High-End Munich is the world’s biggest and most important Hi-Fi trade fair. Everyone (Audio manufacturers, designers, distributors, press) is there. For us it has always been a very important appointment since it’s a unique moment to spend time with our OEM Partners, discuss new projects and cooperations, see the latest trends in action and listen to some very remarkable audio systems.

But this time, it will be different. This time, it will be special.

We are so proud to announce that, for the first time, Volumio will join Munich High-End show as an exhibitor! Yes, we will have our own booth in Halle 1, stand A21!

And that’s not the last surprise we have for you, as we will show not one but 2 world premieres and some really interesting previews. Let’s see them all:

VOLUMIO MOTIVO WORLD PREMIERE

It’s well over one year since we started working on a new, groundbreaking streamer. Its name is Motivo.

It’s a joint cooperation between Volumio, visionary engineering firm Yottamusic and world-class industrial design firm Design Narratives.

We gathered together around a simple vision: to create the next-generation Audiophile Streamer, with a completely new approach to audio processing and with the ultimate usability.

Motivo in Italian means Meaning. And Motivo is our statement to what enjoying music means to us.

You will know everything about Motivo in Munich, where we will display for the first time our early prototypes.

Did I already mention it is a thing of beauty? Here’s a sneak preview for you.

VOLUMIO LINEO WORLD PREMIERE

You asked for it, we made it. We are ready to bring to market a Linear Power Supply, designed to give the Volumio Primo (and all 5V apparatus) the cleanest possible power.

You will have the chance to see it paired with the Primo in Munich.

NEW USER INTERFACE REDESIGN

Our beloved user interface has been serving us wonderfully over those years, but we thought it was time to give it a nice refreshing.

Following the many suggestions from our community and our OEM partners we are performing an overhaul of the User Interface structure and adding quite a lot of usability tweaks. We are also laying the groundworks for an extended navigation capability, leveraging an all-new metadata system.

For those attending, we will be showing a sneak preview of the new interface at our booth. And here’s there’s another sneak preview for you.

WHERE TO FIND US

Our booth @ Munich High-End is located in Halle 1, stand A21 

Munich High End starts Thursday 9th May and ends Sunday 12th, at MOC Munchen

If you’re just attending the fair, just come to our booth to see all our new previews and have a chat with us.

And for those wishing to listen to Motivo and Primo via exquisite Headphone systems, we will have a listening position at AudioValve’s booth, located nearby in Halle 1 stand B05.

Definitely, a great chance to hear our products and to check out AudioValve outstanding offerings. For more information about AudioValve, see: https://www.audiovalve.info/

If you’re looking to have a meeting, to discuss about Volumio OEM or distributorship of our products, we definitely suggest to book an appointment with us using the following links:

OEM MEETINGS (Using Volumio OEM Technology for your Audio products)

https://calendly.com/volumio-hi-end-meetings/oem-munich-high-end

DISTRIBUTORS MEETINGS (Become a part of Volumio network of distributors)

https://calendly.com/volumio-hi-end-meetings/volumio-distributors-meetings

That’s it! We really can’t wait for this year’s Munich High End to start, and most importantly, to meet you guys there!

The post Meet us in Munich High-End 2019 appeared first on Volumio.

Ladies and Gentlemen, please welcome Primo.

Primo in Italian means First. And guess what, we named it like so not only because its our actual first take of a complete Volumio Music Player directly manufactured under our specifications, but also because it has been designed to be YOUR favorite music player. The first of your personal list.

It has been a long time since we started dreaming of manufacturing a complete Volumio product. As Volumio team we always had a clear idea of what we wanted, and we started looking for partners to help us realize our vision.

We found such partner in a well established Hi-Fi manufacturer with which we work since many years with our OEM program: they proved us they could build something to match our expectations. The result of which we are really proud to present to you, our beloved community today.

The primo is a simple, uncomplicated yet powerful streamer.

PRIMO’S DESIGN PHILOSOPHY

The first cornerstone of its design philosophy is of course sound quality.

Personally, I have a very strong orientation on a balanced sound signature, detailed but not hyper-analytical. I want to enjoy music and for that, the ability to convey rhythm and pace is a must.
I wanted nothing but such acoustic signature for our player. And boy, this is exactly what I heard when I received the first sample of Primo.

