This is why we’re considering launching an equity crowdfunding campaign: this endeavor requires a substantial financial investment. And we want to offer this opportunity to our beloved community before everyone else to be part of this voyage.  With a starting contribution of just 100€, your potential contribution can shape the future of Volumio.

You can therefore express your interest, to be notified as soon as we are ready to start a crowdfunding campaign. This initial expression of interest doesn’t commit you to participating in the funding round.

Ready to take the next step in shaping the future of music? Explore all the details about this unique investment opportunity.

LEARN MORE

Perks of Becoming a Volumio Investor

Registering your interest early on will give you additional advantages.

Investors in Volumio are in for some exclusive benefits, including:

1. Exclusive Discounts for Investors Only

Enjoy discounts on subscriptions and products not accessible to the general public.

2. Early Access to New & Limited Edition Products

Be among the first to experience cutting-edge technology with early access to new products and limited-edition releases.

3. Investor Involvement in Decision Making

Stay connected with the Volumio team through a chat room and actively shape Volumio’s future through dedicated polls

What Sets Volumio Apart and what’s the plan?

We’ve always aimed to improve music listening. Fearlessly at the forefront, we were pioneering the Raspberry PI music player, never slowing down since. We are driven by a genuine passion for music and audio excellence. It’s not just a corporate endeavor; it’s a labor of love. Our approach to product development is centered around the user, prioritizing simplicity, personalization, and user-friendliness.

The funds will be utilized to develop, launch, and market the next iteration of Volumio: the one and only app for music enjoyment.

Our goal is straightforward: To deliver the ultimate music player application. By using Volumio you will be able to have all your music collection available, everywhere. And, by leveraging the power of AI, receive tailored recommendations and even summaries of what matters to you, from breaking news to the latest release of your favorite artist.

Why Invest in Volumio?

Investing in Volumio allows you to shape the future of personalized music experiences. Your investment can start at just 100€.

Volumio’s impact has been substantial in the past few years since the company started over 500,000 installations, a community of 40,000+ members, and 9,000+ subscribers to Volumio Premium. With 20+ app integrations and more to come, Volumio is making waves in the world of music technology.

For more information or to share an idea, please don’t hesitate to contact us at investor@volumio.com. We value your input.

With its Italian craftsmanship, authenticity, and user-centric approach, Volumio is a standout in the music technology industry. By investing in Volumio, you not only support a visionary company but also gain exclusive benefits and the chance to be part of a music revolution.

We truly believe that with adequate resources we can have a huge impact on how people of all kinds will enjoy their music, and we want you to be part of this journey.

So, join Volumio in shaping the future of music today!

LEARN MORE

The post Invest in Volumio: Shaping the Future of Music appeared first on Volumio.

We are aware that many of you, music lovers, have been requesting a lifetime deal for Volumio Premium. We understand that some of you prefer the “pay once and enjoy forever” model over a subscription. Well, if you find yourself in such a situation, you’re in luck.

Your requests have been heard, and we’re here to respond. For just €199, you can now secure a lifetime license for all the premium features of Volumio.

But here’s the catch: there are only 200 licenses available! So, act quickly because these won’t last long!

What makes this deal even more exceptional is that we’re offering our beloved community the opportunity to secure Volumio Premium at this special rate before we increase prices in the near future.

From September 27th at 00:00 CET until October 1st at 23:59 CET this is your opportunity to be one of the lucky few with a Volumio premium lifetime license, and before prices go up.

Volumio Premium Lifetime Deal is SOLD OUT

Why Volumio Premium Lifetime is Your Ultimate Music Experience

Imagine having the ultimate music player, delivering impeccable sound quality and unlimited access to your favorite tunes.

Volumio Premium Lifetime is your opportunity to get access to these exclusive features:

• New! Super Search
• New! Infinity Playback
• New! Related Albums and Artists
• Multiroom Sync Playback
• Multiple Integrations
• Digital & Analogue Inputs Playback
• Automatic Backup & Sync
• CD Playback & Ripping
• Music & Artist Credits Discovery
• Bluetooth Audio Playback Input
• Play Here Function

Plus, all upcoming Premium features…

We’re offering all community members a chance to seize the current pricing before any changes take effect. So don’t miss this chance!

Why a limited time offer? Why are you not adding a lifetime option to the supported plans?

