Player Provider Poll #3

[OzGav]

Another year has passed since the last poll. In that time player providers for HEOS, WiiM, Plex Player, Roku, Samsung's Wireless Audio Multiroom and MPD and experimental Alexa support have been added.

The list below is taken from existing requests in these discussions but there are about 80 integrations in HA tagged with media player so if you want to suggest another then put it in the comments but before you do check if someone else has already asked for it and if so just upvote that comment.

If you would like to discuss these options in more detail then here are the threads. Only five that I could find mentioned before so lets see how we go!

MatterCast https://github.com/orgs/music-assistant/discussions/2342
Kodi - Note this works well with the AirPlay provider
Bose Soundtouch - Since poll start this has been IMPLEMENTED
Xiaomi
AES67(Audio-over-IP) https://github.com/orgs/music-assistant/discussions/4138

[reinhard33]

Hello Music Assistant Team and Community,
i have started to use MusicAssistant after i have get the Info from this Bose Server shut down. I am fully switched to MusicAssitant now after i have replaced my old QNAP Nas with new one from Qnap. With the current DLNA i can hear music, but not all is working with this implementation. I am using 4 * ST20 and 1* ST10 System. All of this devices have never get a airplay update. I was also in contact with Bose Support, and they was not able to help here. With the current DLNA Implementation i was not able to activate a multi room group.
It is also not possible to turn off the System. Only when i install the current old Sound Touch Integration in HA. then i see a turn off Button.
In the moment i am waiting for --> Add Bose SoundTouch Favorites provider#3891 --> from @Odn0.
Greetings from Reinhard

[marklam]

I've voted kodi because I've got a kodi install connected to a surround receiver with access to the same NFS share that music assistant is watching, and I'd love to be able to play surround files from music assistant.

To be honest, I'd also like to be able to play surround files to my PC (SendSpin or Music Assistant app, or even Foobar as a client) so that Windows can put its spatial audio provider on it, but that's less important that the physical surround sytem.

[Hedda]

Does anyone know if Kodi even have something akin to a built-in dedicated audio streaming client API designed for multi-room music synchronization?

From what I read that Kodi does expose a powerful JSON-RPC API that could maybe be used to achieve that, but could it not be a better solution to just integrate a native Sendspin client (library written in C++) directly into Kodi instead then expose each Kodi instance as Sendspin client players?

Thinking a native player provider for Kodi over JSON-RPC would be conceptually inferior to using other open streaming protocols, like Sendspin.

However I guess something customized on-top of that might be needed to handle edge-cases such as surround sound as marklam requests.

I know that there is a Kodi integration in Home Assistant that allow you to control a Kodi instanse from Home Assistant, but that is more for automations (like notifications) and to pass standard media entity for announcements. It is not for streaming multi-room audio synchronization.

• https://www.home-assistant.io/integrations/kodi/

Note that Sendspin developers are actively building what is needed so probably easier to extend Sendspin to support surround sound instead:

• Sendspin support for client-side "zones" or up to each clients to expose multiple players for multi-room audio? Sendspin/spec#72

• [REQUEST] UI/protocol support for surround channel assignment per client (speaker role mapping) Sendspin/spec#75

• [REQUEST] Server-side multichannel audio splitting for surround sound (5.1/7.1/9.x Atmos) use cases Sendspin/spec#74

I thin kthat integrating Sendspin (the native, multi-room audio streaming standard built into Music Assistant) into Kodi would be an incredibly much smarter approach to bridge the gap between Music Assistant and Kodi. Music Assistant already has a native Sendspin engine running out-of-the-box, meaning Kodi just needs to behave as a reliable client.

PS: Quick search and seems to already be a project called Sendspin-kodi on GitHub, but that does not look like a native C++ solution for Kodi and instead a third-party Kodi addon which wraps the sendspin-cli daemon:

• https://github.com/shardshunt/Sendspin-kodi

[OzGav]

Kodi supports AirPlay so that can be used now. I don't see us contributing to the Kodi project. You could talk to them directly though.

[CalebGeb]

Would love to see support for fosi s3 streamer!

[Hedda]

Would love to see support for fosi s3 streamer!

@CalebGeb if you mean the "Fosi Audio S3 Balanced HiFi Streamer" then which protocol do you mean exactly?

• https://eu.fosiaudio.com/products/s3-balanced-hifi-streamer

That is, what protocol(s) do you need that is missing from Music Assistant and why?

Music Assistant already have player provider supports Apple AirPlay, Google Cast, Spotify Connect, and UPnP (DLNA) as listed here:

• https://www.music-assistant.io/player-support/

Music Assistant does however not support "Roon Ready" however note that there are existing feature request thread about that:

• https://github.com/orgs/music-assistant/discussions/5133

Also looks like it support Tidal Connect but that would be more of a plugin than a player (similar to the Spotify Connect plugin). Anyway these is an existing feature request thread on that too so suggest that you post feedback in the dedicated threads about those specific protocols:

• https://github.com/orgs/music-assistant/discussions/3931

[Hedda]

@OzGav will you consider adding “Roon Ready” to next player provider poll? Probably hard but Roon Labs seems to have some stuff published:

• https://github.com/orgs/music-assistant/discussions/5133

I do not have/use Roon myself (however I have a college who swears by his “Roon Ready” client devices/speakers and that whole ecosystem).

[Hedda]

Kind of off-topic but just spotten Tidal's list of supported devices (i.e. Tidal's list of supported player providers) and oh my do that list look nice!

• https://tidal.com/supported-devices