Since I am not the best judge of Primo’s acoustic qualities (someone said bias?) I took care of handing another sample to Jens Neugebauer which hosts Soundcheck, a blind test comparison between DACs on a regular basis. Primo, guess what, came out first against all competitors. Read the full report here:
https://volumio.org/forum/volumio-soundcheck-invitation-for-hamburg-germany-t5918-50.html#p50701

For the silicon fetishists among you: Primo’s DAC is the excellent ES9028Q2M, supported by a more than excellent implementation.

Second principle: universality. Primo not only should be able to play every format, every music media (and it does that thanks to Volumio, ça va sans dire) but it’s should also be flexible in terms of output. That’s why we equipped it with Analog Out (as you would expect from a music player) USB (no surprise here as well, as it comes with ANY single board computer) but also S\PDIF. So you’ll be able to use its DAC or any external DAC via USB or SPDIF to your liking.

Third, but not least. It must be practical. So we have the best connectivity options onboard: Gigabit LAN and Wireless N with external antenna for optimal range.
For those who like to have the UI on their display we also made sure to have HDMI video output.

All those great connectivity features are inherited by the Tinkerboard S: which we believe is the best all-rounder embedded hardware on the market for Audio applications: it’s powerful, built with quality and stability in mind and its USB and I2S implementation are better than everything else we’ve tried.

Last (but your wife will put it first): Primo is beautiful. It’s enclosed in a full metal matte black soft touch enclosure. It’s elegant and simple and compact.

So, now that you know Primo and you want it, here’s the best part. We’ve put in production the first batch of 20 pieces, available for pre-order now as “Founders edition”.

This is a special offer for our community of early adopters:

• • Special launch price of 349 euros (instead of 399)
  • Free Shipping (available only for European Customers)
  • MyVolumio Superstar Subscription for 1 Year Included (worth 67 euros)
  • Shipping in late December
  • Only 20 pieces available. Next batch will be manufactured after all Founders Edition orders are shipped (with regular 399 euros price)

If you love Volumio, you’ll adore Primo. We put all our love and thought into it and we’re so proud to offer it to our beloved community.

[button type=”success” size=”btn-large” label=”Get your Primo” link=”/primo”]

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Ladies and gentlemen, the Volumio Team is proud to announce that MyVolumio beta phase is now over, and that starting from today it will be available to everyone!

If you’re late to the party and don’t know what MyVolumio is, here’s a quick recap for you:

MyVolumio is a set of premium features, together with some cloud wizardry that expand Volumio capabilities. Specifically:

• TIDAL and QOBUZ native implementations (so you can enjoy those two Streaming Services in their full Hi-Res glory
• Automatic syncing and backup of Favourites, Playlists and Webradios (and they do get automatically imported on new installs too!)
• Remote Control of your devices from myvolumio.org (so you will be able to control your devices remotely, and without messing with IP addresses or Dynamic DNS stuff…)

And the fun is not over here: thanks to the cloud infrastructure we’ve set up for MyVolumio, we will be able to bring you even more functionalities in the near future (such as CD Playback and Ripping, Remote Streaming of your files, Synced Multiroom Playback, Auto-Updates and so on). If you’re curious to see why we developed MyVolumio you will find a pretty comprehensive explanation in this post and in this forum thread.

I would really like to thank you all beta testers that participated in the MyVolumio Beta testing program: thanks to your help we are now able to deliver this amazing addition for all our beloved users!

So, if you’re eager to get started, here’s how you can do it:

1. Update your Volumio install or download it and flash it (you’re looking for version 2.501 onwards)
2. Create your MyVolumio account. You can do it either from Volumio’s User Interface or from myvolumio.org
3. From your profile page, select  “Upgrade your Plan” and select your favourite flavour of awesomeness: Virtuoso 2,99 euros/month and 28,99 euros/year or Superstar 6,99 euros/month and 66,99 euros/year.
4. From now on you will see TIDAL and QOBUZ settings into My Music section and you will be able to control your device remotely from myvolumio.org (click on the play button next to your device).

By selecting one of our Premium Plans, not only you’ll get the aforementioned features, but you will actively support our project (and fund the development of the next great features we have in mind).

