Luckily we have the Odroid U3 as a Server device (Max2Play Image) and the PiCorePlayer for Raspberry Pi with the Hifiberry DAC, Digi and Amp, so we have everything Sonos offers and more. Of course it's not quite as Plug and Play as a Sonos System, but it's worth the effort. I'm particularly fond of the Hifiberry Amp component, since it finally gives us a high-quality audio player that works with passive speakers and does not need many cables, a big advantage! Ickstream is also here to take care of us in case Mysqueezebox.com really does shut down at some point. I hope they'll manage to improve their service and make it user-friendly.
Two things I currently miss are: Decent cases for my PiCorePlayer devices. I have cobbled together some cases, but they are not pretty and not "safe" either. I'd really love to see more options in that regard. More and more are becoming available though, so I think this will eventually be solved. Especially the HiFiBerry Amp really needs a safe and secure case The second thing is better support for streaming services, and this is where Sonos really shines. Michael does not add any new services to mysb.com anymore or implement any changes to existing plugins like Deezer. This is understandable. The 3rd Party Plugins are mostly OK, but they are usually cobbled together, using workarounds and unofficial APIs. In some cases this works really well, but it's not quite on the same level as Sonos Users can enjoy. In this area, I hope Ickstream will be able to help us out eventually. Their Deezer, Wimp and Qobuz plugins already work reasonably well, but there is still a lot of work left to do. I hope they manae to pull it off. The main problem is surely, that APIs are often limited (like Google Play Music) or not publicly available at all. Spotify cut down the feature set of their API quite a bit to promote their "Spotify Connect" system, just as an example... Well anyway, that's my take on the current situation. I don't think there is any need to throw out the SB System anytime soon with all the 3rd Party Hard and Software out there! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ CommanderROR's Profile: http://forums.slimdevices.com/member.php?userid=59408 View this thread: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=103041 _______________________________________________ discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.slimdevices.com/mailman/listinfo/discuss
