I'd love to hear about how LMS is controlled from a mac or windows PC. I know about ipeng but am not sure about desktop apps. also when playing an album is there other recommended artists and hyperlinked bios etc? Last I played with LMS (slim server) many years ago, it was just a way to pick music and play it, without any discovery capability. Has that changed?
Sheldon
Sheldon
This is what interests me from the comment by Bambadoo as I was hoping there is some magic music discovery plugin.
Hi Sheldon,
LMS has always had a web interface as far as I know, so its accessible from any browser. In recent years, there is a excellent "material" skin that gives LMS a more modern feel. The material author does updates on almost a daily basis.
regards
Greg
I used Roon for 2 years and stopped my subscription to go back to LMS two years ago.
The two applications are not comparable. Although LMS has some good plugins, if you are looking for recommendations and automated metadata, LMS can simply not compete with Roon on those two aspects.
Anything that is automated (discovery, metadata) is a double-edged sword in my opinion, but I can understand that many people appreciate it. However, I don't know any serious music collector of classical or jazz music that would be satifsfied by the poor metadata that Roon offers.
I am not interested in suggestions (I'm ok listening to the radio for that, or just using other sources of information), I do not have a Qobuz or Tidal subscription, and the metadata was a big disappointment to me - in fact I have developped my own solution to add information to my albums (not all). Using LMS and the excellent "Material Skin" plugin, I can link to my album pages (from the "playing" tab) to my web pages and display/edit the information I need on my albums (here is an example of a web page for one of my albums: http://mycloudplayer.herokuapp.com/album#1595433423825).
In my opinion, LMS is a good choice if you want a "no thrills" solution and are content using your own tags. If you also want to be able to develop things around LMS, that is possible - whereas Roon is a completely closed system.
The "Material skin" interface was a much needed development in LMS and offers a nice web interface that works well on both desktop and mobile.
Concerning audio quality, you can get very good results with LMS. For example, I recently installed squeezecore (SqueezeCore: a minimal audio OS running Squeezelite. – AudioDigitale) on a low-powered Intel NUC and am very happy with the SQ.
The two applications are not comparable. Although LMS has some good plugins, if you are looking for recommendations and automated metadata, LMS can simply not compete with Roon on those two aspects.
Anything that is automated (discovery, metadata) is a double-edged sword in my opinion, but I can understand that many people appreciate it. However, I don't know any serious music collector of classical or jazz music that would be satifsfied by the poor metadata that Roon offers.
I am not interested in suggestions (I'm ok listening to the radio for that, or just using other sources of information), I do not have a Qobuz or Tidal subscription, and the metadata was a big disappointment to me - in fact I have developped my own solution to add information to my albums (not all). Using LMS and the excellent "Material Skin" plugin, I can link to my album pages (from the "playing" tab) to my web pages and display/edit the information I need on my albums (here is an example of a web page for one of my albums: http://mycloudplayer.herokuapp.com/album#1595433423825).
In my opinion, LMS is a good choice if you want a "no thrills" solution and are content using your own tags. If you also want to be able to develop things around LMS, that is possible - whereas Roon is a completely closed system.
The "Material skin" interface was a much needed development in LMS and offers a nice web interface that works well on both desktop and mobile.
Concerning audio quality, you can get very good results with LMS. For example, I recently installed squeezecore (SqueezeCore: a minimal audio OS running Squeezelite. – AudioDigitale) on a low-powered Intel NUC and am very happy with the SQ.
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BTW: Here is a screenshot of the web gui of LMS at my home.
Lots of customization can of course be done.
Otherwise agree with the above here...
Regarding music discovery option: I guess Roon is much better there. If that is of extreme importance that solution is better.
Isnt that already built into the bigger streaming services? Tidal, Spotify, Cobus etc?
Lots of customization can of course be done.
Otherwise agree with the above here...
Regarding music discovery option: I guess Roon is much better there. If that is of extreme importance that solution is better.
Isnt that already built into the bigger streaming services? Tidal, Spotify, Cobus etc?
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Thanks to everybody in answering my questions. I like where LMS has come from when I tried it many years ago.
I'm still saddened by the lack of album art and liner notes on the streaming services. You'd think that would be available from ONE of them at least.
I'm always looking for good music suggestions. Pandora used to provide me with some good leads in a fleeting heard it on the radio and can't backup sort of way. I have been disappointed in how lame tidal and qobuz recommendations are, but maybe they just take more time to understand me. After all thety only have the few songs I've played to judge my tastes. The one that I thought was inexcusable is apple music. Apple music has access to my entire music catalog in iTunes (~2300 albums) and it still would recommend out of character things to me. "No, I don't want to hear the new Beyonce album!"
I'm always looking for a tidy and slick way to visualize my music library and make recommendations, all the streaming solutions I've played with are close but not exactly what I want. As of today Roon is the closest.
