Streaming from alternative line-in source - what are the options?

[hazymat]

Question 1: Can I stream music from my iPhone to SqueezeCenter, to be played around the house?
I just bought a really decent Bluetooth receiver with digital and line out (Arcam rBlink - check it out) and I'd love to hook it up to my home SqueezeCenter setup. e.g. one minute I'm listening to my MP3 collection hosted on my SqueezeCenter server, next minute I'm playing from a Bluetooth source, or perhaps another source (TV / iPad / etc.)

I know some players have line-in, but that is only for the local player. I want to centralise the source and play to all players which are synchronised.

Question 2: Bonus point for quick switching.
For example, assigning another source to a favourite, so I can hit a button on my Boom to switch the whole house to my alternative line-in source

Question 3: Double bonus point for not needing to buy new equipment, whilst keeping the quality very high
For example, I don't want to plug my lovely new Bluetooth DAC into the dodgy sound card of my server...

Question 4: Triple bonus point for being able to return my lovely new DAC to the shop
For example, streaming directly to bluetooth on my server (which is actually an always-on laptop with bluetooth built-in), then making that accessible as a source in SqueezeCenter

Okay - maybe that last point is a pipe-dream, but you get the idea!

I had very limited success already by installing Shareport for Windows on the server, setting an output streaming URL on the local server itself, then dialling in a favourite in SqueezeCenter. It works a treat - if you don't mind waiting about 3 minutes for your song to start... *sigh*

Any way I can achieve this, even if it's not the perfect solution, would be great.

[Mnyb]

There is a wav input plugin you could explore , it can potentially take any audio going on on the machine hosting LMS andf put it out to the players .

Yes the server must do it ,afaik but that mkaes it avaible to all the players .

You will see some controll delay in any case .

If you play a local file to a squeezebox it actually has >30 second built in buffer ,but the controll comands can bypass that and flush it or paus the playback instantly .Its going to be a bit different when streaming an external source and your are controlling that source .
However if you minimise lag on the server and possibly transcode it to wav on the server then the player buffer would only hold about 30 seconds . With low rate mp3 a very large partion of the current track could already be in the player buffer .
And you really want the player buffer it makes for resilience in bad wifi conditions and makes gapless work and crossfades (if you like them )

I dont know the specifics on the wavin plugin ,sorry .

But i think wavin could be set as favorite .

[hazymat]

There is a wav input plugin you could explore , it can potentially take any audio going on on the machine hosting LMS andf put it out to the players .


Thanks. I'll take a look at that.

I wonder how I might go about setting up the plugin to always listen to the computer's input port? (even after reboot.) Also should I buy an SPDIF in for the laptop? Otherwise I'll have a pointless conversion to analog and back again in the signal chain!