We don’t offer lifetime licenses for Volumio Premium because our development costs can change, making predictions difficult. We also think lifetime subscriptions limit user freedom to explore other options. Instead, we believe annual subscriptions strike the right balance for our customers. Occasionally, we release a few lifetime licenses in response to demand, without affecting our primary subscription model.

And what about the current prices, when and how will they increase?

Volumio Premium has undergone significant enhancements and gained more capabilities since its launch two years ago, with even more developments in progress. That’s why we have decided to implement a minor price adjustment, effective from October 5th.

The new prices will be: Volumio Premium Yearly 69,99 EUR/79,99 USD/59,99 GPB, Volumio Premium Monthly 7,49 EUR/8,49 USD/6,49 GBP.

We believe these prices reflect the value we’ve been consistently adding to the Premium offerings, both in terms of features (AI Supersearch, AI DJ, and Infinity Playback, Play Here) and in terms of user support, plugin store moderation, and stability improvements. All of this wouldn’t have been possible without the support of our subscribers, and our commitment is to keep adding value to the offering you love and improve it even more, leaving it to our users to judge if what we deliver is worth their hard-earned money.

We didn’t make this decision lightly; rather, we hope you can understand our commitment to continuously improve your beloved music player. We aim to do so while remaining accountable and transparent to our cherished community.

Please note that the price increase will only affect new subscribers. Existing subscribers will keep their current price as long as their subscription is active.

The post Don’t Miss Your Exclusive Volumio Premium Lifetime Deal Before Prices Rise! appeared first on Volumio.

This sleek device combines finely-crafted hardware with the reliable Volumio software, giving you the power to stream your personal music library, play files from USB storage, and explore a world of streaming options. And that’s not all – Rivo offers incredible flexibility with the option to enhance its functionality through plugins, including the addition of DSP. Plus, it knows exactly how to bring out the best audio quality of your chosen DAC.

In case you haven’t heard about them before, the EISA (Expert Imaging and Sound Association)  represents the biggest worldwide editorial collaboration of consumer electronics. Currently with 61 international experts magazines, every year they gather and select the best consumer electronic products giving the EISA award to only the very best products in their category.

The Volumio Rivo an EISA award-winning product

The Rivo is a pure transport device, meaning it doesn’t have analog outputs. Instead, the Rivo connects effortlessly to any external DAC, delivering flawlessly perfect music streams and digital files – we’re talking DSD, WAV, FLAC, Alac, AAC, Vorbis, Cue, Mp3, and more. It can easily read these files from your hard drive or local network. Connecting to the internet is a breeze with its Gigabit Ethernet LAN port or its super-efficient WiFi MIMO 2×2, with separate antennas for sending and receiving data.  If you prefer Bluetooth, Rivo also has Bluetooth 5.0 compatibility.

Featuring two USB input ports (one 2.0 and one 3.0), Rivo welcomes hard drives, discs, USB sticks, and even external CD drives for digitizing and playing your favorite albums. You can even connect a mouse or keyboard to easily control the device. The digital signal delivers the utmost precision via three outputs: Coaxial SPDIF, AES/EBU (offering PCM 192kHz/24bit), and USB (handling PCM 768kHz/32bit and DSD256). And if you want to see what’s happening on the screen, just hook up the HDMI video port. The Rivo’s chassis is constructed with anti-magnetic aluminum, showcasing a modern design curated by Design Narratives. It’s sleek and simple, with one visible feature – a power button with an LED indicator right in the middle of the front.

Rivo’s internal architecture

Let’s dive into the impressive internal architecture of Rivo. It’s all about delivering the cleanest, purest digital signal possible. Every component is precise, with a series of 1:1 transformers that feature galvanic isolation of the SPDIF and AES/EBU digital outputs. The USB output is preceded by a high-precision femto clock, complete with its own separate power supply. The same level of dedicated power supply is provided for all the basic circuits. Speaking of power, Rivo is powered by an external 5V/3A transformer. The current passes through a quality filter comprised of electrolytic capacitors and induction coils for ultimate stability.

