Hello, I’m looking to replace an existing whole home audio system made by Nuvo (Legrand) with something that can be integrated with the rest of our smarthome components. I love what you guys are doing with the AmpliPi and it seems to be exactly what I’m looking for.
I spoke with Jason earlier today and my understanding is that the way sources/zones work is quite different from what we’re used to. Ideally I would like to be able to go on the Spotify App, and use the speaker list (Spotify Connect) to select either a zone or a group where I’d like the music to play. My understanding is that right now I would have to use the AmpliPi web interface to assign a source to a zone/group then go back to the Spotify App to select the music to play. Although this approach works, it may not be ideal for other household members who are less tech savvy and are used to just select a zone from within Spotify.
Is this something that can be implemented down the road?
While AmpliPi is very configurable and can play multiple audio streams at once the hardware does have some limitations that can be a little confusing without knowing the nitty-gritty details. The hardware has 4 “sources”, which can get their audio from the analog inputs or digital streams like Spotify. Each of the 6 zones is connected to any of the 4 sources. See this signal diagram if you want a good high-level picture of what’s going on.
So with that knowledge, you can definitely create 4 Spotify streams in the AmpliPi web UI/app, connect one Spotify stream to each of the 4 AmpliPi “sources”, and finally connect a zone or group to each of the sources. As long as you don’t need to change which zones/groups connect to which Spotify stream, you can do this setup once and then never touch the AmpliPi app again!
Unfortunately as of now if you want to dynamically add a zone or group to your listening session you would have to use the AmpliPi’s web UI/app. I’m actually unaware of any Spotify Connect devices that can do this, could the Nuvo system you had add/remove zones in the Spotify app itself?
There’s always the AmpliPi API as well, if you want a truly custom solution. There are also Integrations for multiple home-automation softwares like Home Assistant and openHAB. I haven’t personally tried it but I believe we have a customer who said they use Spotify through Home Assistant to get additional automation.
The Nuvo system lists each zone as a Spotify Connect speaker, so for example if you have 10 zones, you would see 10 speakers in Spotify connect. The user can select any of the zones from the Spotify app and the music would play there. Seems like a fairly straight forward approach, as you’re not managing the zones from Spotify but merely selecting where you’d like the music to play.
I haven’t looked at Librespot in detail, but to mimic this behavior you would want to advertise multiple Spotify Connect speakers (one for each zone/group) , when a user selects a Spotify Connect speaker you would switch the associated zone/group to Spotify.
I understand that you would still be limited to a maximum of 4 concurrent Spotify streams, but this shouldn’t be an issue unless you need to use a Spotify stream to display the Spotify Connect speakers (even when they are idle).
The Nuvo system lists each zone as a Spotify Connect speaker, so for example if you have 10 zones, you would see 10 speakers in Spotify connect. The user can select any of the zones from the Spotify app and the music would play there. Seems like a fairly straight forward approach, as you’re not managing the zones from Spotify but merely selecting where you’d like the music to play.
So the Nuvo system only lets you play to one zone at a time?
I haven’t looked at Librespot in detail, but to mimic this behavior you would want to advertise multiple Spotify Connect speakers (one for each zone/group) , when a user selects a Spotify Connect speaker you would switch the associated zone/group to Spotify.
Every AmpliPi source that you set to Spotify will advertise as a Spotify Connect speaker (with whatever name you set in the AmpliPi config).
I understand that you would still be limited to a maximum of 4 concurrent Spotify streams, but this shouldn’t be an issue unless you need to use a Spotify stream to display the Spotify Connect speakers (even when they are idle).
Currently, if you want an AmpliPi zone/group to show up in Spotify Connect, you must set at least one of the 4 sources to a Spotify stream, even if idle. The Librespot client(s) only run when an AmpliPi source is connected to a Spotify stream. We DO have a mid-term goal of making what you want a reality, I know it would make my life better! The problem is we have to work through several hurdles to get there. First is a limitation due to our ALSA back-end audio architecture on the Pi. Each of the Pi’s audio outputs (sources) can only have 1 input at a time, and we haven’t moved away from ALSA since some of the stream types require it. We also need to allow auto-source selection of streams so we can hide the 4 AmpliPi sources and users won’t need to think about them. There’s some gotchas making it tricky for us there as well. One thing we’re working on right now is an upgraded Spotify client that will allow group sessions, and hopefully allow us to pass through volumes better. So we want to get there and have plans for everything needed, we just don’t have a hard timeline quite yet.
Nuvo does allow you to play to multiple zones from Spotify, but grouping zones must be done through the Nuvo App. The way they implemented this is let’s say we have the following 3 zones:
Kitchen
Dining
Living Room
These 3 zones are shown as individual speakers in Spotify. If you’d like to play to both Kitchen and Dining, you need to open the Nuvo App and combine the Kitchen and Dining zones. When you do this, Spotify shows the following TWO speakers:
Kitchen, Dining
Living Room
Grouping zones is a bit clunky with Nuvo as it doesn’t support saving zone groups, with AmpliPi you’d ideally want to save multiple zones in a group and select the group directly from the Spotify speaker list without leaving the app.
I think you’ve hit the nail on the head. I believe it’s much easier for users to think in terms of zones/groups rather than in terms of sources. Sources can be managed internally and users can just focus on where they want their music to play. Typically, the source (Spotify, Airplay, Chromecast…) is implicitly set by whatever App/Device is being used. Finally, there will still be instances where you would want to choose the source and initiate playback via AmpliPi, but I think this is the exception rather than the rule.
I’ve replaced a LeGrand Vantage multi-room amp with the AmplPi so am interested in this conversation too.
My wife and kids are not really using the AmpliPi yet as I’ve not managed to simplify the experience to the point where I’m happy to support it for them. That said they never really used the Vantage system either as it was clunky especially working with sonos/spotify.
I have configured three of my four zones as Spotify ‘rooms’ and can confirm that this basic functionality works as expected in 0.1.9. As @Lohrer mentioned the volume control is not functioning properly at the moment so good to hear that is being worked on.
I’ve integrated with Home Assistant so can potentially use that to ‘prepare’ the AmpliPi configuration through simple button press/automations. Need to look into this and give it some more thought.
EDIT: I’ve created a quick Home Assistant automation for my office spotify which at the press of a button (zwave remote) looks for an available (not playing) source, mutes any connected zones, connects ‘Office Spotify’ source, connects the office zone and sets the volume to a comfortable default level. So as a user I push the remote button then use spotify to connect to ‘Office Spotify’ and play away.
