Supersearch: The AI Search Where Music Meets Curiosity

Picture this: you’re in the mood for some tunes, and instead of a regular search, you can type in questions, just like you’re chatting with a buddy or a record store guru. It’s like having a musical oracle at your fingertips. You might be asking for the perfect summer disco dance tracks or craving some Italian funk to spice up your playlist. You could even ask for songs fit for a sunny Sunday. The results of the AI search might not hit the bullseye every time, but it’s all about the thrill of the hunt, discovering new music, and crafting playlists that resonate with you.

To unlock Supersearch head to the search bar and toggle the ordinary/Supersearch switch

And type something like: Rock from the 60s

Or, if you’re feeling like a smooth operator: Smooth Jazz from England

Or, ask for music similar to your favourite artist: Word Music like Manu Chao

Related Artists and Albums: The Rabbit Hole

Volumio knows that there’s great joy in falling down the rabbit hole of musical discovery. So, we’ve added a feature that presents you with related artists and albums as you browse. It’s like exploring a never-ending maze of music. And the best part? If those related artists or albums are hiding in your library, streaming, or local, Volumio’s Supersearch will be able to access them. The related artists appear in the album or artist page with related suggestions

To see related artists or albums select an Artist or Album, if they are in your library (again streaming or local) you can directly browse them and Volumio will suggest related albums or artists below the album or artist description.

Need more than just sticky fingers?

Or want more Amy?

Infinity Playback: Where the Music Never Sleeps

Or, from your queue view:

Tweaking the Stage: A Sleek, Optimized Experience

At Volumio, we haven’t stopped revolutionizing your music discovery. So, We’ve taken it a step further by giving the artist and album presentations a subtle yet noticeable makeover. The result? A less cluttered and more refined interface that allows the music to shine through. Navigating through your cherished artists and albums becomes effortless, optimizing your visual experience.

Try Volumio AI and make the switch to premium!

If you’re already enjoying our free version of Volumio and don’t want to miss out on Volumio AI, upgrading to Volumio Premium is all you need to do. Simply log in to your myVolumio account, go to your account profile, select “Upgrade Plan”, and click to Upgrade Plan below the Premium account panel. And remember: new users have the chance to try Volumio Premium for free for 14 days!

New to Volumio? Don’t worry, you can get started in less than 10 minutes!

The post Volumio Introduces Supersearch: Music Discovery with AI Search Technology appeared first on Volumio.

Many things have been going on these past months, from the release of the new Volumio 3 plus the new pricing plan in December 2021 (we will go into it on a different topic in the next few days about it), we felt that we weren’t communicating enough about all things going on internally in Volumio, especially on the development side. Well, we want to change our current direction this 2022 and give a couple of minutes a week to tell you what is going on and to provide a bit more “insight” into what the development team is doing, as most of the time what they do is behind the curtain work, which is barely visible but that keeps the whole thing going.

via GIPHY

Hope also that this will be a pleasant read also for the techies out there, and to provide some insights into what means to manage a project of the scale of Volumio. Read below what Michelangelo and the Volumio Development Team are working on now.

February

Week of February 21, 2022 – February 25, 2022

This week we have been focusing on scaling up some of our cloud systems, as since the launch of Volumio 3 we’ve seen a great spike in usage of Volumio and therefore the vital cloud parts of it.

Specifically, we increased the capacity of the infrastructure that makes it possible to access your devices from myvolumio.org, adding automatic ssl renewal to them, experimenting with a new brilliant piece of software (caddy server) and setting up 6 new servers in Asia, Europe and North America.

We also further expanded auto-checks on many new endpoints, following a shameful incident that made some of our repositories unavailable due to expired certificates.

We upgraded the musicbrainz mirror (thanks to the help of musicbrainz dev team themselves) and added a robust caching mechanism. This improves response times of metadata retrieval and also refined the algorithm to provide more accurate results and much more hits.

BTW, if you are curious to know how many servers\cloud servers\services are in Volumio’s architecture, head to:

https://status.volumio.com

It makes very apparent (to us in the first place) how complex is the architecture that we have to host to keep the project going. But this is just reflecting how technology has changed in the last years.
When we started Volumio we just needed one server (for downloads and OTA updates, and this server is still running), but now, a music player needs to interface itself with a myriad of third-party services to provide an adequate level of quality and integrations. This is also because in my opinion, a pure FOSS solution is not enough anymore in this day and age: you need to host a bunch of stuff and pay for it, to make it work.

We finally managed to track down a nasty bug that was affecting users with ISPs not using IPV6 or applying NAT, causing frequent stops in TIDAL, QOBUZ and everything that was streamed over HTTP2. This was due to a bug in curl (on buster) which made http2 requests fail under some conditions. We are currently doing QA on this fix, and if all goes well, next week we will release this update (for the joy of many users and our QA lead Davide).

Works on FusionDSP is progressing nicely, thanks to the effort of two brilliant members of the team and community, we are setting up a new open source component to make Fusion DSP finally work with Volumio’s AAMPP and we hope it can go public very soon.

We are also working on the new version of the Android\iOS app (which will be free). This new version will bring a super easy onboarding for the first time users, allowing them to auto update their devices and to connect to their wireless network in a very easy way.
This in our intention will make life easier for newcomers both of Volumio on Raspberry PI but also on Volumio products (that’s another thing we’re working hard on… stay tuned…).

Unfortunately, what we are really behind schedule is improving the plugins store submission procedure and testing. We have still a huge backlog of plugins to test and no one can really focus on it as the dev team is fully occupied. We are not holding it back however as we are actively looking for someone to take care of it as its first and only activity (if you are interested in being this person, drop me a message).