Running the show behind the scenes is the powerful quad-core Amlogic S905D3 processor, clocking at 1.9 GHz. Assisting the processor is a generous 2GB of DDR4 memory and 16GB of internal storage. This ensures smooth operation with Volumio AI the latest release of Volumio featuring Supersearch, an AI search function, Infinity Playback that keeps queuing up tracks as soon as you get to the end of your queue and suggestions for related albums and artists. Plus, when you purchase Rivo, you also get a lifetime premium Volumio membership.  Volumio Premium offers a range of services such as Roon, Airplay, Spotify and Spotify Connect, TIDAL and TIDAL Connect, native QOBUZ, and more through plugins. Not to mention dedicated technical support whenever you need it.

With Volumio premium equipped the Rivo has a multiroom feature. Connect your Rivo to other Volumio enabled-devices, and you’ve got a whole-house audio setup. Rivo is also a UPNP/DLNA renderer.  It grants you access to the free internet TuneIn radio with thousands of amazing stations.

Volumio Rivo: Endless possibilities, simplicity of design

Simplicity is key when it comes to Rivo. Connecting it to your home network is a breeze, taking only a few minutes. And, once connected, you can navigate Volumio’s menus effortlessly using the on-screen options or the Android and iOS apps. The interface offers quick and easy access to streaming services and your local library.

Rivo is all about customization. Experienced users can tweak and fine-tune it as they please.  If you’re not a tech wizard, Rivo has you covered. It comes packed with all the essential functions pre-automated, providing a seamless and enjoyable experience for everyone. Rivo is more than just a streamer – with the EISA award, it’s clear that it is a game-changer.  Combining cutting-edge technology, ease of use, and top-notch audio performance.

Are you ready to experience the Rivo revolution?  You can get your Rivo delivered with free and fast shipping, so get yours now! 

The post Volumio Rivo Wins EISA Award for Best “Digital Player” 2023-2024 appeared first on Volumio.

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.

The post The Volumio Primo is now Roon Ready appeared first on Volumio.

The post Volumio Integro announced Product of the Year! appeared first on Volumio.

VOLUMIO 3.3 UNIVERSAL IS HERE

What does it mean by ALL music lovers? We thought that the values audiophiles believe in, can be of great enjoyment also to a wider music community.  This is why we are introducing our newest release, Volumio 3.3, as Volumio UNIVERSAL. We added new features that give the ability to use our music player in many new playback devices available in the market, both increasing convenience of Volumio as the central hub for music playback that can be appealing for both audiophiles and for music listeners in general.

So, without further ado, let’s see what Volumio Universal brings:

MANIFEST USER INTERFACE FOR EVERYONE!

The Manifest User, who we introduced in the launch of Volumio 3 only for Premium users, will now be available for ALL, both Free and Premium Users. We believe the Manifest UI is the best in terms of aesthetics and music presentation, so we decided everyone should have it. Old UIs are still available but will be decommissioned (maybe becoming optional plugins) soon.

In addition to have it available for all, we worked on making improvements to be more user-friendly, especially on the mobile version. We also redesigned the main menu and designed a new output menu that gives new and improved functionalities which you will learn more about in the next paragraphs.

NEW OUTPUT MENU

In the manifest UI, there is a new output menu with new and improved functionalities:

• Volume control
• Remote Control: the Remote control option on any Volumio device
• Multiroom Control Management with improvements.

And the newest features of Volumio 3.3. Available for Premium users:

• Play Here Function
• Sonos and Chromecast outputs

PLAY HERE FUNCTION

The Play Here function, allows you to stream the audio from Volumio to your mobile device, your computer and also your smart TV. Pretty much everywhere the UI is displayed. For example, if you open Volumio on your computer browser, you can click on the Play Here button found on the output menu and the sound will come out from your computer.

This means that you can enjoy Volumio as a normal music player app when you work on your PC, or via Bluetooth headphones connected to your mobile phone. Since Volumio is a powerful music aggregator, it’s a convenient way to integrate your music from different sources and leave it playing when cooking, working, gardening or having a party. Where audio quality is not needed, and good background music is preferred.

CASTING TO CHROMECAST AND SONOS

With the Casting option on the output menu, you can cast whatever you are playing in Volumio to any Chromecast and Sonos device. Now Volumio is compatible with different endpoints from the single app. As the title says, output whatever audio you are playing on Volumio to your Chromecast-enabled devices (Google Home, Chromecast-enabled Soundbar, Chromecast Audio, etc.) and SONOS devices.

