No Love for Squeezelite from the Industry

Hi Folks, this is my first post here although I have enjoyed reading.

Any opinion on why the industry makes the choice not to include Squeezelite as a streaming option on consumer products?

After all, Squeezelite e.g 'Squeezebox et.al' pretty much put networked audio on the map. 

I’ve always thought the interface was terrible and that contributes to its lack of acceptance by the industry. 
 

I think if we look at the pros and cons of it versus what the other options offer, we may get somewhere. 

Hi thank you for your thoughts.

Squeezelite is an actual 'end-point'.....this is what I'm talking about.

Logitech Media Server is the server, Squeezelite is the end-point to LMS. LMS uses an 'interface' ie a Graphical User Interface 'GUI' which is not what I'm talking about being adopted by the industry. For example, Roon includes the ability to stream to Squeezelite as an end-point. 

For clarification.

Steamers can stream to Roon endpoints, DLNA endpoints, even Spotify as an endpoint via "Spotify-connect"...Airplay etc. etc.

Since most 'Streamers' use Linux as an OS its pretty easy to include Squeezelite as it is also written for Linux and is 100% open source freely available to anyone.

5 minutes ago, Ozeki said:

Hi thank you for your thoughts.

 

Squeezelite is an actual 'end-point'.....this is what I'm talking about.

 

Logitech Media Server is the server, Squeezelite is the end-point to LMS. LMS uses an 'interface' ie a Graphical User Interface 'GUI' which is not what I'm talking about being adopted by the industry. For example, Roon includes the ability to stream to Squeezelite as an end-point. 

 

For clarification.

Steamers can stream to Roon endpoints, DLNA endpoints, even Spotify as an endpoint via "Spotify-connect"...Airplay etc. etc.

 

Since most 'Streamers' use Linux as an OS its pretty easy to include Squeezelite as it is also written for Linux and is 100% open source freely available to anyone.

 

 

Do you see any advantages of using it over UPnP?

Help for understand what "Squeezelite" is.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeezelite

Squeezelite is one of several software clients available for Logitech Media Server. Squeezelite does not have any user interface of its own and must be controlled via Logitech Media Server's web interface or another Logitech Media Server client.

1 minute ago, Ozeki said:

Help for understand what "Squeezelite" is.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squeezelite

 

 

Squeezelite is one of several software clients available for Logitech Media Server. Squeezelite does not have any user interface of its own and must be controlled via Logitech Media Server's web interface or another Logitech Media Server client.

I fully understand the situation. 
 

It comes down to the user interface though. Almost nobody uses squeezelite with Roon because RAAT / Roon Ready work better. After that, what interface do you have for sending to squeezelite? LMS? It’s horrible. 

I bought a Logitech Squeezebox years ago after my CD player died, and loved it. I now have a bunch of Raspberry Pi's throughout my house, mostly running piCorePlayer with the Logitech LMS and Squeezelite. I control these with both the iPeng iOS app and the LMS UI with the Material skin. Both work great.

I think it was really smart of SlimServer, the company that created the LMS and Squeezelite before Logitech acquired them, to have open-sourced all of their software. There's a ton of great plug-ins for the LMS. The sole engineer at Logitech who maintains the LMS software wrote a fantastic Spotify plug-in.

One of my Pi's has a touchscreen interface, and I have the same UI on the display as I had with the original Squeezebox with the open-source Squeezeplay softare.

1 minute ago, skikirkwood said:

I bought a Logitech Squeezebox years ago after my CD player died, and loved it. I now have a bunch of Raspberry Pi's throughout my house, mostly running piCorePlayer with the Logitech LMS and Squeezelite. I control these with both the iPeng iOS app and the LMS UI with the Material skin. Both work great.

 

I think it was really smart of SlimServer, the company that created the LMS and Squeezelite before Logitech acquired them, to have open-sourced all of their software. There's a ton of great plug-ins for the LMS. The sole engineer at Logitech who maintains the LMS software wrote a fantastic Spotify plug-in.

 

One of my Pi's has a touchscreen interface, and I have the same UI on the display as I had with the original Squeezebox with the open-source Squeezeplay softare.

I also think it’s great it was open sourced. 
 

I just wished I liked the product. I haven’t used iPeng in over a decade. 

Almost every streamer and server I have testing in the last several years has support for the Slimserver/Squeeze server protocol.  That includes Roon.  All of these protocols move music files from one place to another.  I find that both UPnP and Slim protocols can provide better sound quality than RAAT.  

Now none of this has anything to do with individual applications UI/UX.   The UX on what is now Lyrion Music Server can be adapted in many ways.  One of the newer ones is called Material Skin.  This process is not user friendly.  

In my system I regularly use the iOS app iPeng to play music here is a short walk through:

 

3 minutes ago, bobfa said:

 I find that both UPnP and Slim protocols can provide better sound quality than RAAT.  

Yes they do...I think this is the common perception.

As far as being able to stream to Squeezelite, its not as complicated as people might think.  Both RAAT and Squeezelite use standard internet protocol....Squeezelite used TCP, where as RAAT uses UDP. Its just a matter of opening a port to the endpoint and allowing your standard internet protocol do its work.

I also run Volumio on one of my Pi's, another audiophile Linux distribution. I even wrote its Spotify plug-in years ago in Node.js. But Volumio tends to be flaky, whereas the LMS is rock solid.

