[bilakos]

Hi All,

as some other guys out there... I have spent my whole weekend looking for a suitable multiroom audio solution. Here, I have tried Logitech's Media Server with the Xsqueeze Add-on, but the results were not really satifying.

I am today using KODI as an HTPC solution for more than 2 years and very happy with it. Now, am looking to extend my single installation in the living room with some more KODI installations based on a Raspberry PI hardware (e.g. bath room). I would like to use these KODI satelites to play a truly synchronised audio stream through my WiFI.

Any hints how to realize this...?

Cheers,

[bossanova808]

XSqueeze is really just a hack that can be handy if you have existing Squeezebox hardware. Which was exquisite and awesome in its day, but is increasingly a legacy thing. But even now your Sonos etc are wildly behind in library features and extensibility. It's a great shame really.

Kodi has zero support for synchronised playback in any real sense, though. Indeed, basically any computer audio solution is not going to be awesome (basically because of the variable latency of comptuer audio pipelines - the timing is simply not on par with proper hardware timing solutions in dedicated audio player hardware)... but Raspberry Pis with squeezelite come about as close as any I have seen and may be close enough for loose synchonisation (i.e. it's nto really good enough if you have multiple players in one room, but OK for walking around room to room).

Unless you really need video playback in your bathroom, I'd look at something like Squeezeplug going into some powered speakers (ideally via usb so that the speaker DAC is being used, the Pi is not so good at this I believe). You can install kodi and run squeezelite as a service in the background as well, but you have to make sure they don't both try and grab the audio device etc (it's possible, not too hard).

Anyway, just some thoughts. Been there, done that, use it a lot less than I thought I would. In the end I am using a variety of older SB hardware to do this and it's still much more awesome than a lot of other solutions, was not too expensive, and is very flexible.

[bilakos]

Hey Bossanova,

Thanks for your reply. Sadly, I think you're right. I think the most promising solution to realize a multi room setup is WHAALE. Basically it is an iOS powered solution which integrates AppleTV and airport express seamlessly and synchronizes all devices but does not integrate any other device than IOS.

I was hoping that this app integrates also into Kodi via airplay. Unfortunately, every time I connect Kodi to it Kodi hangs.

Hopefully, they will be teaming up at sometime with Kodi's AirPlay realization.

[bossanova808]

If you're going to spend the money to have idevices/ispeakers in every room, there are LOTS of non i device alternatives that are cheaper and better if you ask me...

[bilakos]

Ok which one do you think of assuming a budget of 200-300 EUR...? Excluding loudspeakers budget..

I am looking for an open standard which can work with iPhone and Kodi

[bossanova808]

The squeezelite option with pi will work well, control with ipeng on iOS for example. But plenty of options for you to research if you don't like LMS