We also made some minor fixes to CD playback plugin, Tidal Connect, Metavolumio.

That’s it for now, see you next week.

March

Week of Feb 28, 2022 – March 4, 2022

First of all, all our thoughts are for Ukraine and ALL people affected by this tragedy, which is beyond imagination. The team is discussing on how we can send tangible support and we hope we can take action next week.
We decided not to take a political stance, nor to make any statement on the situation but rather focus on doing something tangible to help people in need.

Going back to frivolous stuff, our work this week has been focused on continuing to harden our cloud server infrastructure for remote connection, gradually moving all servers to the new and improved caddy configuration.

On Monday we released a new update which fixed quite some bugs, but unfortunately, the Tinkerboard image suffered from a temporary Github outage, which prevented it from installing some core packages like curl and the remote updater. We then issued an emergency update on Wednesday and our support team is helping those affected.
We are improving the build script in a way that the build will fail if this occurs again, avoiding us to promote releases with missing core-packages.

Two new open-source alsa modules have been released and integrated in the main images, allowing the finalization of the FusionDSP works (which seems very close) and a useful facility for plugin developers.

There has been also bug fixing done for Metadata display on premium plans (from the search function) and some work on CD Playback.

Development on the new apps is currently on halt, awaiting results from testing from Volumio’s moderators and devs.

That’s it for this week. I hope that the next post on this diary will be more cheerful because peace has been reached (although it seems unlikely, but that’s what we hope).

Week of March 7, 2022 – March 11, 2022

This week it has been almost all “behind the curtains” work for the team, boring but very important stuff…

First, there has been an incident when releasing version 3.233: a temporary github outage prevented the build system to download and install some critical components of Volumio image. Basically, the Tinkerboard platform ended up without some very important libraries (curl, flac) and the updater. Other platforms, like the PI, instead were built without the classic UI.
But you already knew about that.

The team work has been directed to debrief the incident and to take proactive measures against it happening again: we tweaked the build system in a way that it will fail the build if that should happen again (thanks Ash!) and add some more tests into our QA checklist for new releases (thanks Davide for the hard work there!).

We will gradually refactor the build system to report (and fail) every minor issue in the build process. Besides increasing trust in release repeatability, it will be a very important step in deploying an automated build system (on a CI) which we are considering for a long time.

In the last times, the complexity of the project has increased substantially, so we are at the point where we need to set up robust procedures (quality, development, support) and debrief very often.

On an organizational level, this is increasing a little bit of internal bureaucracy, but we reckon that it’s a very important task to carry out to ensure we guarantee high-quality standards for our users. The mantra that we are having is: never make the same mistake twice.

Then, works on the new iOS and Android app is progressing, although with some showstoppers: we are trying to solve some compatibility issues with old android versions with the new Wireless set up flows: it appears that older Android versions are not able to receive properly the list of wireless networks to connect to.

We continue monitoring the cloud infrastructure, following the big upgrade that happened in the past few weeks. The scaling of servers and architecture seems to hold up pretty well, and the increased load is handled beautifully.

Last, but not least, since the biggest (and most daunting) bugs of Volumio 3 have been fixed, we are now focusing on minor bug fixing and tweaks, and we have a new version under QA testing, hopefully to be released next week. It will include fixes for Ui, network-attached storage mounting, metadata discovery and more.

As you might notice, developing, maintaining and making Volumio grow, involves a lot of work that is not obvious nor visible to the general public, but it’s equally important to make it work.

Week of March 14, 2022 – March 18, 2022

This has been a good week here at Volumio HQ. The main reason for that is that we somehow feel that we’ve managed to turn around the “bad climate” that we had in this community lately and re-establish the joyful vibe that we strive to cultivate in this place of the net.

We reckon that the release of Volumio 3 hasn’t been without issues: many people were frustrated by a couple of nasty bugs (which we solved) and the lack of plugins in V3. This meant that the community was filled with angry comments by users (and the famous vocal unhappy minority), which were expressing frustration about those issues. This vibe not only made this a quite less interesting place, but had a huge toll on the team’s morale and contributor’s “attachment” to the project.

Thanks to the suggestions of the private moderators’ group we decided to act and put a lot more effort in communicating proactively with the community (what you read is an outcome of this) and the users who were experiencing issues.

It looks like it’s paying off. We can sense that the spirit of this community is getting back. But we are not relaxing, this challenging time was an occasion for us to learn how to do better, and this is what we want to continue to do.

One process which is being reshaped a lot is our technical support and customer help department. First, we wanted to have a better “dispatching” of requests to the proper person in the organization. We achieved so by restructuring the contact page in a more “directive” way, to forward requests to the appropriate person (shop requests\returns, billing, technical support, partnerships, distribution etc.)

Then we wanted to provide faster answers to the people requesting technical support.

By analyzing supports requests we found out that about half of them could be solved pretty quickly without the need of our support people, by just providing small written hints.
So we implemented a chat-bot with automatically matches users’ requests with our knowledge base (which we are filling on an ongoing basis) and provide immediate answers to known problems or situations.

This has proven to work well for some kinds of requests, but really it did not for others. Analyzing the flow and some feedback by our users this week, we found out that this system was not providing enough feedback on the required actions for some users (we required some further action from user before initiating the support session) which felt frustrated of not receiving support and contacted us on other channels (Facebook, forum, etc).

So, we are working to change this part, by changing the user contact flow in those kinds of situations. We expect to have this change live in about 10 days.

So, for those users which felt neglected in the past month, we acknowledge the problem and we are working to fix it, so the next time you need us you’ll find a better experience.

