Hi there,
I’ve tried to do my research before asking here, but I’m hitting some snags attempting to get a multi-room setup going, and would appreciate any pointers to put me in the right direction!
Current Hardware:
1x Raspberry Pi 4 | USB DAC | 32GB Sandisk Ultra Class 10 U1 SDHC
2x Raspberry Pi Zero Ws | USB DAC | 32GB PNY Elite Class 10 U1 SDHC
I’m using the Pi 4 as the master, and I’ve disabled Spotify, Airplay, and Bluetooth on the client devices to reduce the load. I’ve also disabled UPNP globally, as I don’t need it.
I’m able to connect to the Pi 4 Master via all desired services - Spotify, Airplay, and Bluetooth. I’m unable to connect to the clients via any service. I’ve tried testing them individually in STANDALONE mode with no luck. As they don’t have any onboard headphone jack, I haven’t been able to test them without their USB DACs.
Right now, I have a couple of hunches:
-
The SD cards; I know the officially recommended models are the Sandisk Extreme Pros, and I’m happy to replace with those if this seems like the issue. Right now, the card running on the functioning master (Sandisk Ultra) and the PNY cards on the non-functioning clients should theoretically be comparable Class 10 U1 cards. The PNYs are testing at 90MB/s read / 20MB/s write; without having an Extreme Pro to test against, I’m not sure how that compares to the ideal.
-
The USB DACs. The one running on the master is a Dragonfly Red that looks like it’s defaulting to 24/44.1 (S24LE) and the two running on the clients are cheapo dongles running 16/44.1 S16LE.
-
The WIFI network. I’ve enabled QOS on my router, made sure multicast routing is enabled, and disabled NetGear Smart Connect (which groups the 2.4 and 5GHZ bands under the same SSID) in an attempt to optimize it, but my service isn’t always the strongest.
-
OS discrepancies. The application type is 32 bit to account for the Pi Zero Ws, but I was only able to get the Pi 4 to run on 64 bit OS when setting up that device.
Variables I’ve tried experimenting with:
- SOUND_MODE and SOUND_MULTIROOM_MASTER to force the master/client modes
- AUDIO_OUTPUT to force the USB DACs
- SOUND_SPOTIFY_BITRATE and SOUND_INPUT_LATENCY to lighten the load.
An assortment of error messages I’ve noticed in the logs:
- multiroom-client: [Warn] (Alsa) snd_pcm_avail_delay failed: I/O error, avail: 2646, delay: 2037, retrying.
- multiroom-client: [Warn] (Alsa) snd_pcm_avail_delay failed: Broken pipe, avail: 660, delay: 1887, retrying.
- multiroom-client: Failed to connect to host ‘192.168.1.15’, error: Connection refused
- multiroom-client: [Warn] (Resampler) Soxr not available, resampling not supported
- multiroom-client: [Error] (Controller) Failed to send hello request, error: Operation timed out
- multiroom-server: [Notice] (Server) Server::start: Can’t open device ‘pulse’, error: Connection refused
- Alsa error PCM open ALSA function ‘snd_pcm_open’ failed with error ‘ECONNREFUSED: Connection refused’
Thank you!
-Sam