Tip of the day: Use Sense to play through phones, tablets and computers.

[Stephen Healy]

Hi everyone,

A common feature request we have had is the ability to use Sense to play music from your Innuos system to smart devices such as phones, tablets, and computers. This has the benefit of then being relayed through to other devices like bluetooth headphones, desktop speakers, or even TV AV systems.

The good news is that this is already possible! Any device capable of running Squeeze will appear as an endpoint in Sense. Furthermore, this will perform much better than UPnP.

For iOS users, you can install SqueezePad to turn your iOS device into a Sense endpoint.
For Android users, you can use SqueezePlayer to turn your Android device into a Sense endpoint (also available on TVs running Android, such as Sony and Philips!)
For Windows desktop users, you can use Squeeze-LX to turn your computer into a Sense endpoint.

Whilst not an 'official' solution, these work very well and on my Windows desktop I personally have been using this method to use Sense (running in a browser) to play my library of music to a compact headphone setup where I do not have space for HiFi components, but still want to utilise the Sense UI for my library.



This is more a tip of convenience rather than outright high-fidelity - dropping in an Innuos streamer will sound better than a PC of course, but in some situations where is not critical and you just want the convenience/luxury of using Sense in a new set of scenarios, then this is useful to know.

If you have any experience with any other apps or devices to achieve similar results, please share below!

 

[mikehughescq]

Er, yes, but you do have to pay for Squeezepad.

 

[Stephen Healy]

Er, yes, but you do have to pay for Squeezepad.

As is so often the case for anything Apple vs Android on the App store!

 

[guardajoias]

For Mac OS one can use either the local player included with Lyrion Music Server, or SqueezePlay.

For iOS and iPadOS As far as I know, Squeezepad is for iPadOS only and does not work on iOS (iPhones). It is also quite old and has not been updated in (7?) years. iPeng does not seem to be actively developed either but is still more modern and works on both iPad and iPhone. The issue though is that although iPeng (and I assume Squeezepad) can indeed act as a local player and also then send the music to Airplay devices, in practice it is cumbersome and unstable.

Cumbersome because for the device running iPeng as player to appear in the Sense menu, the iPeng app has to be running in the foreground or playing music. So either you use another device (computer, other phone etc) to control Sense and select the iPhone/iPad, or you launch some music on iPeng first and then switch to Sense to change what is being played. It works, but not terribly convenient.

Unstable: if further sending the music to some speakers via Airplay, the connection, in my experience, tends to be unstable, even when Airplay is stable when using say Apple Music. A much better solution for Airplay speakers or DACs is to use the Airplay Bridge plugin on the Innuos Server/Player and send the music directly to the Airplay receiver (but iPhone and iPad cannot be Airplay receivers, although recent MacBooks can). This is very stable with Apple HomePods for example.

Hopefully on the horizon for the future: an integrated Airplay Bridge, similar to what you did for UPnP, and separately a local player for Sense...

 

[mikehughescq]

I’d tried iPeng previously and…. no-one in their right mind would.

Squeezeplay? Well putting aside the cost one can only hope Innuos finally grab this nettle as it could politely be described as “20th century”.