On the development side, work this week has been again on our cloud ecosystem. If you wonder why that is, that we spent all this time on cloud stuff and not on the “Volumio” side of things, here’s why.

Back in 2018, we took a very important architectural decision: move all the integration intelligence to the cloud, rather than on the device.

For example: our albumart retrieval server used to run on the device. It basically identified the artist, album and track and made some queries online to fetch and download the most appropriate albumart for a specific track. This worked well. Or at least it did until one of those online services shut down or change their API (this happens more frequently than you might think).

So, you have 2 ways to solve the issue:

• Update all the software you have on the field (in our case more than 430k installs). This means that many users will experience the problem until they update their software. It also means that spotting this problem will come only after you have some users’ reports.
• Move the logic that aggregates online content to the cloud and have the albumart facility in Volumio just rely on that.

We took the second step. This brings some additional advantages:

• We can understand quickly if something goes wrong, since we can set up automatic monitoring of all the services we use.
• When we spot a problem and fix it, the fix is instantaneous for all our users, without the need for an update.
• Doing some optimizations like caching and load balancing we can offer faster response times compared to an algorithm running on the device itself, and make in turn the whole experience better.

This comes also with some disadvantages:

• It costs money to run those services. If we use the “distributed” computing power of the devices, it does not cost anything. But if we need to set up, maintain and host such systems on a scale required for Volumio, this has a cost.
  Basically, every time you look for an albumart, Volumio has to pay for it. Considering the service we provide for some of those endpoints is free, we have to be very clever to optimize our technology to not be overly expensive (in those cases, we don’t use AWS but a mix of Kubernetes + dedicated VPS with high microservices density).
• In case it fails, it fails for everyone at the same time. So you have to put in place automatic recovery strategies and monitoring and ensure adequate redundancies.

Some examples of the services that use this architecture are:

• Oauth login for Spotify, QOBUZ, TIDAL (and possibly more like LastFm)
• Albumart retrieval
• Browsing of QOBUZ and TIDAL
• Plugins store
• Webradio selection
• Metadata and credits retrieval

And yes, what needed some love this week was the albumart provider. A change in an upstream API deteriorated the performance of retrieval of artist arts. We were able to fix it and deploy a fix without requiring anyone to update. And the best part of it, is that most of you didn’t notice.

We are continuing with this architectural pattern, especially when we enrich functionalities, which might explain why you see fewer commits on the Volumio backend regarding such aspects.
Some of the things we already worked on (we are waiting for frontend parts to support it) are live concerts notifications and lyrics.

That’s it for this week! Hope you got a better glimpse of how also the community can impact Volumio, both in positives and negatives ways. Remember that and keep on helping make this place a good portion of the net.

Week of March 21, 2022 – March 25, 2022

First of all, we managed to package together the update which we will release next week. It includes various fixes for multiroom, utf-8 characters and the longly awaited AAMMP update (which will allow us to release the amazing Fusion DSP plugin).

What held us up from releasing was a mysterious bug that affected multiroom, which we took a while to identify (turned out to be a very silly mistake, but very hidden and difficult to spot).

Then, finally, we managed to get the new Android and iOS app to a level where we are happy with: the new improved and simplified onboarding flow works well in all circumstances.

It took a lot of debugging, testing, swearing… You can’t imagine how tedious sometimes can be to design and implement a very simple process…
Next time you try a piece of technology that just works, consider that a developer could have lost all his hair to make it work properly
Our plan is to release a beta test of the new app next week.

This week’s focus has also been a careful analysis of our current state (as a project and as a company) and strategic planning. As they say, “tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat”.

We held various team meetings to pivot our strategy in 2 main areas.

The first is the OEM long-term strategy and approach. As you might know, Volumio OEM  is a service we provide to quite a lot of Hi-Fi companies around the world. We basically empower them to release Hi-Fi products using Volumio Technology and experience. We are proud that more than 30 Hi-Fi companies worldwide choose Volumio to power their audiophile products.

This has worked well both for us and them for the past years and Volumio is what it is today also thanks to the financial and design contribution of our partners.

We however think that we can do better and be more ambitious with the OEM Partner program.
We saw a huge increase in requests to become Volumio OEM Partners since the release of Volumio 3 and a slight change in what new partners require from our technology.

Compared to 3 or 4 years ago, Hi-Fi companies tend now to have in-house IT departments and are asking us for less direct involvement and more freedom when implementing our technology and a more SDK-like approach.

So, we are redesigning our OEM program very similar to what Android does. So yes, our plan is that Volumio will become the Android of the music technology world.
Of course, following our “co-design” approach, we are involving some of our best partners in the decision and design processes.

The other planning involved Hardware. We have ambitious plans and some really, really nice things that we are working on…
We can’t disclose anything at the moment, but, if I were you, I would consider visiting this year’s
HIGH END Munich  trade show…

That’s it for this week!

The post Volumio Development Team: Weekly Diary appeared first on Volumio.

Sound@home is a native app available for all android devices. It allows full control of Volumio with many features available, and an important thing to mention: it is completely free!

I should point out this app is a part of something bigger. Diego has started Sound@home first, as a part of a project that he would like to cover, one step at a time, entire home automation, being passionate not only about Hi Fi music but also IoT.
But enough writing, let’s jump to the cool part and see all the things you can do with Sound@home app for Volumio, shall we?
A completely renovated User Interface making the app more intuitive and of course, good looking! And if you prefer to use your device horizontally, you can surely do it!

Sound@home for Volumio App allows you to configure and control multiple Volumio devices in your home from the same App.
With one click you can search and automatically configure your device (once Volumio has been configured the first time via WEB UI).
Once configured on the app, even if the device is later moved to another network or room, Sound@home is able to recognize it automatically without any further configuration by the user.

