Playlists creating & storing

[Tom Swaman]

Perhaps this is the wrong place for this. If so, kindly forgive my ignorance.

I am looking into some of the newer, reasonably priced streamers. What do I need to make and to store music playlists from my own FLAC files and folders?

[garym]

Re: Playlists creating & storing

Almost any music library program can create and save a playlist. I use LMS, foobar2000, or mp3tag to create playlists. Any program that will create *.m3u or *.m3u8 files will work.

[Tom Swaman]

Re: Playlists creating & storing

Thank you garym. Are these playlists lossless or lossy?

[garym]

Re: Playlists creating & storing

Thank you garym. Are these playlists lossless or lossy?

if the underlying audio files are lossless, the playlists are lossless. I use FLAC files in my playlists. Do not let the term m3u confuse you. This has nothing to do with mp3 files.

[Tom Swaman]

Re: Playlists creating & storing

Gpt it garym. I use only FLAC and my files are all 16-bit to 24-bit. Now if I want to make 20 playlists, each containing 1000 FLAC tracks m what hardware and software do I need to stream this from one system to three other systems in the same home without loosing much quality in the sound?

[garym]

Re: Playlists creating & storing

NO need to lose any quality at all. But there are hundreds of potential streaming solutions. What are you using now for streaming music?

[Tom Swaman]

Re: Playlists creating & storing

3 LINN DS units. One froze twp days ago. I use asset and free LINN rather poor software. I would not buy LINN again for 20 reasons. I also cannot afford that kind of money I hope that answers your question and thank you garym.

[Tom Swaman]

Re: Playlists creating & storing

NO need to lose any quality at all. But there are hundreds of potential streaming solutions. What are you using now for streaming music?

There appears to be a lot out there, but upon a close look many of these require third party software to enable streaming one's own music as opposed to music from some other source. Also, many of these are prohibitively expensive, i.e. in the thousands of dollar range U.S.

[garym]

Re: Playlists creating & storing

It doesn't have to be expensive. the dbpoweramp developer's AssetUPnP as noted above is a popular streaming server software, and then can be paired with almost any system that has a UPnP endpoint.

In my case I use Logitech Music Server (LMS) as my music server. This is free and you can run this on any windows, mac, or linux machine. It also runs nicely on an rPi, which is what I do (rPi4B with a 4TB portable USB drive attached to the rPi). You can even have the rPi serve as both the music server running LMS *and* the endpoint streamer connected to your DAC/stereo. In LMS terms, this is called squeezelite (because it emulates the older Squeezebox music players). The operating system of the rPi I use is called PiCorePlayer. If you install that, you can easily select both LMS and squeezelite to run. And the entire thing is just on 24/7 and is the size of a deck of cards! Good user forum here for this stuff:

https://forums.slimdevices.com/

Here's the how to guide for piCorePlayer:

https://www.picoreplayer.org/

https://docs.picoreplayer.org/

LMS is community software these days and is free. picoreplayer is provided free, but donations are certainly welcome. The rPi4B costs about $45 (normally, except right now there are supply chain problems making rPi units hard to find). In my case my entire server/streamer costs about $45 not counting the cost of the 4TB USB drive (maybe that was $99) and the donation I made to piCorePlayer. And all this supports multiple room streaming (synched or not), streaming almost any kind of file (flac, apple lossless, WAV, mp3, m4a) up to 24/192. So instead of thousands, I've barely invested $200 to make all this work. And by the way, I would spend $10,000 to make all this work if I thought it mattered, so I'm not doing this to be cheap. I actually find my setup to be very good, flexible, and very easy to use.

[Tom Swaman]

Re: Playlists creating & storing

Like AssetUPnP for instance? In my experience the only way to go for streaming your own music is UPnP, but that's because I have my collection extensively tagged and no other system can offer me what UPnP does, most can't even offer the basics (from memory BluOS only supports a tiny set of tags and doesn't even handle multi-value tags properly for those).


There is a lot of praise for the WiiM Mini streamer which is (amongst other things) a UPnP endpoint, so you could look in that direction, and pair it with any dac/amplifier you so choose.

Many thanks Simbus. I am looking into this now because of your comments. I am also looking into Bluesound NODE as I have read glowing accounts of this unit and the supplied software.

[Tom Swaman]

Re: Playlists creating & storing

It doesn't have to be expensive. the dbpoweramp developer's AssetUPnP as noted above is a popular streaming server software, and then can be paired with almost any system that has a UPnP endpoint.

In my case I use Logitech Music Server (LMS) as my music server. This is free and you can run this on any windows, mac, or linux machine. It also runs nicely on an rPi, which is what I do (rPi4B with a 4TB portable USB drive attached to the rPi). You can even have the rPi serve as both the music server running LMS *and* the endpoint streamer connected to your DAC/stereo. In LMS terms, this is called squeezelite (because it emulates the older Squeezebox music players). The operating system of the rPi I use is called PiCorePlayer. If you install that, you can easily select both LMS and squeezelite to run. And the entire thing is just on 24/7 and is the size of a deck of cards! Good user forum here for this stuff:

https://forums.slimdevices.com/

Here's the how to guide for piCorePlayer:

https://www.picoreplayer.org/

https://docs.picoreplayer.org/

LMS is community software these days and is free. picoreplayer is provided free, but donations are certainly welcome. The rPi4B costs about $45 (normally, except right now there are supply chain problems making rPi units hard to find). In my case my entire server/streamer costs about $45 not counting the cost of the 4TB USB drive (maybe that was $99) and the donation I made to piCorePlayer. And all this supports multiple room streaming (synched or not), streaming almost any kind of file (flac, apple lossless, WAV, mp3, m4a) up to 24/192. So instead of thousands, I've barely invested $200 to make all this work. And by the way, I would spend $10,000 to make all this work if I thought it mattered, so I'm not doing this to be cheap. I actually find my setup to be very good, flexible, and very easy to use.

As always, I thank you garym. Your knowledge is way over my head. I think I understand about one-half of what you wrote.

[garym]

Re: Playlists creating & storing

As always, I thank you garym. Your knowledge is way over my head. I think I understand about one-half of what you wrote.

Sorry! But basically I'm saying you need a server (some sort of computer to hold your music and feed it to your players) and you need an endpoint (something to receive the music and feed it to your stereo). Some stereo receivers have built in uPnP endpoints. So do some DACs.

[Tom Swaman]

Re: Playlists creating & storing

Garym, I do understand what you just wrote. I do have an excellent desktop PC. I do have a good stereo system in three different rooms. I need the other part, what I call the streamers and the necessary UPnp software.

Did you ever look at the Bluesound NODE? Your thoughts please.

[garym]

Re: Playlists creating & storing

Garym, I do understand what you just wrote. I do have an excellent desktop PC. I do have a good stereo system in three different rooms. I need the other part, what I call the streamers and the necessary UPnp software.

Did you ever look at the Bluesound NODE? Your thoughts please.

I've read good things about Bluesound stuff, but have never used it.

[Tom Swaman]

Re: Playlists creating & storing

I've read good things about Bluesound stuff, but have never used it.

Thani you garym. Tom Swaman