If you want to experience the best Volumio has to offer and support the project SUBSCRIBE NOW TO MYVOLUMIO!

UPDATE

I really wish to say a huge thank you to everyone which joined MyVolumio in the first 3 days of release. We really had an overwhelming response, well beyond our most optimistic expectations (we got hundreds of MyVolumio subscriptions in the first 3 days).

A sincere thank you to whom subscribed, to who will do it and to everyone which participated to development and discussion of MyVolumio!

The post MyVolumio is finally available for all Volumio users appeared first on Volumio.

I2S DAC Auto-detection

I2S DACs are somehow the best chance to get great Audio quality out of our little PI, at a very reasonable cost. Therefore Volumio should work like a breeze with them. And that’s what we achieved. Just connect your IQ-Audio DAC Plus or Hifiberry to your Pi, and turn it on. Without any configuration it will be ready to play and configure to get the last bit out of your music. Since this is an heavily kernel-dependent feature autodetection works only with the two models above, but the good news is that for non-autodetected i2s DACs you can just select them from Playback options and they will be active right away. Some of them may still require a reboot, but you’ll be asked to do so.

Multilanguage

Volumio now speaks your language. Just go to the appearance section, and select yours. Not finding it? You can join the many volunteers in the community which translated Volumio in their language, and give a substantial contribution to the project.

Wireless Hotspot if no Wireless Network is configured

The first time you will turn Volumio on, it will create an open wireless network named, guess what, “Volumio”. Just connect to it, and the UI will automatically appear. From there, you can easily connect to your wireless network, and the hotspot will disappear. Then, when you bring Volumio out of home with you, it will create the Volumio network again. Isn’t that handy?
Please note that at the moment, the Hotspot function works best with the Edimax EW-7811Un. Other wireless adapters will most likely not work, but wireless connectivity will not be affected.

Seamless Wireless Connection

Wireless connection as easy as can be. Nothing more to say here…

Easy NAS (Network Attached Storage) mounts

For lots of our users, mounting their NAS has always been a pain in the… Not anymore. Just go to My Music, Add a new drive and let Volumio figure out which NAS are available. Select yours and click save. If an authentication is required, Volumio will ask. Now you just need to look your Music Library statics get bigger and bigger. And if you’re adding new music to your NAS (or USB drive), Volumio will figure it out and add it automatically.

A plugin universe

We have a wonderful community. Lot of brilliant music lovers around here. So here’s a way for them to shape Volumio features directly: we prepared a Plugin system which will allow everyone to create new features. We’re talking about new streaming services support, equalizers, scrobblers… you name it. We’re working on a comprehensive documentation, so stay tuned. In the meanwhile, you can enjoy a better-than-ever Spotify integration.

OTA (Over the air updater system)

The idea here is to flash once your SD Card, and then update your Volumio as you do with your Smartphone or any other consumer product. We created a very stable, fast and scalable updater system (really appreciated in our OEM Program as well) designed to do just that. Furthermore, the system is designed to protect the SD Card from wearing, as the core system is a read-only image. Also, you can update without loosing your settings and data, thanks to persistent user-data partition.

Live Search

Search whatever you want to listen to, and our live search will serve what you were looking for, divided by artist, album or track. You will also get results from Webradios, and if your plugin supports that, also from it (Spotify someone? Go and try to see how Spotify searches look…).

An adaptive WebUI

Thanks to all the feedbacks from our community, we understood that a responsive WebUi was not enough. Using the very same layout on Desktop and Mobile and simply resizing the elements was not enough. So we decided to get back on our mockups and design a different, mobile-centric experience on smaller screens. The result is an adaptable, aka it chages the layout substantially, on mobile to improve comfort and usability. For example, important playback controls are on the lower part of the screen, to allow an easy reach (when using a mobile with just one hand). All important controls are within your thumbs reach. The volume slider is also located there, allowing a no-scroll experience and a more fine grained volume control. To pass from tab to tab, for example from playback to browse, you can simply swype left or right (or use the tab buttons on top). I think this is a major usability improvement.

I really hope you will enjoy the new Volumio as much as we did creating it. A huge thanks goes to all contributors, community members and users that contributed in every way. You can tell us what you think in this forum post or report problems in our issue tracker. If you want to contribute, you can also donate via paypal or get one of our selected products in Volumio Shop.

