Daphile

gvl

Super Member
Even though it doesn't come up often on this forum I learned about its existence here, thanks to whoever mentioned it recently. It is a BYOH (bring your own hardware) headless Linux based network media player with a slick mobile-device friendly browser-based web interface. I loaded it on a 15 y/o ASUS Digimatrix Media PC that I was procrastinating to scrap, the installation was a breeze and it runs like a champ, or mostly, some USB audio issues due to the wonky early SiS USB 2.0 chipset, but the integrated optical SPDIF works great.

So, what's good about it?
- runs on older hardware
- you can use a web-browser to control it from any device at home
- can access your media stored on the network via CIFS/FTP
- support for various streaming services Spotify and Tidal including, internet radio, etc.
- Spotify Connect is semi-supported, but it works
- bit-perfect Spotify playback downstream of the OGG decoder
- support for simultaneous output to multiple audio devices, ever wanted to A/B your DACs without switching cables and/or changing output settings in the player app? now you can
- built-in resampling and transcoding to DSD (haven't tried it yet)
- there is support for convolution filters
- rips CDs to FLAC with automatic album art and track lookup
- umm, free?

Not so good:
- limited support
- while effective the browser interface is still limited
- no DLNA support, only supports Logitech Media Server (but doesn't require one)
- things may break down the line, it is developed by a single person, not clear about long term support, but he has been active in supporting it in the recent years
- familiarity with Linux is useful but not required

http://www.daphile.com/

If interested in giving it a try I suggest using the latest beta build from here: http://www.daphile.com/firmware/private-beta/

i486 - 32 bit builds for older hardware
x86_64 - 64 bit builds for more modern 64 bit processors
x86_64-rt - 64 bit builds with runtime Linux kernel, no real good reason to use these
 
Ooops, PCs and Music Servers would be a better place for this, oh well, perhaps moderators can move it.
 
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You can also use a smartphone or tablet to control it. iPeng for iOS. Squeezer (free) or Orange Squeeze for ($) for Android.

I am pretty sure you need to have LMS running some where? From Daphile.com "Daphile is based on the open source Squeezebox Server, Squeezelite and Linux." Squeezebox Server = LMS.

DNLA is supported with the UPnP/DLNA bridge plugin.

I basically use the same system (LMS and Squeezelite) but I set it up myself way before Daphile was a thing.
 
Thanks, I'm still finding my way around it. Good to know about DLNA, Something to look into, however I mounted my NAS with music over CIFS, seems to work so DLNA is more of a nicety now plus my older NAS doesn't know how to read tags in flac files. One of the main kickers for me is Spotify Connect support and bit-perfect Spotify playback, well, ignoring the fact it is lossy to begin with. The USB issue is annoying I have to admit, but it is likely isolated due to older h/w. UAC2 is problematic, UAC1 is much better. One would think it should work fine on a 2.5GHz machine, but something is not right, could be Linux USB drivers. I find the ease of use to be very good, everything just makes sense (to me) and very simple and works out of the box.
 
Reading the tags is LMS's job and it shouldn't matter whether you are using a NAS or not. Did you use the LMS's settings page? All you do is point LMS to your NAS and LMS should have no problem reading your flac's tags. Here is my basic settings page (NOTE: I am not using a NAS. I use an external USB hardrive. Two actually, one is a backup).

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What I meant was that even if I could Daphile to get to my NAS files over DLNA the latter is unable to read tags from FLAC files and publish them in the catalog. LMS reads tags without issue when it can get to files directly.
 
BTW, I've just managed to get Volumio on the same PC, and no stuttering over USB with it. Seems it's a Daphile/LMS issue.
 
Back to Daphile, re-purposed another PC that has more oomph, like that Tidal is well-integrated unlike in Volumio or at least not yet. So far so good.
 
Another hiccup, seems I can't set target bit-depth for resampling, and the bit-depth is inferred from the reported audio device capabilities. Unfortunately in my case the the max bit-depth reported by the USB interface is higher than the DAC physically supports, so the samples are being truncated in half in the DAC (32bit to 16bit), sigh.

EDIT: after some thinking this may not be too bad but I suppose I'd want Daphile to be able to dither down to 16 bit to avoid truncation.
 
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