1.  Requirements

• Multi-room audio distribution
• 3+ zone
• Reliable (wired) audio rendering
• Allow ipod/mp3 player input
• Remote power trigger for Amplifier

1.1  Options

• Bidirectional streaming? (ipod in bedroom streams to whole house?)
• Synchronization (it's hard!)
  • Logitech Media Server
  • Snapcast
• Home Automation integration - see Network Receivers
  • Remote volume control

2.  Solutions

3.  Components

• Server (1)
• Amp & Speakers (1 set per zone)
• Renderer (1 per zone) - ethernet, audio decoding
• Controller (1 per zone + mobile controllers) - user interface

3.1  Server

• mpd, icecast2, streamTranscode
• Mediatomb
• minidlnad
• Muse
• XBMC Multiroom Audio
  • Only works with other XBMC clients?
• Logitech Media Server
• Plex Media Server
• mopidy + snapcast
  • spotify
  • snapcast

3.2  Renderer

• mmpc
• media streamer (from Nokia)
• Kodi

3.3  Renderer-Controllers

• Kodi

3.4  Amplifiers and Speakers

• Logitech Z5500 (5.1)
• Onkyo TX-NR636 (7.2)

4.  Research

4.1  Amplifiers

4.2  Onkyo

Automation

HA Onkyo (power, volume, source)

• NR-609 (2011, HDMI problems?)
• NR-515(2012)
• NR-626 (2013)
• NR-636 (2014, Atmos upgrade)
• NR-545 (2015, Atmos, 100W)
• NR-646 (2015, Atmos, 160W)

Yamaha

Automation

OpenHAB Yamaha (power, volume, mute, source)

• Yamaha RXV-475
• RXV-379 (2015, 5.1 only)

Denon

Automation

OpenHAB Denon

• AVR-X2200W (2015)

4.3  Renderer-Controllers

• Kodi
  • Kodi XSqueeze
  • Multicast Streaming scripts
• O2 Joggler ~£50-75
• O2 Joggler ~£50-75
• Roku Soundbridge
• Logitech Squeezebox Touch

5.  Software

Components:

• mopidy
• snapcast
• shairport-sync
• upmpdcli

5.1  mopidy

5.2  snapcast

Install snapclient on all media player nodes:

Releases

https://github.com/badaix/snapcast/releases

Server

amd64 deb

Clients

Android, RPi

No iOS equivalent?

Note that snapclient on volumio is symlinked to /usr/sbin/snapclient. The default snapclient is very old (~0.2) and won't work with recent snapservers (0.11+).

Snapserver config

• Don't daemonize. systemd does it for you.
• Use the same or separate streams for mopidy and airport?
• Depends on librespot@.service templates for multiple instances of librespot service

/etc/defaults/snapserver:

USER_OPTS="--user snapserver:snapserver"

SNAPSERVER_OPTS=" \
    -s 'pipe:///tmp/snapfifo0?name=Mopidy&sampleformat=44100:16:2&codec=flac' \
    -s 'pipe:///tmp/snapfifo1?name=Airport&sampleformat=44100:16:2&codec=flac' \
    -s 'pipe:///tmp/librespot1?name=Spotify-1&sampleformat=44100:16:2&codec=flac' \
    -s 'pipe:///tmp/librespot2?name=Spotify-2&sampleformat=44100:16:2&codec=flac' \
    -s 'pipe:///tmp/librespot3?name=Spotify-3&sampleformat=44100:16:2&codec=flac' \

"

Multi-instance snapclient systemd service

/etc/systemd/system/snapclient@.service:

# Multi-instance snapclient service file
[Unit]
Description=Snapcast client
After=network-online.target sound.target
Requires=network-online.target
Wants=avahi-daemon.service

[Service]
# Uses a per-instance defaults file to specify the soundcard device
EnvironmentFile=-/etc/default/snapclient-%i
Type=forking
ExecStart=/usr/bin/snapclient -d $USER_OPTS -i %i $SNAPCLIENT_OPTS
PIDFile=/var/run/snapclient/pid-%i
Restart=always

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

/etc/default/snapclient-x:

# Legacy?
START_SNAPCLIENT=true

USER_OPTS="--user snapclient:audio"
SNAPSERVER_HOSTNAME=media

# Don't specify -i here, it's added by the systemd service
# RPi HDMI soundcard
SNAPCLIENT_OPTS="-h $SNAPSERVER_HOSTNAME -s CARD=ALSA,DEV=1"

Install with:

5.3  librespot

Spotify daemon.

Multi-instance librespot systemd service

Depends on snapserver. Using TCP ports 22120-22129.

/etc/systemd/system/librespot@.service:

[Unit]
Description=Librespot
Requires=snapserver.service
After=network.target storage.target snapserver.service

[Service]
#EnvironmentFile=/etc/default/librespot
User=snapserver
Group=audio
Restart=always
RestartSec=10
PermissionsStartOnly=true
Environment="CACHE_DIR=/path/to/librespot-cache"

ExecStartPre=/bin/mkdir -m 1755 -p ${CACHE_DIR}/%i
ExecStartPre=-/bin/chown snapserver:audio ${CACHE_DIR}/%i

# Create the fifo for snapserver to read
ExecStartPre=-/usr/bin/mkfifo /tmp/librespot%i
ExecStartPre=-/bin/chown snapserver:audio /tmp/librespot%i

Environment="DEVICE_NAME=Spotify-%I"
Environment="BITRATE=96"
Environment="CACHE_ARGS=--cache ${CACHE_DIR}/%i"
Environment="VOLUME_ARGS=--enable-volume-normalisation --linear-volume --initial-volume=100"
Environment="BACKEND_ARGS=--backend pipe --device /tmp/librespot%i"
## Abuse the instance ID to open a known port (for firewalling)
Environment="ZEROCONF_ARGS=--zeroconf-port 2212%i"
ExecStart=/usr/local/bin/librespot --name ${DEVICE_NAME} $BACKEND_ARGS --bitrate ${BITRATE} $CACHE_ARGS $VOLUME_ARGS $ZEROCONF_ARGS $OPTIONS

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target snapserver.service

Install with:

5.4  shairport-sync

5.5  upmpdcli

Available for armhf Jessie-based Volumio but not for Stretch-based OSMC.

Packages available from: https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/upmpdcli/downloads.html#debian

Install

Configure

Edit /etc/upmpdcli.conf (and for Volumio, copy it to /tmp/upmpdcli.conf):

Two settings needed:

friendlyname = my-hostname
upnpiface = eth0  # or wlan0, or whatever