You can install new plugins and configure them as well as all the different Volumio configuration options. It also supports Qobuz and has its own widget to facilitate the user experience. First, you will need to login to your Qobuz account via the Volumio UI and later you will be able to command Qobuz via the Sound@home App.

It allows you to rearrange the queue of your songs by simply dragging and dropping them.
In the next version to be released soon, it will also support the “swipe left” and “swipe right” gesture to switch between sections faster.
Currently it doesn’t allow streaming the same song on multiple devices; but when it becomes available at Volumio, works will be done to have the same functionality in the Sound@home app.  For additional help, you can find some “How To” videos in the official Sound@home Youtube Channel
Of course, we cannot end the post without introducing the great mind behind the project. In his own words, Diego told us a couple of things about himself:

I’m a simple person, passionate about Hi-Fi music and IoT. Even if I’m an engineer the Sound@home project is just one of the ways to express my passion for technology and the possibility the technology can simplify and enjoy our life.

In the past, I was also a DJ and at that time I started to love Hi-Fi music and all the related world.

I think everyone should have the possibility to enjoy the music they love in a simpler and economic way, especially the Hi-Fi music that will give a difference. Volumio is one of the possible solutions and Sound@home will permit to spread more the Volumio knowledge on the market.

I’m alone at the moment on developing the Sound@home and until I can I will continue to improve it.

In the past, there was a stop on Sound@home improvements due to the fact a new baby came into my life. He completely fills my life with his happiness, joy and a lot of stuff to manage but now I’m back with more energy to be spent on my dream, bringing hopefully it to a new level.

The new version of the App will always include new services or new possibilities of control! Stay tuned…

Are you ready to try it out?

Download for free the Sound@home for Volumio Android App here and let us know what you think!

Write it in the comments section or email Diego at digx At hotmail.it

Enjoy!

The post Big News for Android Users: The new version of Sound@home for Volumio App is here! appeared first on Volumio.

Let us introduce our Volumio’s album of the week. To prepare ourselves for the weekend, we will deliver a list of curated suggestions of our favorite music collections. One album, once a week… a mix of art and pure sound quality to freeze yourself in instants that you hopefully will remember.

Week #1

Our first week’s recommendation is a newly fresh studio album from the Norwegian act Ulver – “Flowers of Evil”.

An outstanding album, which gives a touch of what a synth-pop album should have; from instrumental greatness to nostalgic touch. The difference is that ULVER has proof once again that they don’t need to follow the rest by simply creating catchy electronic sounds to please the general audience.

If you don’t believe us, listen it for yourself and feel the greatness with “Machine Guns and Peacock Feathers”

Week #2

Let’s go back to 2014 and transport yourself into a new dimension with the album LUX by French group Ez3kiel.

We can describe LUX as a combination of powerful and dramatic, in a vibrant way.

One of a kind… 

With LUX, Ez3kiel includes a mix of electronic with a modern post-rock, providing a captivating combination that we believe on stage it sounds incredibly hypnotic, but even at home, it can satiate immensely.

A must-track to be listened: “Dead in Valhalla”

Purchase the vinyl on Amazon: LUX by Ez3kiel

Week #3

One of the projects of the unstoppable Shabaka Hutchings, king of British Nu Jazz. Psychedelia, cosmic electronics and lysergic colors in a mix of Flying Lotus experiments.

“Imagine a culture that rests on a more spiritual relationship with the earth and with lovers… Unable to listen, we keep talking… Unable to notice ourselves, unable to stop and unwilling to learn” unforgettable words from song Blood of the past.

This record is a true avant-garde journey guided by jazz paths, a jazz steeped in groove, from rock to funk, from acid house to d’n’b, from clarinets to sax, TCIC leads us to discover a new reality that is not only musical, but a lively artistic kaleidoscope.

Must-tracks to be listened: BLOOD OF THE PAST & SUMMON THE FIRE

Purchase the vinyl on Amazon: Trust in the Lifeforce of the deep Mystery by The Comet Is Coming

Week #4

We are in the indie world, but not the noble one, the trendy one. The CIGARETTES AFTER SEX give us a concentration of pure androgynous, nocturnal and minimal hyper-romanticism that intensifies piece by piece. The songs can be more properly called bedroom stories, 10 compact tracks soaked in bourbon and romance.

Purchase the vinyl on Amazon: Cigarettes After Sex by Cigarettes After Sex

Week #5

Week #6

Here we have a band who are pushing boundaries, creating music without electric guitar which takes Zappa, Soft Machine, The Residents, John Zorn and Art Zoyd into logical and illogical extremes, blending sounds which have no place being put together, to create something which is strangely enthralling and enticing while at the same time also being harsh and abrasive. They use atonality almost as a weapon to distract the listener when things could almost be getting too commercial and poptastic. It is challenging music where there really are no limits. There is a sense of humour, playfulness even, within some of the sounds, but the result is always something which many music lovers are going to find too harsh to be enjoyed.

Purchase the vinyl on Amazon: 1000 by CHROMB!

Week #7

Purchase the CD on Amazon: Sing & Dance by Sophie Zelmani

Week #8

The first self titled CELLDWELLER album marks a new generation in the US electro-rock fields, musically taking on a style most akin to industrial rock, an 18 tracks production heavy beast. A self proclaimed perfectionist, Klayton’s high level of editing and tweaking for the sake makes it better with every single song. 