As usual you can download it at the download section

And that’s only the beginning…

The post Your favourite Audiophile music player for Rasperry PI, reinvented appeared first on Volumio.

Let’s take a moment to review what the benefits are with this new board iteration:

• Quad Core ARM v7 CPU @ 900MHz (Foundation claims it to be 6x more powerful)
• 1GB of RAM instead of 512 MB
• Full compatibility with Accessories and Software of V1.

The new Raspberry Pi 2

What they basically did was replace the BCM2825 SoC with a newer and more powerful BCM2836, and adding a 1GB elpida DDR2 RAM module on the bottom of the board. The remaining parts of the board remain unchanged.

You can see an interesting performance comparison here.

For those of you wondering if the new Raspberry Pi 2 will suffer from the same USB issues: yes, the Ethernet is still over USB (like every single board computer out there) so we’ll need to test the new drivers behaviour extensively to see if the notorius #1 bug on PI has been solved.

Now, let’s see what you can get using Volumio and Raspberry Pi 2 as a music player:

• 35 dollar Hardware, the most inexpensive one
• Way more power than Volumio needs
• Full compatibility with I2s DACs (Hifiberry, IQ-Audio and others) up to 24\192 playback
• Extra RAM for RAMPlay function

I’ll cover a bit more extensively the hardware capabilities of the Raspberry PI 2 in a future post

And here is what you get with Volumio 1.55:

• Compatible with Raspberry Pi, Rasbperry Pi B+ and Raspberry PI 2
• I2s DAC compatibility with Raspberry PI 2 (Hifiberry Dac Plus, IqAudio Dac Plus and others)
• Better Spotify handling: new Spop daemon version and search by Name or Artist
• USB DAC hotplugging is now supported
• USB Storage can be used on the fly, and you’re not required to reboot any more

As usual, you can download the new version at the DOWNLOAD PAGE and leave your comments and feedbacks on the Specific Forum Thread

And while downloading, take a look at the great Android Companion Apps for Volumio!

Enjoy!

The post Volumio for Raspberry PI 2 appeared first on Volumio.

Let’s face it: after the little Pi, the market is literally flooded with embedded single-board computers. That’s really good, because we can just choose the best one to fit our needs. But as a side effect, we just have too many to compare!
Now, let me be a little sentimental, for once: I just love Solidrun, they are the first firm we contacted back in the days of RaspyFi, and they believed a lot in RaspyFi’s (and Tsunamp\Volumio) vision.  Besides that, what really matters is that the little Cubox is an awesome machine, packed in an incredible tiny form factor. That’s why I was mutually convinced we were going to see exciting stuff with SolidRun products.

The new Cubox-i especially delivers lots and lots and lots of processing power, has plenty of connectivity and features also an optical S\pdif output. The range of cubox-i enables you to have a perfect Volumio companion which has the following key-points:

• Unprecedented WAF
• Up to 2gb of RAM, enjoy RAMPLAY as long as you wish
• Wi-Fi connectivity, on some models
• S\pdif out: for those of you who need that, no more converters
• E-sata connector
• IR remote receiver for LIRC fanatics

So, I’m very pleased to announce that Volumio for Cubox-i has been released, it is also compatible with the upcoming HummingBoard, and it features the latest updates both to WebUi and System. The combo Volumio + Cubox-i runs pretty well, it has an astonishing 20 seconds boot time, and the system is smooth and doesn’t have problems with big res files. Furthermore, it sounds awesome! (to find out some more,  just scroll a bit…)

So, cubox-i owners and wannabe ones: to enjoy that, just download it here

Side note: I’m more and more convinced that Freescale’s  Imx6 (the platform on which Cubox-i, UDOO and Compulab Utilite are based on) is the one which achieves the best audible performances. Of course, there are lots of factors involved in SQ, like the implementation and boards layouts. But I can feel that Imx6 products are somehow better sounding than competitors. Before you think I’m gone mad, I made also some measurements (jitter and integer resolution) which have confirmed this thought.
I could just suspect there are some bus optimizations that made this possible, or that 3.0.35 Freescale’s mainline kernel (all 3 boards use this older kernel, which is the only current supported one) is just better in audio related tasks. Furthermore, digging into kernel optimization, I found out that Imx6 features Hardware DSP support… Could be a clue…
Anyway, I’m just collecting my ideas on that, you’ll read a more exaustive article on the matter when I’ll have better assumptions to support my thoughts…

Let’s talk about that on Volumio’s Forum! 