You don't need a special or separate interface to stream to Squeezelite no more than you need a special interface to stream to Bluetooth. Its just a program that uses a protocol to accept streamed data. So brand X would still use their house interface to stream to Squeezelite just like Roon uses its house-interface to stream to Squeezelite. 

19 minutes ago, Ozeki said:

where as RAAT uses UDP

I believe Roon switched to TCP shortly after launching. 
 

Edit: June 2017. 
 

https://community.roonlabs.com/t/roon-1-3-build-234-is-live/26719

11 minutes ago, Ozeki said:

You don't need a special or separate interface to stream to Squeezelite no more than you need a special interface to stream to Bluetooth. Its just a program that uses a protocol to accept streamed data. So brand X would still use their house interface to stream to Squeezelite just like Roon uses its house-interface to stream to Squeezelite. 

I think my question is, why would one of the few brands that actually has its own interface, spend time to build-in Squeezelite support in the interface and hardware?

What do you see as the advantages, that would make the effort to build it and support it, worth it?

I’ve been championing Ravenna for years because it’s very robust and supports 16 channels of DXD / DSD256 without a hitch. None of the current solutions in HiFi products do that. 
 

Squeezelite seems to duplicate existing functionality of UPnP and Roon Ready / RAAT. 

3 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

I think my question is, why would one of the few brands that actually has its own interface, spend time to build-in Squeezelite support in the interface and hardware?

 

What do you see as the advantages, that would make the effort to build it and support it, worth it?

Thats just it....they don't need to build in Squeezelite. They don't need to install Squeezelite into their interface or hardware.

All they need to do is add a few lines of code to make it support sending data via TCP per Ralph's Squeezelite protocol. Once they add the lines of code Squeezelite it will auto-magically show up as an end-point. Just like the end-points of UPnP, DLNA, Roon, Airplay, Spotify-Connect etc....talk about redundancy. 

Being open-source means they don't have to invent the wheel or do any heavy lifting. The code already exists....

No changes to their GUI, no special changes to an interface, no adoption of the LMS interface or ecosystem, as mentioned in your first post. Perhaps the barrier is a lack of understanding what Squeezelite is and how to use it.

3 hours ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

Squeezelite seems to duplicate existing functionality of UPnP and Roon Ready / RAAT. 

Actually its the other way around....Slim Devices came out in 2001, where are the standard for UPnp didn't exist until 2008 and Roon later than that.

As mentioned before, Squeezelite pretty much put network streaming on the map.  It's others who duplicate it, not the other way around.

7 hours ago, Ozeki said:

Any opinion on why the industry makes the choice not to include Squeezelite as a streaming option on consumer products?

At least WiiM, Innuos, Antipodes and Holo Red Streamer do it …

13 minutes ago, stefano_mbp said:

At least WiiM, Innuos, Antipodes and Holo Red Streamer do it …

And of course the entire Sonore Rendu series has supported and included Sqeezelite since the beginning…

14 minutes ago, Superdad said:

And of course the entire Sonore Rendu series has supported and included Sqeezelite since the beginning…

… and SOtM too …

47 minutes ago, Superdad said:

I have to admit it caught me by surprise when I discovered that Roon supports streaming to Squeezlite endpoints.

If you think about it, supporting Squeezelite gives Roon an immediate existing user base who might be willing to at least try their product. It does nothing to support or promote LMS, so its a win for Roon and a win for the countless users worldwide who already use LMS + Squeezelite. Not to mention Roon pretty much copied the client / server scheme created by Slim Devices in the first place. 

5 hours ago, Ozeki said:

 

Actually its the other way around....Slim Devices came out in 2001, where are the standard for UPnp didn't exist until 2008 and Roon later than that.

 

As mentioned before, Squeezelite pretty much put network streaming on the map.  It's others who duplicate it, not the other way around.

 

 

I completely understand the timeline, but in the context of my question, adding support for squeezelite duplicates functionality all the manufacturers already have. This is why I keep asking what are the benefits of squeezelite over what is already being used. 
 

Your initial question could be answered if we could list the benefits of squeezlite over existing methods. 

3 hours ago, Superdad said:

And sorry, I don’t find the various skins for LMS—nor LMS’ file/storage/server management—to be compelling.

This was also my answer to the OP’s original question about why more manufacturers don’t implement it. 

5 hours ago, Ozeki said:

 

Thats just it....they don't need to build in Squeezelite. They don't need to install Squeezelite into their interface or hardware.

 

All they need to do is add a few lines of code to make it support sending data via TCP per Ralph's Squeezelite protocol. Once they add the lines of code Squeezelite it will auto-magically show up as an end-point. Just like the end-points of UPnP, DLNA, Roon, Airplay, Spotify-Connect etc....talk about redundancy. 

 

Being open-source means they don't have to invent the wheel or do any heavy lifting. The code already exists....

 

No changes to their GUI, no special changes to an interface, no adoption of the LMS interface or ecosystem, as mentioned in your first post. Perhaps the barrier is a lack of understanding what Squeezelite is and how to use it.

building in = adding a few lines of code. 
 

Manufacturers need to add the code to their apps and hardware. If they don’t see any added functionality, the cost to do this, test it, and support it, will always be too much no matter how easy it is. 
 

Networks are a gigantic support nightmare for audio manufacturers. Adding an additional network based playback method, that appears to offer nothing more than they already have, seems like a recipe for disaster. 
 

If we could like all the benefits, perhaps this wouldn’t be the case.