OK For years I’ve been using various Logitech Squeeze radios and Squeezeboxes around the house as kitchen and bedroom radios. This has all run very well on an an ancient Netgear Readynas Duo V1 which must be about 15 years old! My ripped FLAC library is on there too and is thus accessible for both my Squeezebox devices and also my Naim NDX.
A few months ago the BBC decided to switch off some element of their radio streaming service which means none of my Squeezeboxes will play BBC radio and the missus really misses it!
I have looked and the solution to this is to install the BBC sounds app but my old NAS is I think too old to run it (due I think to issues with it needing newer versions of Perl) I’m a networking numpty but that seems to be the issue as I’m not able to see or load any third party apps nowadays on the Readynas Duo.
Now I also have a much newer Readynas 212 which I use for photo storage and storage of video and movies accessed via Plex. This should be new enough to run BBC Sounds app so I decided to install Logitech Media Server on it with a view to then installing the BBC SOunds plugin but have had no luck at all. Apparently even this newer NAS is now end of life and Netgear seem to have no interest in supporting it. I’ve been poring over various forums all morning and the gist of it seems to be that Netgear messed up their app repository causing any new app installations to fail and the only way around it is to start messing with the server config command lines to redirect the box to go to the correct place to access the app and download/install it.
A post on the Slimdevices forums has advised me to buy a Rasberry Pi and to configure it to run Logitech Media Server and Plex and then to access the two NAS devices as hard drives. To be honest I’m a bit wary of this because I fear this turning into a huge time hog as I try to get all this working. The truth is I hate all this networking stuff and part of the appeal of the NAS approach in the first place was that I didn’t need to go deep into the bowels of a whole bunch of IT schenanigans!! I’ve been looking at a Pi 5 with 8GB Ram which I think is around £115. The expensive option is to spend around £400 on a new Qnap server which has workarounds for Logitech Media server - but who knows how long they will continue to work - it’s a very old platform…
Also I’m unclear if going the Rasberry Pi route means losing the Raid capability of my NAS which provides backup of precious photos and my music library. I do wonder if retiring the oldest NAS might be a good idea anyway and just using the newer one for everything would be safer.
I know there are some very tech expert people on here and would welcome some advice on how to proceed.
Thanks Bruss, I did think about that but am keen to avoid leaving a PC on all the time and I don’t really have an old one going spare just now, so a server solution seems sensible. My main desktop PC is a seriously powerful hulk of a thing which uses similar amounts of electricity to the USS Nimitz and is used to power my flight simulators in VR… It literally heats the room so I don’t want the electricity bills of leaving that running all the time lol!!
I think BBC only changed their stream URLs (perhaps type of stream also). I had to edit the BBC stations stored on my MPD server to get them back. Can you edit URL on your squeezebox?
Im using Raspberry PI 3b (cheap and works great) with MoOde Audio software. It supports NAS amongst other storage solutions. It’s pretty straightforward setup (flash SD card etc) and their forum is helpful if you have issues.
Many thanks for the recommendations. I think as a first step I’m going to buy an Amazon Echo for the kitchen - that gets us hands free internet radio, the BBC and also Tidal music in a compact box - which is all we need in there. I might sell off the Squeezebox radio that currently lives in there…
Although I have a Squeezebox touch in the gym/studio coupled up to my NAIT and a Squeezebox radio in the bedroom I’m actually now wondering if the time is right to move my NDX in with the NAIT forcing me to upgrade the NDX to a newer Naim streamer in the main system and replace the last Squeezebox radio in the bedroom with something like an Echo Studio. Alternatively I could just make do with the very good Cambridge Audio soundbar in there already and is coupled to the TV and an Amazon Firestick equipped with Tidal.
Running obsolete hardware is all very well if you are a techy who likes messing with stuff and wants to side-load stuff and play with configuration but in truth I have my hands full maintaining enough hi-fi and tech kit in this house already, plus a full on flight simulator with VR which often throws up a problem. I’m just not sure I really need the hassle of yet another box to maintain.
This still leaves the medium term problem of my Netgear NAS drives not being supported into the future, although they seem pretty robust and work perfectly for Plex and the Naim kit plus archiving my photos. I guess I may just buy a very large offboard USB drive to copy the data on them to another drive stored elsewhere for safety. If and when one of them falls over I will buy a Qnap or Synology unit to replace them.
I appreciate all the input but am coming to the conclusion that brilliant as the Logitech stuff was in its day there are now competing products out there from Amazon, Wiim etc that require less complex support.
To me it seems like a bit of a faff to have to maintain LMS software to use squeezeboxes. I’ve used it on a Mac and a Synology NAS in the past and it always seemed clunky, with the need to add a third party plugin or three just to get things to work, all through a UI that made you feel like you were back in the early ‘90s.
For BBC iRadio the Sounds app on iOS, cast to your devices over Airplay, is the best way to access it. Maybe time to trade in that old NDX for a Mk2?
I’m running piCorePlayer on a Rasberry Pi4. The installation was a breeze as was configuring LMS and enabling the plug-in for Qobuz. This setup with iPeng suits my needs and is rock stable.
Whatever you do with Squeezebox, be aware that Logitech is terminating MySqueezebox. Among other things, this means that the Tidal and Deezer plug-ins will no longer work. (That’s the one that affects me.). Spotify and Qobuz are OK. I have no idea about other services.