The stream happens thanks to a low-latency HLS encoding which can be sent to any of the above devices. Please note that synchronization is not possible between Chromecast devices and SONOS devices, but you can play to a Sonos Group to have audio synchronized to that group.

This, in a nutshell, it the latest round of features that you will see in Volumio 3.3. In short, those features will make Volumio YOUR UNIVERSAL MUSIC PLAYER.

How to get Volumio 3.3?

If you are a first time Volumio user, you can download it directly here. If you already have Volumio installed on your device, go to System Updates and click on Check Updates. You are looking for v3.378.

What do you think? Do you like what you see?

Let us know in the comments and enjoy!

The post Introducing Volumio UNIVERSAL appeared first on Volumio.

We feel very proud of having a great community that shares our same passion for music and great sound, and we are happy you chose Volumio to help you have the listening experience you deserve and build a music player that can adapt to your music needs. With so much info going around (that sometimes can feel a little overwhelming) and many options on how you can use Volumio to the fullest, we wanted to go ahead and give you some tips and recommendations on how to get started and how to get the best out of Volumio.

This is just a quick guide, in the next few weeks, we will go more into depth with the many cool things you can do with Volumio. For now, let’s get started with the basics.

GET STARTED WITH YOUR VOLUMIO MUSIC PLAYER:

SUGGESTED DEVICE

The suggested hardware is Raspberry PI 4, with 2GB of RAM (4 and 8GB are overkill). Pi Zero is not suggested: Volumio works but, it’s very slow and unresponsive.

Considering the current shortage, also PI 3 is a good alternative, but its internal Wi-Fi is known to have issues, so consider using an external supported Wi-Fi dongle for it.

Tinkerboard S is very good, but hard to find.

Last, also PC is a good choice, but considering the countless configurations possible, we can just recommend using Intel NUC.

NETWORK CONNECTION

The biggest limiting factor for a good experience is network connection. If the network connection to your device is not optimal, you will experience disconnection, slow response and sub-optimal audio.

When possible, always use a Wired Connection: this ensures the best stability and swift operation. If you can’t pull a wire to your Volumio, consider a Powerline extender: they offer a reliable connection using your home’s electrical system and they don’t introduce unwanted noise.

Last, if you really can’t, Wi-Fi is a good option if you can use 5Ghz Wi-Fi or you can ensure optimal connection. If you connect via Wi-Fi, check on Volumio Network Settings that you have at least 75mbs speed. Any lower and it means your connection is sub-optimal and you have to try what is suggested above.

POWER SUPPLY

Raspberry PIs are very sensitive to power supply. If the PSU cannot deliver at least 3A at 5V, you’re going to experience instability and SD Card corruption (you have to reinstall Volumio frequently).

The safe bet is going with the official power supply. Don’t save money on your PSU, get a proven quality one if the official power supply is not available.

If you need to use external devices such as Hard Drives, CD Drives, better use a powered USB Hub to compensate for the increased power consumption.

If you use the Raspberry PI touchscreen or an external monitor, use 2 power supplies: one for the PI and one for the display.

CHOOSE A DAC

Volumio works with any USB DAC which is compliant with UAC standards. This means 99% of available USB DACs. If you connect your DAC to Volumio and it does not show up in the Audio Output list, unfortunately you are unlucky to have found this 1%. There’s nothing we can do about it, move on and find another one.

I2S shields are another great option. Before buying your I2S Shield, check on Playback Options → I2S DAC if this DAC is on the list. If it is, good news, it’s compatible and you can go on and get it. If it’s not, it might or might not work, so you’re advised to not get it.

PLUGINS

Even if plugins are carefully checked, we can’t check all the combinations of plugins. So we urge you to just install the plugins you strictly need.

Do not install plugins manually, even if you find many instructions on the forum asking to do so: you’re installing plugins that are not endorsed or validated by the Volumio team, potentially creating stability issues or problems that our support team will not be able to troubleshoot

PLAYBACK OF LOCAL FILES: NAS OR USB

They both work just fine, but for optimal experience and convenience, a NAS is highly recommended. Make sure you get a NAS from QNAP or Synology and you keep your NAS firmware updated (for security and compatibility). Usually, users with not up-to-date NAS cannot use it with Volumio unless they specify special options (like vers=1.0 in advanced options).