What we find here is an album that benefits from a strong electronic backing and production that brings everything in the mix forward into the spotlight, and further strengthens the overall style of the album. Instrumentally, Klayton’s ‘jack of all trades, master of none’ approach to things brings a strong performance to the record. Although lacking anything close to a lead guitar, the wall of rhythm guitars riffage more than does the job, with songs like ‘One Good Reason’ and ‘Own Little World’ featuring a catchy, guitar driven sound. Songs like ‘Under My Feet’ and ‘Symbiont’ flourish in percussion driven segments, and the blend of acoustic and electric drum kits found throughout the album works exceedingly well.

The writing on this album is by far his best. 

In contrast with his later work, Klayton’s vocal delivery on the album largely remains moody and features far less production, benefiting the darker nature of the lyrics greatly, and giving songs like ‘Fadeaway’ a big boost. The crown jewel of the album, ‘The Last Firstborn’, stands as the embodiment of everything this album is: a blend of electronic trance with metal screams and a big wall of guitar distortion.

Must-track to be listened: Switchback & The Last Firstborn

Purchase it on Amazon: Celldweller by Celldweller

Week #9

A post-punk, rock, industrial album of the week with Criminal by THE SOFT MOON (2018)

Luis Vasquez is still not over his personal demons. Since The Soft Moon’s self-titled 2010 debut, the mechanized riffs, post-punk squirms and groggy krautrock beats of the Oakland-based one-man-band have remained. On Criminal, The Soft Moon’s fourth studio album, these sounds are at their most gruelling, and most sharply-produced, yet.

Criminal details some of the darkest aspects of the human experience – shame, guilt, violence, desperation, self-loathing. Give something, then, is a pleasing break from the intense motor that runs through the first couple of tracks, as higher-pitched synths observe more nuanced vocals that wreak of desperation rather than sheer anger. It’s still painstaking, but on an album defined by its horror, there is beauty in the spaciousness which is wrought into delicate melodies.The album’s opener “Burn” fits its name, sudden and pulsing, a hot industrial song about lost control and a frightening kind of helplessness, one that is almost akin to dependence.

The following tracks, “Choke” and “Give Something” take a down tempo turn, brooding, softer giving off an almost liquid texture. Clear throughout Criminal is the singer’s bald-faced struggle, his wrestling with something deep insider; what is more, it feels like he’s losing, badly, especially as “Give Something” seethes restlessly to its dystopian finish. On “The Pain” the tempo picks back up, forging one of the record’s most dramatic constructions, a fury of heart racing keys and pulsing beats. As the record crackles to a finish on a triptych of songs (“Young” “Born Into This” and the title track) one is left with no other recourse than to believe Vasquez, his performance, the way he feels every instrumental shock mimics the experience of being abandoned.

Week #10

The Americans Om, a pearl in the stoner sludge panorama (project by Sleep’s icon Al Cisneros), in their 2012 album Advaitic Songs, evoke ancient rituals in psychedelic mystical landscapes, unreal landscapes wrapped in dreamlike atmospheres. An aimless journey through India, through supernatural worlds, choruses that sing disturbing litanies, everything contributes to creating dark and arcane fantasies.

The first track, “Addis”, knows how to convey the idea: you hear a voice singing mysterious words, almost a Middle Eastern chant, in the background percussion and strings and the journey begins. With “State Of Non-Return”, however, the unstoppable rhythm leads to a landscape that is much more ‘hard’, which will no longer be perceived for the rest of the album and which refers to the past stoner rock, apart from the calm closure again.

“Gethsemane”, in fact, takes up the mystical journey we had undertaken with “Addis”; but the piece lasts 10 minutes in which it knows how to build a spiritual and timeless atmosphere: strings, percussions, bass, singing an austere prayer to any god, even if this is a typically oriental spirituality. “Sinai” begins with the bursting of arcane words praising the mystery that reveals an Arabian sun. We are confused by the suggestive carpet of arches, which obscures the sun and makes the journey continue in other scenarios.

“Haqq al-Yaqin”, the last stage, is firmly anchored to a gothic and gloomy universe: the sound is solemn, the song a sacred melody among the gloomy spires of an ancient cathedral. The record ends and it is not easy to return with a clear mind.

Must-track to be listened:

• STATE OF NON RETURN
• SINAI
• HAQQ AL-YAQIN

Purchase the vinyl on Amazon: Advaitic Songs by OM

Week #10

The album of the last week of 2020 is Forever Blue by A.A. Williams, a combo of post rock, post classical. Released this 2020.

Classical studies as a child, falling in love with Deftones and the most extreme metal, a guitar found on the street, the first compositions, an eponymous EP and, then, the leap in quality, with a 10 “vinyl entitled “Exit In Darkness” composed in collaboration with the Japanese post rock band Mono. These are the stages in the short career of A.A. Williams, a young Londoner who with “Forever Blue”, her debut published via Bella Union, finally tries her hand at long distance.

Eight songs for forty-three mins, in which the young songwriter puts her studies and passion for the most experimental rock. 

From the first listening, in fact, influences from bands such as the mentioned Mono, Rachel’s, Explosions In The Sky, Sigur Ros and Cult Of Luna are perceived, relocated in a sound context in which also contemporary classical and contemporary textures emerge, opening to a livid and crepuscular folk. However, it would be very simplistic to frame this debut through its bands of inspiration: in fact, the album shows all the talent of a young artist who writes great songs and has many things to say through her own original artistic vision.

“Forever Blue” is first and foremost the perfect representation of the dramatic liturgy of our times, the ghostly photograph of a world adrift and hopeless.

It is one of the best albums of this grey year, a complex and fascinating record, surrounded by a sadness that does not evaporate, but that drags and wraps around a candlelight, a glimmer of hope.

Purchase the vinyl on Amazon: Forever Blue by A.A. Williams

Well.. we want to hear from you, what are your thoughts on it? Have you listened to them before? Are they related to your music preferences?

