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![]() Lyrion Music Server Web Interface | |
Developer(s) | LMS Community |
---|---|
Stable release | 8.5.2 / May 20, 2024 |
Written in | Perl |
Operating system | Linux, Windows, macOS |
Platform | Deb package, RPM package, Docker (software) |
Type | Streaming audio server |
License | GNU General Public License |
Website | lyrion |
Lyrion Music Server (formerly Logitech Media Server, SlimServer, SqueezeCenter and Squeezebox Server) is a streaming audio server supported by the LMS community and formerly supported by Logitech, developed in particular to support their Squeezebox range of digital audio receivers.
The software is designed for streaming music over a network, allowing users to play their music collections from virtually anywhere there is an Internet connection. It supports PCM audio formats including MP3, FLAC, WAV, Ogg, Opus, and AAC, as well as transcoding. It also supports DSD audio formats such as DSF, DFF and DSD WavPack. It can stream to both software and hardware receivers, including the various Squeezebox models, as well as any media player capable of playing MP3 streams. Plugins from Logitech and third-party sources are also supported, allowing additional functionality to be added. Lyrion Music Server supports grouping clients in order to synchronize playback among all clients within a group. [1]
Lyrion Music Server is free software, released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. While no longer distributed in conjunction with any Logitech hardware product, LMS continues to be developed.
Logitech's own Squeezebox hardware players existed in a variety of configurations, offering wired and wireless Ethernet, analog and digital audio outputs, touchscreen interfaces and a variety of remote controlled options. Logitech discontinued their hardware players in 2012.
Lyrion Music Server also works with networked music players, such as the Roku SoundBridge M1001, although Logitech does not officially support these competing products. Chumby devices also support streaming music from a Lyrion Music Server, as does the Rio Receiver when running replacement software to emulate the SliMP3 device, although it is limited to modest bitrates (<128kps). In late 2015 support was added via a plugin to use Google's Chromecast Audio device as a headless player which can then be connected to any audio system or powered speakers.
Recently the O2 Joggler has proven a popular device for running Logitech's open source SqueezePlay software, providing a similar interface to the Squeezebox Touch on a 7" display.
The Raspberry PI, using the piCorePlayer streams from LMS and in some cases LMS is run on the Raspberry PI too. [2]
SqueezeAMP, a free open source hardware player. [3]
SqueezePlay is based on SqueezeOS, the operating system that drives the hardware devices Squeezebox Duet, Radio and Touch. Written in Lua, it is also open-source software and sees regular updates through Logitech's SVN releases. There is also a free software emulator version of the Squeezebox, called Softsqueeze, which is written in Java and can be run easily as an applet inside a web page. A third player, SqueezeSlave, is also available, which operates similarly but without any display. SqueezeSlave is designed to be run on a server connected to an amplifier/speakers, and can be controlled through the standard Lyrion Music Server web interface. At this time, SqueezeSlave is incompatible with Logitech's Spotify plugin due to a lack of support for 'direct streaming'. [4]
In 2012, work began on Squeezelite, a cross-platform, headless, LMS client that supports playback synchronization, gapless playback, direct streaming (for use with Spotify, etc.), and playback at various sampling rates. [5]
In 2019, Squeezelite has been ported [6] to the ESP32 WiFi/BT chipset and works on WROVER and ESP-A1S module or any board that includes an ESP32 and 4MB of SRAM (e.g. SqueezeAMP)
There is as well three free open source "bridges" that allow UPnP/DLNA, ChromeCast and AirPlay devices to appear as regular SB players. AirPlay devices can be synchronized with other SB players. Chromecast groups are recognized as well as Sonos (UPnP) group, but they can only play synchronously within their own respective brand.
The Lyrion Music Server software is written in Perl, and will run on Linux, Microsoft Windows, Apple Macintosh, BSD, and piCorePlayer platforms.
Lyrion Music Server itself can run on a number of NAS devices, such as QNAP Turbo NAS, Synology Disk Station, Netgear ReadyNAS, Buffalo Linkstation, Linksys NSLU2, Thecus N5200 & N7700, Xtreamer eTRAYz and any device running FreeNAS software. Lyrion Music Server also comes pre-installed on the VortexBox Linux distribution and VortexBox appliance. This generally results in lower energy consumption than running Lyrion Music Server on a personal computer, whilst offering the same feature set (albeit with a slightly less responsive web interface under certain circumstances). Some NAS devices may require more effort than others to get Lyrion Music Server running, though. Logitech only supported the Netgear ReadyNAS NAS devices.
It is possible to customize the user interface using skins by installing a plugin. The Material Skin for LMS provides a fully responsive HTML5/Javascript user interface for Lyrion Music Server, suitable for both mobile and desktop usage. [7]
There are numerous plug-ins and device drivers available for Lyrion Music Server, which include features such as support for automation systems from Clare Controls, AMX LLC and Crestron Electronics. Plugins also provide access to additional services, such as the live radio and 'listen-again' features of BBC Sounds in the UK.