VOLUMIO UPDATES

Volumio gets updated very frequently. If you are experiencing an issue, it’s very likely that we already released an update that fixes it. Don’t be the ones that get stuck on an old release because “it sounds better”, check updates frequently and have faith in upgrades.
Usually, when you need to know something when updating, we write it in the changelog. So read it carefully.

Last, make sure you don’t enable TEST MODE on your device, if you do you will receive experimental updates meant only for developers or testers. Those updates can and will introduce unwanted behaviours since we use them to test new stuff. Many people report such misbehaviors only to then discover they are in TEST mode. Do not enable them. If you did, disable them by going to the DEV page and setting TEST to false.

Tip: if you are in test mode, there will be a warning before the changelog stating “WARNING: you are installing a test release”.

SSH AND TINKERING

Volumio is designed to be an open system to allow experimentation. But this requires you to know what you are doing. Usually there are guides that suggest connecting via SSH and performing various manual installs and tweaks. Even if they are written in good faith, there are good chances you will mess up something.
Especially, never ever do apt-get upgrade. This will brick your install.

GET INVOLVED IN THE COMMUNITY

Volumio is what it is today thanks to the music lovers who participated in the community and gave useful insights on their experience and what they wanted Volumio to be.

Join the community and provide your feedback, help others, share your experience. Do it politely and in a constructive way, treat everyone with respect and speak out.

Believe it or not, this really makes a difference.

ENJOY THE MUSIC

via GIPHY

Seriously. Don’t worry about your gear, the orientation of your power plug, the resampling algorithm, MQA blue or the current lunar phase. Get involved in what you listen and forget about being an audiophile, at least until tomorrow.

The post Back To Basics: Get the Best Out of Volumio 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.

He has worked with numerous world-class characters, including Chet Baker, Lee Konitz, Bob Berg, Michael Brecker, Tony Oxley, Dave Liebman, Kenny Wheeler, John Scofield, Joe Lovano, Toots Thieleman and Ramin Bahrami in the splendid Bach is in the air. He performs in major Italian and international jazz festivals, as well as holding solo piano concerts.

Danilo Rea is also a great Hi-Fi enthusiast, he has never hidden it. In his apartment, numerous systems alternate between the sacred and the profane, between modern and vintage. But the interpretation he makes of Hi-Fi is completely personal, for him a device is like a piano, he chooses them carefully, in short, they must correspond to it. Volumio Primo was immediately part of Danilo’s universe, who immediately appreciated its natural and expressive qualities as well as its ease of use.

Now Primo is a permanent partner of his musical universe, alternating between one system and another, he has made it a real work tool.

Musicista di livello assoluto e molto ricercato in ambito pop e jazz, è considerato tra i migliori pianisti italiani. Diplomato al conservatorio di Santa Cecilia a Roma, è l’artista d’elezione dei migliori interpreti italiani, tra i quali Mina, Baglioni, Celentano, Mannoia e più di recente Gino Paoli. E’ un interprete immenso e viscerale, che ammalia e conquista irrimediabilmente con le sue libere improvvisazioni su temi melodici celebri.

Ha lavorato con numerosi personaggi di livello assoluto, tra i quali Chet Baker, Lee Konitz, Bob Berg, Michael Brecker, Tony Oxley, Dave Liebman, Kenny Wheeler, John Scofield, Joe Lovano, Toots Thieleman e Ramin Bahrami nello splendido Bach is in the air. Si esibisce nei maggiori festival jazz italiani e internazionali, oltre a tenere concerti di piano solo.

Danilo Rea è anche un grande appassionato di Hi-Fi, non lo ha mai nascosto. Nel suo appartamento numerosi impianti si alternano, tra sacro e profano, tra moderno e vintage. Ma l’interpretazione che fa dell’Hi-Fi è del tutto personale, per lui un apparecchio è come un pianoforte, li sceglie con cura, gli devono, insomma, corrispondere. Il Volumio Primo ha fatto subito parte dell’universo di Danilo, che ne ha apprezzato immediatamente le doti di naturalezza ed espressività oltre alla facilità d’uso.

Adesso è partner fisso dei suoi ascolti, e lo alterna tra un sistema e l’altro, ci lavora, ne ha fatto, insomma, un vero e proprio strumento di lavoro.

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