Tell us in the comments!

Reviews written by DED@Volumio

Do you enjoy Volumio Album of the week? Then you will love Music Letter! Check it out here.

The post Introducing Volumio’s Album of the Week appeared first on Volumio.

Some of you might have noticed a link in Volumio’s header called “Custom Solutions”. Some of you might have wondered what it is and why we decided to make it so prominent. Well, here’s your chance to have a behind the curtains overview of what it means and why we’re so proud of this.

Essentially, Volumio is not only your favorite Audiophile Music Player, but it’s a technology that we do license to many Hi-Fi companies around the world. The idea is simple: Volumio is the result of the development efforts of our beloved community and of the developers working for the Volumio company. As we are great fan of efficiency, we understood that to create a top-notch music player, we had to involve (both financially and on a co-design basis) the more stakeholders possible: the more ideas we put in it, the more development resources we put it it, the better.

So, what you, in fact, use every day has been funded thanks to all the Hi-Fi companies (there are more than 30, worldwide) that embraced Volumio technology and used them in their product. On the other hand, such companies receive a tailor-made, state of the art streaming software, enabling them to bring new products to the market. And the Volumio company not only provides the software per-se, but a range of services (consultancy on software and hardware, support, branding, fine-tuning of audio performances etc), effectively removing all the complications that software inherently brings.

This is essentially why Volumio OEM has become the choice of many audio manufacturers for their streamers solution, ensuring them a stable, feature-rich and proven platform. And why the OEM program allowed Volumio to grow as it is today.

Enough talking about Volumio, now let’s see a case where we can safely assume that the Volumio OEM tailored software, together with exquisite audio and design expertise produced a remarkable result.

The ORATORIO. Created by France-based brand LIEDSON is an integrated high-end streamer with CD playback and ripping ability built-in. It captivated us not only for its sonic performances, but as well its elegant design. With Volumio OEM Solution, we provided to the ORATORIO a customizable platform where users can manage the device, inheriting proven stability and performance of the Volumio OS, and customizing the looks and feel to provide a coherent package.

Desktop Version

Gilles Aguilera, designer and founder at LIEDSON, created the Oratorio’s OS when he first developed the product. Decided to go on a different path, he later on tested Volumio on the device, resulting in a new decision to incorporate instead a customized Volumio version for the Oratorio’s main OS. As Gilles explained to us, he chose Volumio because the system is “fluid, responsive with very good ergonomics”. 

Mobile Version

 The ORATORIO, more than high-end streamer, a philosophy

Gilles carefully designed and developed the ORATORIO based on its passion for art and audio. Being an awarded painter/sculptor since the age of 18, he was fond by Italian art and the artists surrounding it. In addition, audio was another passion recollected since he was young, creating his first audio server worked under Linux in 2005.

After all, a great product comes with great design. Two years ago, with the help of an Italian designer friend, Gilles developed the first visuals of the Oratorio. Gilles’ wife contributed as well with the first model, developing a modernized device with noble materials while keeping it user friendly with its plug and play convenience. 

All products from LIEDSON are assemble by hand

 

The ORATORIO is built around an aluminum chassis machined in the mass for a weight of 16 kg, the sides and the bottom have a thickness of 10mm, and the front face is 150 mm x 30 mm it serves as housing for the reader CD which is totally trapped, reducing mechanical vibrations to naught. 

The wooden part “the hood” is machined from a noble wood, from 30 years old drowned burl. It is machined to tenths of a millimeter on digital control, to receive the imprints of the internal components (transformers, PCB, capacitor) which are fixed on the bottom of the ORATORIO.

Our products are intended for a demanding clientele seeking custom-built equipment, free from all noise, and unparalleled reliability. – Gilles Aguilera

We can surely agree the ORATORIO provides the complete package. Elegancy, timeless design and universality.

 

The post Introducing the ORATORIO by LIEDSON: Volumio new OEM partner appeared first on Volumio.

However, there are other things being preserved over there that we believe are important for the next generation. What about music? Have you thought about how the world of music and streaming will be in a thousand years? We can imagine it today, but we don’t know exactly for sure. But in a thousand years, people will definitely know about today’s music and streaming. Specially about Volumio, because plant seeds are not the only thing being protected in the Svalbard archipelago…

Volumio is part of history

We have discovered that Github introduced its Archive program, a data repository conserved in the Arctic World Archive (AWA), where many open source softwares have been stored in the Github Arctic Vault, a facility 250 meters deep in the Arctic mountain. And we could not believe it when we received the news and found out that Volumio is one of the open source softwares archived in the Github Arctic Code Vault! It gives me the chill just even writing it…

Github, being called the world’s leading software development platform, decided to established their Archive program with its partners to save the best and consequential open source softwares to preserve them for all future generations, being the purpose protecting these OSS by storing various copies, on an ongoing basis, across various data formats and locations so many years later, next generations will be able to learn and understand how technology is today.

“It is a hidden cornerstone of modern civilization, and the shared heritage of all humanity. The mission of the GitHub Archive Program is to preserve open source software for future generations.

Future historians will be able to learn about us from open source projects and metadata.” – Github Archive Program Site. 

A celebration for many years

Volumio has been selected officially as one of the most important OSS Project in the world. Since July 8, 2020, our open source software is now being stored in what it used to be a decommissioned coal mine hundreds of meters deep in the remote island, on silver halide film designed to last over 1,000 years! A proud and important step forward we couldn’t have ever imagined, having the possibility of being protected and remembered for many years ahead. We couldn’t be more proud to announce the excitement of being part of the world’s future and to learn how important our project is it today and it will be tomorrow.

