep meaning to make it do more but I'm just not that interested in fiddling around with computers ATM).

 

The key is to run an O/S that is optimised to minimise writes to the SD card and get SD cards designed for application hosting (A1 spec or better IIRC, think there are even fancier specs these days).

 

Some of the Pi O/Ss just churn huge log files onto the SD cards and the SD cards are not designed for that. If you want to run something which generates huge amount of writes get the right SD card, or install it on a USB SSD (or PCIe SSD on the Pi 5). If you want to avoid the issue all together I think you can netboot Pis now so you can eliminate the SD cards altogether (with the offset that they depend on a server working which depending on how you do it might be more hassle). Nothing wrong with the Pis if used properly.

[-rick-]

2 hours ago, Pocster said:

nuc i3 + hdmi touch screen ( just because it’s spare ) , usb powered hub . Cheap dacs into cheap amp boards apart from ‘ proper audio ‘ via smsl .

All in 1 case ; just 1 plug . 

 

And have to deal with audio cables to each location and potential hums. I like the idea of multi room audio but I've only ever got proof of concepts running and then got bored and never made a finished system.

 

These days it's so easy to just get some smart speakers and cast to them that doing more just seems like a slog.

[Pocster]

58 minutes ago, MikeSharp01 said:

Whole house Audio one presumes, is that for making sure the same music is everywhere.

You can or tbh more usually seperate audio per zone . Squeezebox 

[Pocster]

31 minutes ago, -rick- said:

 

Not exactly. I've got a Pi 2 still chugging along, though admittedly it doesn't do that much just run some audio passthrough stuff (keep meaning to make it do more but I'm just not that interested in fiddling around with computers ATM).

 

The key is to run an O/S that is optimised to minimise writes to the SD card and get SD cards designed for application hosting (A1 spec or better IIRC, think there are even fancier specs these days).

 

Some of the Pi O/Ss just churn huge log files onto the SD cards and the SD cards are not designed for that. If you want to run something which generates huge amount of writes get the right SD card, or install it on a USB SSD (or PCIe SSD on the Pi 5). If you want to avoid the issue all together I think you can netboot Pis now so you can eliminate the SD cards altogether (with the offset that they depend on a server working which depending on how you do it might be more hassle). Nothing wrong with the Pis if used properly.

I have used max2play for audio in the past and you can set it to do no sd writes once booted . Sd card failure is pretty common on pi’s . Nvr , Emmc etc all doable but they’re not really ‘ premium grade ‘ . That NUC i3 I got 2nd hand off eBay for £40 . So with its ram and ssd not only cheaper than the pi equip, but more robust .

Edited 4 hours ago by Pocster

[Pocster]

26 minutes ago, -rick- said:

 

And have to deal with audio cables to each location and potential hums. I like the idea of multi room audio but I've only ever got proof of concepts running and then got bored and never made a finished system.

 

These days it's so easy to just get some smart speakers and cast to them that doing more just seems like a slog.

Wiring was already in per room . Zero hum anyway . So it’s more an upgrade I guess that a new system . You could of course stick Sonos everywhere at great cost. Selling those 5 pis and Hifiberry amps on eBay covered the cost of replacement system .

[Pocster]

17 minutes ago, Pocster said:

Wiring was already in per room . Zero hum anyway . So it’s more an upgrade I guess that a new system . You could of course stick Sonos everywhere at great cost. Selling those 5 pis and Hifiberry amps on eBay covered the cost of replacement system .

It was this or some tiling ……

[Bramco]

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

I have just reinstalled my Pi Music box on a new SD card, second failure in 5 years.  That does seem to be a weakness of the Pi that they do not seem to be up to the job of being the boot disk and OS disk.

Interesting - we have 3 players, all Pi Zeros and haven't had a failure yet in well over 5 years....  There's been lots of discussion on many forums about which SD cards are more prone to failures.

[ProDave]

1 hour ago, Bramco said:

Interesting - we have 3 players, all Pi Zeros and haven't had a failure yet in well over 5 years....  There's been lots of discussion on many forums about which SD cards are more prone to failures.

My first failure was a micro SD card in an adaptor to make it a full size SD card.  I suspect the poor quality of the adaptor may have been at least part of the problem.

 

This time around I searched and eventually found a full size SD card to avoid that.  That was hard to find so then add in trying to find a particular type would be even more difficult.