Wed Jan 03, 2024 8:51 pm
How I use Serviio (audio)
Hi everyone, I’ve been a casual user of Serviio over the last few years. For Christmas I got a Raspberry Pi. My goal was to migrate my Serviio audio library from my Mac mini to the Pi. It went beautifully! Anyway, I thought I would share the ways I use Serviio, and perhaps you’ll chime in with some thoughts as well.
iPad as command central:
Once I got the library on the Pi I really wanted my iPad Pro to serve as the command point. That’s because I pretty much always have it with me in the house, so sometimes I want to listen on headphones, but if I’m in my home theater or my office I want to route the audio to different speaker setups. I have found that the nicest app for these purposes is MConnect HD. MConnect can act as a renderer or a control point, which is great. I’ve tried many (MANY) others. They all work to some degree, but I really like MConnect and it has proven to be very reliable.
When I’m in my office I dock my iPad to an Anker 551 USB-C hub. I have a Topping E30 connected to that which outputs to my speakers and sub. I *really* like having my Mac mini entirely freed up now.
When I’m in the theater I have a few options. If I just want music (TV off) I have MConnect “Play to” to my Denon DNP-720AE which works great with Serviio. Usually I’ll keep my iPad open with MConnect HD running so I can see album art and/or switch up the music.
If I want album art up on the the big screen, I still use MConnect on the iPad but I use 8Player Pro on my Apple TV (8Player Pro is also available for the iPad, but I prefer the aesthetics of MConnect). But a really neat aspect of 8Player’s Apple TV version is that it has a built in renderer mode, which means I can use MConnect on my iPad as usual and “Play-to” the Apple TV which has become an addressable renderer. Pretty cool. 8Player did a nice job…the album art looks really nice through the aTV and there’s a nice time-progress bar at the bottom of the screen.
In the last several days I’ve been learning to use Serviio’s APIs in order to build a tiny album art display using a Rapberry Pi Zero W with a little 4” screen (waiting on the screen which is back ordered). There are a few examples on the internet and they looked pretty neat so I thought I’d give it a shot (haven’t seen anyone try one using Serviio). I have the HTML ready and it looks good. The javascript checks in with Serviio every 15 seconds and updates the artwork, song title, and artist. I’m going to set the little guy up in my office underneath my monitor. I’ve always loved having album art viewable while listening/working. (minor request to Zip if you read this… would love to have access to the album title via the API, and maybe even the next song/artist/album/thumbnail that is waiting in the queue).
Anyway, I know this board isn’t super active these days, but I wanted to post my use-cases and say thanks for a very dependable and efficient app. The older I get, the less I feel like streaming from Apple Music, Spotify, etc. I’d rather keep things local. Maybe I’ll start ripping my Blu-ray’s soon, who knows. I’ve tried some radio stations over the last few days but that seems really hit and miss (mostly miss) now that the big companies seem to want you to stream directly off their sites and apps.
Thanks for reading
iPad as command central:
Once I got the library on the Pi I really wanted my iPad Pro to serve as the command point. That’s because I pretty much always have it with me in the house, so sometimes I want to listen on headphones, but if I’m in my home theater or my office I want to route the audio to different speaker setups. I have found that the nicest app for these purposes is MConnect HD. MConnect can act as a renderer or a control point, which is great. I’ve tried many (MANY) others. They all work to some degree, but I really like MConnect and it has proven to be very reliable.
When I’m in my office I dock my iPad to an Anker 551 USB-C hub. I have a Topping E30 connected to that which outputs to my speakers and sub. I *really* like having my Mac mini entirely freed up now.
When I’m in the theater I have a few options. If I just want music (TV off) I have MConnect “Play to” to my Denon DNP-720AE which works great with Serviio. Usually I’ll keep my iPad open with MConnect HD running so I can see album art and/or switch up the music.
If I want album art up on the the big screen, I still use MConnect on the iPad but I use 8Player Pro on my Apple TV (8Player Pro is also available for the iPad, but I prefer the aesthetics of MConnect). But a really neat aspect of 8Player’s Apple TV version is that it has a built in renderer mode, which means I can use MConnect on my iPad as usual and “Play-to” the Apple TV which has become an addressable renderer. Pretty cool. 8Player did a nice job…the album art looks really nice through the aTV and there’s a nice time-progress bar at the bottom of the screen.
In the last several days I’ve been learning to use Serviio’s APIs in order to build a tiny album art display using a Rapberry Pi Zero W with a little 4” screen (waiting on the screen which is back ordered). There are a few examples on the internet and they looked pretty neat so I thought I’d give it a shot (haven’t seen anyone try one using Serviio). I have the HTML ready and it looks good. The javascript checks in with Serviio every 15 seconds and updates the artwork, song title, and artist. I’m going to set the little guy up in my office underneath my monitor. I’ve always loved having album art viewable while listening/working. (minor request to Zip if you read this… would love to have access to the album title via the API, and maybe even the next song/artist/album/thumbnail that is waiting in the queue).
Anyway, I know this board isn’t super active these days, but I wanted to post my use-cases and say thanks for a very dependable and efficient app. The older I get, the less I feel like streaming from Apple Music, Spotify, etc. I’d rather keep things local. Maybe I’ll start ripping my Blu-ray’s soon, who knows. I’ve tried some radio stations over the last few days but that seems really hit and miss (mostly miss) now that the big companies seem to want you to stream directly off their sites and apps.
Thanks for reading