As of September 2019, Lyrion Music Server is controllable by a full-function Alexa skill (called 'MediaServer' [8] ) available in the en-US and en-GB locales. In addition to allowing voice control of hardware and software Squeezebox players, this also allows streaming audio from LMS to an Amazon Echo device for playback.
Virtual Studio Technology (VST) is an audio plug-in software interface that integrates software synthesizers and effects units into digital audio workstations. VST and similar technologies use digital signal processing to simulate traditional recording studio hardware in software. Thousands of plugins exist, both commercial and freeware, and many audio applications support VST under license from its creator, Steinberg.
A digital audio workstation is an electronic device or application software used for recording, editing and producing audio files. DAWs come in a wide variety of configurations from a single software program on a laptop, to an integrated stand-alone unit, all the way to a highly complex configuration of numerous components controlled by a central computer. Regardless of configuration, modern DAWs have a central interface that allows the user to alter and mix multiple recordings and tracks into a final produced piece.
Rhythmbox is a free and open-source audio player software, tag editor and music organizer for digital audio files on Linux and Unix-like systems.
Music Player Daemon (MPD) is a free and open source music player server. It plays audio files, organizes playlists and maintains a music database. In order to interact with it, a client program is needed. The MPD distribution includes mpc, a simple command line client.
MediaPortal is an open-source media player and digital video recorder software project, often considered an alternative to Windows Media Center. It provides a 10-foot user interface for performing typical PVR/TiVo functionality, including playing, pausing, and recording live TV; playing DVDs, videos, and music; viewing pictures; and other functions. Plugins allow it to perform additional tasks, such as watching online video, listening to music from online services such as Last.fm, and launching other applications such as games. It interfaces with the hardware commonly found in HTPCs, such as TV tuners, infrared receivers, and LCD displays.
MediaMonkey is a digital media player and media library application developed by Ventis Media Inc., for organizing and playing audio on Microsoft Windows and Android operating systems. MediaMonkey for Windows includes various management tools, and is extensible using plugins, while MediaMonkey for Android is an adjunct for sharing the library with Android devices. MediaMonkey is commonly displayed/marketed as a solution for managing large libraries of music.
An Internet radio device, also called network music player is a hardware device that is capable of receiving and playing streamed media from either Internet radio stations or a home network.
Slim Devices, Inc. was a consumer electronics company based in Mountain View, California, United States. Their main product was the Squeezebox network music player which connects to a home ethernet or Wi-Fi network, and allows the owner to stream digital audio over the network to a stereo. The company, founded in 2000, was originally most notable for their support of open-source software, namely their SlimServer software which their products at that time all depended upon, and is still available as a free download and modification by any interested developer.
Squeezebox is a family of network music players. The original device was the SliMP3, introduced in 2001 by Slim Devices. It had an Ethernet interface and played MP3 music files from a media server. The first Squeezebox was released two years later and was followed by several more models. Slim Devices was acquired by Logitech in 2006.
PulseAudio is a network-capable sound server program distributed via the freedesktop.org project. It runs mainly on Linux, including Windows Subsystem for Linux on Microsoft Windows and Termux on Android; various BSD distributions such as FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and macOS; as well as Illumos distributions and the Solaris operating system. It serves as a middleware in between applications and hardware and handles raw PCM audio streams.
Netgear's Digital Entertainer line of products are digital media players that can pull multimedia content from home computers to the typical audio/video entertainment center. There are three products in the line, the EVA700, the HD EVA8000 and the current EVA9150 Digital Entertainer Elite. All support high definition video, the EVA700 via component output up to 1080i and the EVA8000/EVA9000 up to 1080p with both component and HDMI connectors. All models support audio, video, image and streaming audio and video formats and can be networked via wired and wireless Ethernet. The EVA700 is Intel Viiv certified.
The following comparison of audio players compares general and technical information for a number of software media player programs. For the purpose of this comparison, "audio players" are defined as any media player explicitly designed to play audio files, with limited or no support for video playback. Multi-media players designed for video playback, which can also play music, are included under comparison of video player software.
AirPlay is a proprietary wireless communication protocol stack/suite developed by Apple Inc. that allows the streaming of multimedia and device screens, together with related metadata, between compatible devices. Originally implemented only in Apple's own software and hardware, the company has since licensed the AirPlay protocol stack to third-party manufacturers and it has been implemented on devices such as television sets and home audio systems. AirPlay works through either a direct peer-to-peer connection between devices or through an infrastructure local network.
Quod Libet is a cross-platform free and open-source audio player, tag editor and library organizer. The main design philosophy is that the user knows how they want to organize their music best; the software is therefore built to be fully customizable and extensible using regular expressions and boolean logic. Quod Libet is based on GTK and written in Python, and uses the Mutagen tagging library.
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.
BubbleUPnP is a DLNA-compliant UPnP media controller, server and renderer, designed to allow streaming of audio or video from and to an Android device with various external devices and software. Alongside the Android client, it also has a server middleware application that can be installed on Windows, macOS and Linux computers or network storage devices, providing remote access through a web interface. BubbleUPnP also utilises ffmpeg and ffprobe for transcoding.