This goes without saying that this achievement is thanks to all the developers and members of a community that made Volumio a reality, every contribution made must be celebrated! Without all the contributors, Volumio wouldn’t have been a dream come true.

Today, let’s celebrate we are all part of history.

Cheers!

The post Volumio is here for a thousand more years! appeared first on Volumio.

This is dedicated to all the Volumio community, now you can listen to music on your favorite audiophile music player, but also wear it whenever you go and feel the comfort and quality you deserve.

The Volumio t-shirt wouldn’t be possible without Cipriani Couture. The fashion company based in Italy helped creating the designs options and was in charge of the whole production process. Its amazing team provided the creativity, and expertise while choosing the highest quality of textiles for the garment and printing technique for the logo, providing the best usability to the product.

The price for the Volumio T-shirt is €29.99. The high-quality of the garment gives a high value to it, produced entirely with 100% organic cotton with handmade silk-screen printing, all Made In Italy.

The Volumio T-shirt is perfect to use every day, you chose your preference and we listened! The t-shirt comes in Black color with short sleeves. You can see the size range and measurements available below:

US S / EU M → Heigh: 62cm. Chest Width: 50cm

US M / EU L → Heigh: 62cm. Chest Width: 53cm

US L / EU XL → Heigh: 66cm. Chest Width: 56cm

You can find the t-shirt to be incredibly versatile because of the simplicity in our design and the materials used. For most of us, a t-shirt always express how we are or what we like, now you can show the Volumio everywhere you are headed!

Needless to say, we are extremely fortunate to build such a great community these past few years that has been enjoying using Volumio the way we do while developing. Our concept for this shirt is you, the Volumio community.

Your new favorite t-shirt has arrived and it’s ready to be worn by you!

Get the Volumio T-shirt here!

The post A new staple of your everyday wardrobe: The Volumio T-shirt is now available! appeared first on Volumio.

We can say we are extremely proud of the community we have built these past few years. We’ve noticed how much you guys enjoy Volumio as much as we do developing it. Therefore, we have decided to have our referral program for you to be rewarded while sharing Volumio to your close ones.

The MyVolumio Referral program is dedicated to ALL MyVolumio users. If you have a MyVolumio account, whether it is the free or premium account, you are instantly eligible to participate.

How does MyVolumio Referral Program works?

1. You must have a MyVolumio account. If you don’t have it yet, it only takes two minutes to create one.
2. After you have signed up or logged in on your MyVolumio account, you can find on your profile page the Referral section, simply click on “Start sharing now” and you are in!
3. You will get an unique referral link that you can share it in different platforms to everybody you know.
4. Once your friend signs up to MyVolumio through your unique link, it will count as one referral.
5. You get rewarded! The rewards are according to the milestone program and your subscription type, and the leaderboard program.

What are the Milestone & Leaderboard Campaigns?

MyVolumio Referral Program consists of two campaigns: Milestone & Leaderboard. For each milestone achieved, you’ll receive the rewards according to your subscription type (Free, Virtuoso or Superstar). At the end of each month, the top 1 on the leaderboard will receive the big prize!

What are the rewards?

Milestone rewards are received depending of which plan do you have active on your account. You can win Virtuoso and Superstar premium plans according to your subscription. We separated the rewards according to your active susbcription type to be fair to all users, and get the rewards according to the value of your subscription.

Milestone Rewards:

• 1 Referral: 5% discount on Volumio Primo
• 5 Referrals: Additional month for free on your subscription. If you have MyVolumio Free, you will get one month free of MyVolumio Virtuoso.
• 10 Referrals: Additional two months for free on your current paid subscription. If you have If you have MyVolumio Free, you will get one month free of MyVolumio Virtuoso.
• 30 Referrals: One year for free on your subscription. For MyVolumio Free users, you will receive a one year of MyVolumio Virtuoso.

Leaderboard Reward: The one with most referral each month will receive a MyVolumio Superstar Lifetime plan!

You can see your unique link, the rewards, a real-time count of your referral and the leaderboard on the Volumio UI or myvolumio.org while logged in on your account, as you can see in the image below.

We’ve seen you enjoy Volumio, so why not share your love to the rest? Our goal is to help you share their your experience with Volumio and excitement with the rest. As an user, with the Referral Program you’ll get rewarded whenever your unique referral link is being used by everybody you know when they sign up to MyVolumio and grow our community!

This program’s goal is for our users to invite other people to join Volumio. If you are enjoying Volumio we want you to show to your friends and closed ones why you use our services and why they should try it as well. And from there, you receive all the rewards. Therefore, is important to mention we do not accept any fraudulent participation and behavior on the program. We do this with good intentions, hence, we expect the same from all participants.

Let’s share with MyVolumio Referral Program today! Create your account today or log in to your MyVolumio account and participate!

Happy Referring to all!

The post Invite your friends and get rewarded with MyVolumio Referral Program! appeared first on Volumio.

The Music and Artists Credit Discovery feature will allow you to answer all the questions above and more by exploring the behind the scenes of the music you listen on MyVolumio.

You can see on the video above a quick overview of how this new feature works.

The new released is available to all MyVolumio Superstar subscribers. We believe is an important addition for the audiophile, letting you find out detailed information about songs, artists or albums.

You can read the biography of your favorite artists.

From the biography of an artist to the story of the studio where an album was recorded, all this information will be easily accessed on the User Interface. You can access to all this data on the browse menu, or in the playback page.

Want to know who play what? Now you can!

The Music and Artists Credit Discovery feature gives you the opportunity to learn the story of each album, the credits list, or even the instruments that were used to record from all the music on your local files. And not only for your local files, but also for MyVolumio compatible services such as Tidal, Qobuz, Spotify, and more.

