Play from outside source to Squeezebox -- is this possible?

[JHW]

Everyone --

I have the Squeezebox Classic running off of the latest version of Logitech Media Server. In this "standard" configuration, the player works fine.

I am wondering if there is any way to get the Squeezebox to play music "from" my laptop or Android phone and tablet, without first uploading the file to the computer running LMS and then doing a library scan. For example, is there any way I can "direct" the sound output of my tablet and have it played by the Squeezebox? (e.g. when watching a YouTube video or listening to an MP3 that came to me as an e-mail attachment) The goal would be to have the Squeezebox serve as the wireless "interface" that lets this music be played through my hi-fi, even though the LMS software can't "see" the files. Is this at all possible?

Thanks in advance

[bhaagensen]

Its somewhat possible, but likely less than ideal. A few keywords you can use for further investigations: waveinput, nicecast, icecast.

Be aware that you will under no circumstances get synchronized AV for e.g. Youtube.

[Soulkeeper]

What bhaagensen said.

The Squeezebox is not a sound card. There are a couple of tricks you can do to get it to play lots of different stuff, but there will be latency.

[Wigster]

The following may get you to 90% of the functionality that you want:

The latest version of LMS has a UPnP server built in. This actually doesn't seem to work for me, so I use Whitebear Media Server instead. You mileage may vary.

http://www.whitebear.ch/mediaserver

If the built in server doesn't work, you will need to install Whitebear on the same machine as you have LMS running (so I hope it's a Windows machine): either way, the UPnP server exposes the Squeezebox device as a UPnP renderer. This means that you can now use a DLNA controller to play files to it.

An example of a DLNA controller is Windows Media Player in Windows 7, but you can use foobar 2000 and many other on other platforms. It will make your Squeezebox appear as a target device. In Win7 I just right click on a sound file, or select something from the WMP library and select Play To > [Squeezebox name] and it plays through Whitebear, which passes the file onto LMS which plays it on the SB.

One of the issues is whether FLAC files are supported. WMP does not support them natively, but you can find a plugin called WMP Tag Plus which extends the support to read the tags and you need to get a codec to play them also. If search the forums for a Whitebear thread, the author is quite active here.

Another thing I do quite a lot, is just pass the URL of podcasts or files I find on the web into the Tune In URL option in the LMS web interface: this plays the internet-located file directly on the Squeezebox. You can get such streaming to work with m4a files but you have to tweak it a bit. Then for YouTube and Soundcloud there are plugins for LMS which will play the files directly if you pass the URL to them.

Hope this helps.

[chrisinparis]

The iPhone app 'iPeng' offers web services where you can search youtube etc or just open a web page and play the audio from there. Not exactly what you're asking for, but I have used that in the past (playing some one hit wonder for the kids...).

[AndrewFG]

One of the issues is whether FLAC files are supported. WMP does not support them natively, but you can find a plugin called WMP Tag Plus which extends the support to read the tags and you need to get a codec to play them also. If search the forums for a Whitebear thread, the author is quite active here.

Indeed. After you have installed WMP Tag Plus, you need to install this FLAC Media Foundation codec too:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/mfflac/files/

This will enable WMP to support the Play To [Squeezebox (by Whitebear)] command.

Note: with WMP Tag Plus and the above-mentioned MFFLAC codec installed, WMP will support "Play To" for the following media types: MP3, M4A/AAC, WMA, WMAL, FLAC, WAV; but sadly it won't support M4A/ALAC (Apple Lossless) since there is no Media Foundation codec available for that format...

See also this thread for more information: http://forums.slimdevices.com/showth...l=1#post703644