Not sure if this is more of a terminology question than a configuration question, because I swear I've searched. What I'm trying to do seems basic.
PC audio -> MA (installed as HA add-on) -> cast speakers
What kind of "provider" do I need?
#All PC audio to Music Assistant
calm furnace
sterile rune
Not sure if this is more of a terminology question than a configuration question...
what is your actual use case? perhaps there is a better option?
this isn't something music assistant is really designed to do. you could maybe try and set up the pc to stream its audio via a internet radio protocol. using something like icecast. then import it into music assistant as a radio station. but its hacky and will definitely add some delay.
I guess it depends on what your actual goal is though.
calm furnace
what is your actual use case? perhaps there is a better option?
this isn't some...
what is your actual use case? perhaps there is a better option?
this isn't something music assistant is really designed to do. you could maybe try and set up the pc to stream its audio via a internet radio protocol. using something like icecast. then import it into music assistant as a radio station. but its hacky and will definitely add some delay.
I guess it depends on what your actual goal is though.
Thank you for the reply. I suspected this is the case, both on there being better ways to do this and on IceCast being the path forward (as misguided as it might be). I wanted to confirm before going down my 15th rabbit hole on this.
If you don't want to read the (largely irrelevant) text to follow, what I could really use is a nudge in the right direction on how to set up just such a stream using Virtual Audio Cables and IceCast (plus/slash DarkIce?) in a secure manner. I can tell you from 4 months of searching that someone else is going to end up with the same question, so my story might help them. I am not technically inept just perpetually finding myself sent in the wrong diretion in this particular domain.
Let me try to give you
- use case boiled down to ultimate outcome
- context for this without making this way too long and irrelevant.
1: Music Assistant as central audio hub taking inputs from
- a: the things it is designed to do, (working great as of tonight, I love it)
- b: as well as one PC, and proxmox willing, two VDI's as needed.
2: When I moved four months ago I decided I would like to design my new apartment's layout and network / tech stack around cloudless home automation (I am an IT professional and have been "homelabbing" on and off for 20 years since I was a teen and RHEL was just "Red Hat").
This was SOLELY because it seemed to be the easiest path towards full home multiroom audio, the rest of the cool stuff HA provides just being gravy. I really just wanted to be able to go take a piss or grab a snack and hear the TV's audio in the bathroom or kitchen, or play a particular playlist in the bedroom while Slayer plays in the living room, you get the gist.
I wanted to prototype it early and cheap, so I found a few old threads suggesting accumulating a few first gen Google Home Mini's for $20 a pop as it was the easiest and cheapest. Queue 4 months of frustrating half solutions and half baked stop gaps. You see, I really didn't (/haven't) wanted to setup my 2 brand new servers, proxmox HA cluster, HA fully redundant core services, storage and backup, etc until my plan for the whole setup was fully baked and automated from LXC deploy to final application configuration, and it just isn't there yet.
So in the meanwhile I've tried tons of things, but Google cast is just a proper pain in the ass. I've bought and returned Wiim's, I've tried all kinds of software. Spotify Connect is the only thing that works flawlessly. Getting audio from anything else to play in sync or even to a whole Google speaker group is the worst. But you know what does work? Casting from a chromium based browser from a PC. At least an hour at a time. So I've watched plenty of movies on the projector from my couch, with the audio coming from my PC to those speakers.
It's a bit wonky but I've learned to like having the ability to get my computer's audio to the speakers in a few situations, and would like to continue to do that.
Tonight I finally had some free time, but not enough to do the whole environment deploy, so I just set up HA and MA in a VM, just to see how it looks. Right off the bat I love MA. Casting just works. But can't figure out how to do the PC audio to MA so it can cast for me.
The VDI's should be easy, they'll be some flavor of linux workstation or HTPC distro (easier casting through mkvchromecast or whatever) with passthrough to the HDMI and audio ports if necessary (one VDI on each proxmox node that happen to live next to my two projectors).
Help? Keep in mind that I can cut latency in most aspects (everything wired with cat6a, enough 50 ft hdmi cables to go that route if I really needed to, several nodes with excess compute and memory if so needed). Even if IceCast or whatever might not be the best idea, I'm willing to give it a shot.
I think ultimately, this is also me solving for what might be another problem down the line: firestick/projector audio to the same place. Computers and HDMI audio extractors are already in the toolbox
sterile rune
you are probably better off having proper audio distribution hardware
not nessasarily cheap though
calm furnace
Have I mentioned how much this whole ordeal has taught me about how stubborn I am? Lol. At this point I should have just bought Sonos kit.
I almost refuse to abandon the Mini's. Is this really that difficult a thing to do? I would think based on what I've seen of MA that it could take an input as simple as this
I could just continue casting through chrome browsers and eventually mkv-whatever, I just instantly fell in love with MA and the idea of using it as a central hub.
Utopia apartment where I only have tocommunicate with one system to get PC to this display and these speakers, and such
sterile rune
music assistant is just the wrong tool for the job tbh
calm furnace
What's the right tool?
sterile rune
have a look at this video - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isqlWMeibuA
it may give you some ideas
calm furnace
If you don 't have a lot of experience with the whole Google cast audio thing, I gotta say despite being a pain in the ass to work with disparate systems, the syncing is so impressive. Hence my instant love of HA/MA using it without question
Is MA not involved in so me way when users queue up a movie on HA configured display A and configured speakers B and C?
Not sure how my situation is much different. But I will watch that video front to back for you out of gratitude engaging
calm furnace
So maybe it's not really an MA question so much as an HA question. I dont know the terminology / discrete aspects
I just figured MA brought in the audio casting code
If I can get my PC to be a "provider" within HA to reach the same outcome, perfect
Note that one of the VDI's will literally be hosting the container HA will live on in production (edit: ykwim)
sterile rune
providers generally provide audio files "songs". there is the radio site as i mentioned which is perhaps possible to use to pipe an audio stream out
but we are probably talking delays of multiple seconds at best.
calm furnace
See I was actually seeing this as potential solution for the delay thing, that maybe was incorporated already (or I could if not)
Cause bluetooth is out as its delay is too bad. Casting is bad but not too bad. I figured I could time it (through code) and send the video stream or audio stream in the right way, if you follow
Do people not use HA to queue up movies with wireless speakers at all?
sterile rune
the delay would likely be variable too not a fixed amount. so compensating would be hard
sterile rune
Do people not use HA to queue up movies with wireless speakers at all?
not with audio running through HA
calm furnace
Is this not what MA already accomplishes? I havent noticed desync
Between speakers
And if not mA I figured snapcast or whatever that spotify connect clone is
It may be variable but its really just like a half second offset between lips and audio with casting IME. Not the second+ of bluetooth. It's even watchable as is
calm furnace
not with audio running through HA
Damn I just assumed! Which one shouldnt ofc
Ok but say I could adjust the video stream to the offset. I really cant just get my PC's audio to cast through HA or MA?
No other casting method of any type I've used has been so convenient / seamless
sterile rune
Ok but say I could adjust the video stream to the offset. I really cant just get...
no, i dont think so
