Replies: 8 comments 5 replies
-
Balena-sound is what you're looking for. |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
shairport-sync , afaik, was built having lowest latencies between synced clients in mind. The basic question is. Is a proper shairport-sync installation/configuration sufficient to run separate stereo speakers without serious interchannel non-linearities? At a quality level rivalling classic stereo systems. |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
This setting in the config file should accomplish what you are after: Set one RPi to "both left" and the other RPi to "both right". |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
Sorry, for not being clear. For quality stereo playback the time difference between left and right channel would be the key challenge here. On a single standalone system this is no issue. We can configure delays via software. On two seperate systems with drifting clocks, different setups etc, that would be a major challenge. We simply can't assume both client systems work equally timewise. There'll be variations. To cope with that is most challenging. Therefore it IMO would require a sophisticated buffered sync mechanism between left and right client on a lower microsecond level to accomplish quality stereo playback. Just by looking at typical double digit milliseconds latencies on non-realtime systems this to me looks like a major challenge. Anyhow. Perhaps there's a solution to it. Mike and team did put a lot of effort on the latency and sync subject. @noelhibbard |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
I am entertaining a similar but less sophisticated idea. I own two battery driven Canton musicboxes xs which have excellent sound but are AUX and bluetooth only. They do stereo via bluetooth true wireless. I managed to hook one of them up to a Pi 3b with an aux cable (so far only to the headphone jack) and they play nicely as a stereo pair that way. I am thinking of using a Pi zero 2 W to make this somewhat portable. Would a Pi zero actually be powerful enough for Airplay 2? And I also don’t have a good idea about how to power the Pi. There is nothing on the speaker I could tap into. These boxes also add a lot of latency which I could compensate with |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
Thanks for the post.
|
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
I'd like to get back to this as today I got around to really fix the delay by measuring it. I recorded an audio track by tapping on the iPad with a pen in semi-regular intervals of about 6 seconds. This track I played simultaneously on a regular airplay speaker and via shairport on the Canton speakers. The resulting very audible double clicks I recorded again and analyzed the peaks in audacity on a PC. A script I found here gave me very accurate results of the times when the peaks started. Computing the differences (0.3628 sec) gave me the delay. The result is so accurate that holding the left channel from the regular box to one ear and the right channel of the Canton boxes to the other gives perfect sound (disregarding the speaker differences). I am thrilled. But I have a question. A small problem is that the delay is very different when I use a single box, so I need a different config. Do you have a good suggestion how to switch between the two setups? For example, could you run two shairports on the same computer simultaneously? But it is a minor problem, the single box doesn't sound very good anyway. |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
Thanks for the update.
With difficulty -- it seems that AirPlay 2 clients can not deal with more than one player on a single device, so you have to do some virtualisation or containerisation, which brings its own complications. @noelhibbard is the expert here. |
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
-
Hi.
I was wondering if shairport (AP2) could be used to build a system of two wireless active speakers running
an RPi on either side.
There are commercial solutions for wireless systems (e.g. Dali). Somehow they managed to get a wireless system properly in sync.
There has to be an advanced latency control and buffer management in place to accomplish a good working "sync" setup between the left and the right speaker
AP2 streamers like the Wiim Mini Airplay 2 Music Streamer seem to use microphones to (auto-)sync clients properly. Not sure how well that works.
I'd guess the key challenge is not just keep both RPis in whatever "sync" though.
If both systems should act as a high quality stereo config, we probably talk about "single-digit-milliseconds" left-right sync and a very low level of interchannel variations (data jitter).
Anybody tried this with shairport !?!? Is it possible? Would it be possible at all?
Beta Was this translation helpful? Give feedback.
All reactions