The post Volumio for Cubox-i has been released appeared first on Volumio.

The post Volumio and Audiophonics: the first Volumio powered product is coming to life! appeared first on Volumio.

What can you do with Compulab Utilite and Volumio? 

• Enjoy Bit Perfect Sound from Analog Unbalanced output, USB or S/PDIF
• Pair it with your Home Network via N Wireless connectivity or Gigabit Ethernet
• Connect up to 4 USB drives to it, full of your favourite Music
• Forget the Hassle of removing PSU to shut it down. Use the Handy ON\OFF switch and you’re good to go
• Skyrocket your WAF with the nice and elegant Compulab Utilite Form Factor.

You can download Volumio for your Utilite here . This version features some minor under the hood improvements, and I must say that Volumio Compulab Utilite is a really killer Audiophile Music Player, making this combo really interesting thanks to its flexibility (Analog Out, Coaxial S/PDIF and USB as audio outputs) , the really nice form factor, the excellent computing power and the integrated N Wi-Fi which ensures extended range connectivity. As usual, you can discuss about that in Volumio’s Forum !

Download Volumio for Compulab Utilite

Enjoy!

The post Volumio for Compulab Utilite Has been released appeared first on Volumio.

The postman hates me. I see him quite too much, and I know that when someone rings early in the morning, he’s him delivering fines or fancy electronic gizmos.
This time, I’m really proud to announce that he delivered a shiny Compulab Utilite mini PC. Some days ago I got a suggestion from one Volumio user (thank you  hassellbear!) to get in touch with Compulab and see what could be done to port Volumio on Utiltite Computer. So why is this a really good news? 

As you may see the Compulab Utilite has a great form factor. Boxed, nice to see, and cleverly thought (you can’t see from picture, but the top is made of polished metal, and gives the unit a really good solid feel). The dimensions are comparable to a small router.
The specs are also quite interesting also. It relies on IMX6 platform, which I know very well (UDOO and Cubox-I are based on the same architecture) and is the current top performing one in the embedded scenario.
Porting Volumio on that will be a great value for those looking to have a ready to play, and nice to see Audiophile Music Player.
Let’s examine Utilite’s connectivity options:

You can just see you’ve got plenty of flexibility out of that. What I really like is:

• Great form factor: nice to see and solid build
• IMX6 dual or Quad Core processors, with 2 gb of RAM available (someone said Ramplay?)
• Coaxial S/PDIF out (and a coaxial cable comes bundled)
• Integrated Wi-Fi with external antenna
• Two USB ports in the Front

So I think that Utilite and Volumio will be a great combo, as an Audiophile Music Player. I will for sure think on a way to use all this options (like double ethernet…) . But really think I’m going to have fun with that, I received the Compulab Utilite Standard and in my opinion this is your best bet in the range of Compulab’s with Volumio.

So, thanks Compulab for this donation, and really think that this machine will make lots of Volumio users happy…

Development has just started…

The post Volumio for Compulab Utilite appeared first on Volumio.

– More stable system
– Playback should stutter no more on problematic systems
– Shairport no more resamples to 48 khrtz, but 44,1 instead
– FFmpeg library enabled, so no-one of your music files will be left out
– Hosts fixed
– Now shutdown command actually shuts the pi down instead of rebooting
– Fixed system halting after rebooting while playing
– A minor tweak that results in sonic improvements

You are advised that in order to get the best audio quality, just go to playback, select hardware mixer and then hit save. This way the system tailors itself to your very DAC.

As usual, you’ll find this release in torrent and sourceforge link, please help by seeding it!

https://volumio.org/download/

You can discuss about that on Volumio Forum

Let me know what is solved and what is not. Hope for you guys a merry Christmas! And of course a brilliant new year, where you’ll find what you’re looking for.

A big hug

Michelangelo

The post New Version of Volumio for Rpi – Bugfixes and improvements appeared first on Volumio.