The feature comes in different languages (French Version)

Adding to all these capabilities, the data can be available in the current language you use on the software, but if that’s not the case, the will appear in English.

You can also enjoy it on the mobile version.

And this is where we say thank you to all the contributors that made this release possible. This new addition to MyVolumio would not have been possible without the help of Jo, his creative mind came up with the idea, worked on the cloud side of it and the design, making this vision a reality.

Another important contribution we must acknowledge is to Agnes & Bence of Ollala Design Studio. For all Volumio users, this great team worked on the usability of the Volumio UI, releasing a refreshed web user interface, with many fixes. The Ollalla Design Studio team explained “In this release we designed and implemented the newest iteration of the music browser. The main goal was to provide a flatter and more content rich music experience for the users while maintaining consistency with the existing UI. This project was definitely a good start to get to know Volumio and the team. Stay tuned for the leap of developments that are coming! Volumio has a bright future and we’ll make sure to polish the UI this pearl.”

A big thanks goes as well to Chris for his great insights, code contributions and suggestions, Gkkpch, Balbuze, Ash, Giacomo, Monica, Stefano, Massimiliano and all Volumio team members which do awesome things for this project.

Last but not least, we have to thank Wikipedia and Music Brainz (to which we are proud to be Supporters) for their amazing collective work over the years. The contribution of those 2 projects to mankind wisdom and access to information is invaluable. Without them, the work we’ve done on this feature would not simply be possible. If you appreciate freedom of information, think about the fact that those 2 projects have huge operational costs to be run, so consider making a donation to keep them making the world a better place ( Wikimedia foundation Donation Link, Metabrainz Foundation Donation Link).

Learn all the credits in the Credit Section

Now that we’ve shown you what the Music and Artists Credit Discovery features does, the facts you can read and learn about your favorite music, and the refreshed Volumio web UI; we want to invite you to see it for yourself and try it out!

The feature is available to MyVolumio Superstar users, just update Volumio to the latest version and enjoy the feature, in the event you still cannot see it, simply refresh your browser page.

This new release brings also many improvements for the free Volumio system (as you know, the financial boost coming out from MyVolumio is reinvested in the whole platform, no just the freemium part). All users are getting a reworked Album and Artist overview pages (with a more informative readout of the item, such as genre and file type), and a whole bunch of minor fixes. Next on our roadmap is to further improve the “customizability” of the browse page to allow you to “PIN” your favorite items for faster access and extra convenience.

Last but not least, we want your feedback! What do you think about this new addition to MyVolumio? Do you find it useful and interesting? Are there other credits information about your music you would like see? Give us your opinion or write down any questions you may have in the comment section!

Enjoy!

The post Discover Your Music With MyVolumio Latest Credits Feature! appeared first on Volumio.

Yet, I didn’t know that there could be something more, something that will improve my experience of listening to my favorite music in the best quality possible.

I met Michelangelo a few months ago and right away he talked to me about Volumio. I would be lying if I said I understood about Hi-Fi and Volumio after the first conversation with Michelangelo. Oh no… it was a new world for me and took some time to understand what this audiophile world was about.

Before I go deeper into this matter, let me introduce myself. My name is Monica, I am currently part of the Volumio team and I am a woman.

When I joined Volumio, a whole new experience began. I was very intrigued so I’ve learned about the Hi-Fi industry, who is an audiophile and what an audiophile seeks. The importance of high-quality sound reproduction and how this enhances somebody’s daily life.

But… how have I never found out about this before? If music is something I am passionate about and I listen to it everyday, why shouldn’t I enjoy it to the maximum as well?

Are we getting enough room in the hi-fi community?

After doing some research while working in Volumio, I noticed something peculiar: only 10% of Volumio’s users are women. Even when I go online and search something related to the hi-fi industry, I see that mostly men are the ones part of this community. The million dollar question is: Why?

Today, we can say there are many fields, such as audio and technology, that are elements and needs for both male and female, and whatever comprises this field it should be targeted to all of us. Also, being fair enough, women of all ages have better hearing frequencies than men, isn’t that say something?

Women enjoy to listen to music as much as any men. And as a woman, being part of this community but also working in it, made me wonder what we should do about it. I’m glad I decided to join Volumio because it showed me a bunch of interesting and powerful ideas in this industry that keeps growing. Also it demonstrated how I can enjoy what I like to do the most in an advantageously way, and what better time to share it now and encourage more women to join the community and let the women already interested in it, to be part of it. 

We must expand the hi-fi image and communication

I know out there we will find many women interested as soon as they learn about the Hi-Fi community. Believe me, the past 10 years I studied and worked in the fashion industry and now, this new world opened to me with so many new experiences that fortunately keep my enthusiasm high everyday. We are just missing a little communication pointed towards the female audience, to bring out the curiosity and the chance to explore the countless attributes that the audio industry can offer.

Today, I can see most of the communication goes towards the middle-aged men who has the most expensive hi-fi, resulting of an useless stereotyping that does not help the community grow. Should we start changing the face of Hi-Fi?

Based on my personal experience, if it wasn’t for Michelangelo I would probably still be unfamiliar about Hi-Fi and everything that consists of. Therefore, my goal is for you and I to invite and encourage the women in our lives to experiment the feeling of listening to any audio in a bit-perfect quality.

At the end of the day we all love music, and we all deserve to enjoy it to the max. 

So, what do you think we can do to change the image of the Hi-Fi industry and give more room to women? Write me in the comments, I would love to hear your opinion!

Let’s make this community more diverse!

The post A Woman in a Man’s World? Hi-Fi Edition appeared first on Volumio.