Sheldon
I'm still saddened by the lack of album art and liner notes on the streaming services. You'd think that would be available from ONE of them at least.
I'm always looking for good music suggestions. Pandora used to provide me with some good leads in a fleeting heard it on the radio and can't backup sort of way. I have been disappointed in how lame tidal and qobuz recommendations are, but maybe they just take more time to understand me. After all thety only have the few songs I've played to judge my tastes. The one that I thought was inexcusable is apple music. Apple music has access to my entire music catalog in iTunes (~2300 albums) and it still would recommend out of character things to me. "No, I don't want to hear the new Beyonce album!"
I'm always looking for a tidy and slick way to visualize my music library and make recommendations, all the streaming solutions I've played with are close but not exactly what I want. As of today Roon is the closest.
Sheldon
This may have been covered earlier. Just in case it wasn't. From my limited understanding of how the streaming services work with other players / servers etc.; the album art etc., along with other data must be provided by the streaming service. So, if Qobuz, Tidal, Spotify etc. won't work with the devs to provide that info, then it won't be available on that platform. It took quite a while for Qobuz to be "available" on Roon as an example. Purportedly, Qobuz was the holdup, not Roon.
I may not have a complete understanding of the picture, but LMS may not have access to that information directly from the source and/or may not want to deal with it.
Re: recommendations. Even if they could code up an incredible algorithm for recommendations - they'd need the metadata from not only you, but a large user group along with consistent metadata to ensure accuracy from "known sources". So, that would be another complication for just a media "server" and an associated player. I'm not sure about Roon (Qobuz and Tidal), but Spotify and Pandora garner recommendation data from all users. It's not just based upon your own ratings.
Thanks for starting this thread and to all that have responded. I've been using Roon + Ropieee for years, but I never shelled out for the lifetime Roon sub. I've been looking for a potential substitution.
I may not have a complete understanding of the picture, but LMS may not have access to that information directly from the source and/or may not want to deal with it.
Re: recommendations. Even if they could code up an incredible algorithm for recommendations - they'd need the metadata from not only you, but a large user group along with consistent metadata to ensure accuracy from "known sources". So, that would be another complication for just a media "server" and an associated player. I'm not sure about Roon (Qobuz and Tidal), but Spotify and Pandora garner recommendation data from all users. It's not just based upon your own ratings.
Thanks for starting this thread and to all that have responded. I've been using Roon + Ropieee for years, but I never shelled out for the lifetime Roon sub. I've been looking for a potential substitution.
Yes, thanks for starting this thread - I now benefit from the "Material" plug in for LMS. I didnt know it existed until reading the above posts about it. Looking forward to trying it on my iPhone - though I do have iPeng.
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Joe Jasniewski - PiCorePlayer, rPi 3B / AMP2, Dayton PS-180 with SUB-1200
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Joe Jasniewski - PiCorePlayer, rPi 3B / AMP2, Dayton PS-180 with SUB-1200
I had been using LMS for years with Sqeezebox, UPNP/DLNA and Airplay devices, but was unsatisfied by its aged interface limitations and frustrating sync issues. I ended up buying a heavily discounted Elac Discovery music server that comes with lifetime Roon Essentials license and have not looked back. Roon continues to update the software and recently removed some of the original limitations, making it very close to the full Roon now. A problem I found with the last update (song lyrics) was responded to directly in their forum and corrected in a few weeks. My cost was $250 for the server. With the continually updated rich metadata and curation tools and ultra simplicity, looking back it was a bargain for me.
i have around 200GB flac collection, mostly from my youth album/artist in 90's 20's with some updated newly release album. previously i used spotify premium just for the sake of it's mobility, i can listen to my music during commute and at my office ( i build a heamp + Senn HD650)
when i listen to my music at home, i use foobar for my flac collection or play it on my cd player. but covid strike and good news is that Deezer just release Hifi Flac which i can't resist. Deezer Hifi is my ultimate solution, I'd like to try Tidal/Qobuz too but unfortunately it's not available on my country
now i'm just wondering the usage of this dedicated server for music, it there still any benefit when you can it from online streaming with loseless quality?
when i listen to my music at home, i use foobar for my flac collection or play it on my cd player. but covid strike and good news is that Deezer just release Hifi Flac which i can't resist. Deezer Hifi is my ultimate solution, I'd like to try Tidal/Qobuz too but unfortunately it's not available on my country
now i'm just wondering the usage of this dedicated server for music, it there still any benefit when you can it from online streaming with loseless quality?
Primary benefit is not using internet bandwidth. SQ over internet streaming should be identical if using a lossless protocol and through a streaming service and the publisher w/o any watermarking. Watermarking being my own personal experience vs. a clearly documented issue... although others have shared similar experiences in online forums with deteriorating SQ with certain catalogs.
re: Qobuz - it works well with a VPN ... from personal experience.
re: Qobuz - it works well with a VPN ... from personal experience.