Innuos Zen MK III to Raspberry Pi Endpoint in another room.

[sandworm]

I have an Innuos Zen mk iii hooked up to my main system, but I’d like it to act as a server to send music to my secondary system. I was hoping to do this with a Raspberry Pi and tried using the UPnP option that Innuos offers with the Raspberry Pi running RoPiee. This worked at playing music but wouldn’t advance tracks and paused etc. was weird. I tried all the different UPNP profiles but no luck.

Does anyone have a good solution to streaming from an Innuos device, running Innuos Sense software (dont want to change that for now) to a network endpoint? I also considered running Squeezlite on the Raspberry Pi but I can't find any documentation for doing that with Innuos other than with Roon, and I'd like to not use Roon right now. I'm open to other OSes and software, or even other streamers/endpoints. Is there maybe a good linux distro, that would sync well with one of the provided UPnP profiles?

For this second system, I don't want to have to buy another Innuos device just to stream to it (for now). I know I can also do this with MConnect or other control point apps and use the use Native UpNP option, but I'd like to still have my ratings/etc. in the Sense app all available. This is one thing that makes me want to go back to Roon, but I really prefer everything about Sense, and the SQ on my main system of the Zen.

 

[Stephen Healy]

My advice on this is to stay away from UPnP if you can, and you're on the right track with trying to get Squeezelite going as this will work much better and integrate much more naturally with Sense app.
I'm fairly sure it is achievable with a Raspberry Pi, but if you have trouble getting this configured then it might be a lot easier to buy a budget streamer that has Squeeze support built into it, of which there are a couple of options.

 

[guardajoias]

I have an Innuos Zen mk iii hooked up to my main system, but I’d like it to act as a server to send music to my secondary system. I was hoping to do this with a Raspberry Pi and tried using the UPnP option that Innuos offers with the Raspberry Pi running RoPiee. This worked at playing music but wouldn’t advance tracks and paused etc. was weird. I tried all the different UPNP profiles but no luck.

Does anyone have a good solution to streaming from an Innuos device, running Innuos Sense software (dont want to change that for now) to a network endpoint? I also considered running Squeezlite on the Raspberry Pi but I can't find any documentation for doing that with Innuos other than with Roon, and I'd like to not use Roon right now. I'm open to other OSes and software, or even other streamers/endpoints. Is there maybe a good linux distro, that would sync well with one of the provided UPnP profiles?

For this second system, I don't want to have to buy another Innuos device just to stream to it (for now). I know I can also do this with MConnect or other control point apps and use the use Native UpNP option, but I'd like to still have my ratings/etc. in the Sense app all available. This is one thing that makes me want to go back to Roon, but I really prefer everything about Sense, and the SQ on my main system of the Zen.

Squeezelight is the way to go, but a practical alternative for a secondary system that is Airplay capable, can also be Airplay bridge. I installed the LMS Airplay bridge plugin on my Zenith, and I can select Airplay speakers directly in Sense... It has the limitations of Airplay, but it is for the secondary players and requires no additional hardware or software. All managed very simply in Sense...

 

[sandworm]

thanks to @Stephen Healy and @guardajoias. I got Squeezelite working properly on my Rasperry Pi using RoPieee. I was looking for the player to show up in the "Audio" Settings as the Innuos server and UpNP players do, and other players I've plugged into the USB, but I guess it doesn't do that. I found it in the bottom right where you select the player, where I should have looked all along. Also, I needed to set the "Big Buffer" setting to on. Once, I did that it works great on. my Raspberry Pi! I'll probably buy something else, maybe a microRendu although by that point I could just get a Pulse Mini maybe!

It might be nice if there was any documentation about Squeezelite compatibility in the manuals. Just knowing that it's possible would be nice, even if there weren't instructions. The only thing I could find was buried in the FAQ section all the way back to the Sense 2.0 update. Please forgive me if it is there somewhere, but if it is, my several Google searches definitely didn't reveal it) Everything seems to come up about Roon expiremental mode when searching.

 

[Stephen Healy]

thanks to @Stephen Healy and @guardajoias. I got Squeezelite working properly on my Rasperry Pi using RoPieee. I was looking for the player to show up in the "Audio" Settings as the Innuos server and UpNP players do, and other players I've plugged into the USB, but I guess it doesn't do that. I found it in the bottom right where you select the player, where I should have looked all along. Also, I needed to set the "Big Buffer" setting to on. Once, I did that it works great on. my Raspberry Pi! I'll probably buy something else, maybe a microRendu although by that point I could just get a Pulse Mini maybe!

It might be nice if there was any documentation about Squeezelite compatibility in the manuals. Just knowing that it's possible would be nice, even if there weren't instructions. The only thing I could find was buried in the FAQ section all the way back to the Sense 2.0 update. Please forgive me if it is there somewhere, but if it is, my several Google searches definitely didn't reveal it) Everything seems to come up about Roon expiremental mode when searching.

Sounds like a good topic for one of our 'Tips of the Day' posts, so will put some thought around doing a post on this subject. Thanks!

 

[Dricus]

I'm planning to buy the HiFi-ESP32 https://sonocotta.com/hifi-esp32-and-hifi-esp32s3/ . The engineer who made it told me the following: "The key difference is and ESP32-S3 MCU on the second one. It is much more capable but relatively new, so software wise it is not as adopted. If you're using squeezelite, S3 only have experimental build at this moment." For a price in euros we can order from him directly, he said.

 

[andriy@sonocotta]

Hey folks. I'm the author of the HiFi-ESP32, along with Loud-ESP32 and Louder-ESP32 boards, all of which are available in both ESP32 and ESP32-S3 variants; with or without ethernet and with or without external wifi antenna. The primary use case for all of them was the squeezelite-esp32 firmware, which runs quite well on it (I'm using it on a day-to-day basis), the difference being the DAC. The first has line-level to be paired up with an external amp, the second has a simple 5W per channel DAC running off USB-C, and the last has a more powerful 2x22W stereo DAC with DSP capabilities needing an external power adapter.

I'm myself a hobbyist and audio enthusiast and I'm really interested in seeing more use cases for my devices since I started from the simplest devices like coo-coo-clock and moved up to hi-fi stereo systems for home audio and multi-room systems. I'm glad to answer your question and even develop something extra on community demand.