Raspberry Pi OS, Shairport-Sync & PulseAudio advice/help...

[Dowser]

Hi All - wasn't sure if this should go in audio...or even DIY...nowadays.

I use an RPi4 with Allo Digione digihat and running Raspberry Pi OS (currently Bullseye v11, checking into bookworm v12) to feed into my DAC (currently Delius dCS). Used mostly for Radio Paradise (fantastic sound quality!) and streaming media content off the LAN via Kodi.

I'd like to add Airplay functionality at the OS layer (Kodi supports it, but I barely run it anymore) - seems Shairport-Sync is the solution, but it does not play well (natively) with PulseAudio that most Linux GUIs have switched to now (and I would like to keep).

I understand, essentially, I need to setup shairport-sync to run in the user context rather than system context, as otherwise it starts before pulseaudio at boot time and sends everything to alsa (default) and by time pulseaudio starts the audio stream is not detected, but I'm struggling to find an online step-by-step guide that talks me through setting this up.

Does anyone have experience of this?

Many Thanks, Richard

 

[vacuum_tubes]

You could set a dependancy on the shairport service for pulseaudio so it doesn't start until that is up first

 

[Dowser]

You could set a dependancy on the shairport service for pulseaudio so it doesn't start until that is up first

Thanks, yes, I saw that mentioned as one option...but I'm a bit of a CLI clutz...so am looking for detailed instructions I can also set a manual script to start shairport from the GUI, which should be easier I guess

 

[Man in a van]

I just a search for shairport-sync with pulseaudio and the second link gave this

https://github.com/mikebrady/shairport-sync/issues/1596

ronnie

Note: bookworm uses Pipewire as default so check if it is installed

pi@bookworm:~ $ which pulseaudio
/usr/bin/pulseaudio

ronnie

 

[Dowser]

I just a search for shairport-sync with pulseaudio and the second link gave this

https://github.com/mikebrady/shairport-sync/issues/1596

ronnie

Note: bookworm uses Pipewire as default so check if it is installed

pi@bookworm:~ $ which pulseaudio
/usr/bin/pulseaudio

ronnie

Thanks Ronnie - saw that while checking last night, and thought I didn't want to fix a broken installation, rather di it right first time, so thought it wasn't relevant...just realised there's a clean config there too - thanks! Good timing, I just cloned the git repository

Decided I'm staying on bullseye until I get things functional.

Cheers, Richard

 

[Dowser]

Wow, that was easier than expected Got it running manually, and could stream FLAC from Radio Paradise via Airplay on my iPhone - sounds pretty good, but have not compared to doing same from a Rasp Pi OS browser yet, and there are some default volume settings I need to play with to get level matching right.

Spotify also sounded good (maybe I should quantify - i decided to try this after setting up an old Airport Express for my daughter to stream to last night, and being somewhat disappointed at the results sonically).

But after pausing RP for 10 mins, tried to play again and no sound, and loads of sync errors in the log, still some fine tuning to do until I have it reliable enough the create a script and run it at login I think Definitely worth it though if you only want Airplay for audio.

Thanks for the input all!