I just tried Spotify connect on my Lumin U1. Nice 
.
90% of my music is classical and jazz, with cds and cd and hi res streaming with Roon + Qobuz.
But for discovering new pop, Spotify is great, and MP3 bothers me less on pop than classical or jazz. They have nice playlists, and all that is free.
And my wife and kids can stream easily their playlists from their phones.
I may upgrade to Spotify premium, especially if integrated in Roon.
I listen to jazz, rock, piano, guitar solo etc etc. I have a laptop server direct to Matrix running jRiver, Amazon HD and Spotify Premium. I love Spotify and there is a reason it has like 10x or more subscribers than most services. I use it for background a lot but it’s main purpose is new music discovery- mostly thru the outstanding playlists it develops.
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Spotify playlists are awesome for music discovery, aren’t they ?
No equal. Amazon HD trys but Spotify has the selection and algorithm down pat. Maybe 320 bit rate is not killer hi Def, but the Playlist make it worth it. When I find something I like, it’s almost always in Amazon HD. I have yet to try Qobuz.
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I also enjoy the discovery on Spotify. My challenge has been to be able to listen to it and still use convolution I have setup in HQPlayer for room/bass correction.
I have a RPi4 running DietPi OS and Pi-Hole primarily but it also hosts a couple Roon Extensions. One I’ve used for years, Deep Harmony, that allows me to use my Harmony remote to control Roon (and by virtue of this connection control Roon via Alexa voice commands) and…
…most recently I added Jan Koudijs’s relatively new EntryPoints extension. This allows for devices (and in my case loopback) to inject their audio into Roon. Once the stream is in Roon it flows to HQPe and processes convolution and then on the the dac, etc.
Raspotify is also installed and running and emulates perfectly Spotify Connect so that any Spotify client can control what’s playing.
I’ll work to format my notes of what I did to get it all working and share if anyone is interested.
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Maybe I’m just a noob, but my gosh that sounds complicated!
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I’m very fortunate to be able to afford the time to figure these things out.
Do either of you use Spotify Stations? It’s a different take on playlists. Only available on mobile devices.
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No, I just started my account, still discovering it.
Thank you for mentioning that possibility. I have Spotify on my iPad. Would that work, or does it have to be on a phone ?
Stumbling around the Roon forums, they make it sound like a Spotify-Roon integration would never ever happen. (Not in spotify’s interests, don’t want third-party control of its service/data, etc…)
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Thanks. That’s too bad for Roon.
IMHO, Roon is in a dangerous spot: they only have integration with Qobuz and Tidal, two niche actors under increasing financial pressure from a bunch of giants (Apple, Amazon, and to a lesser extent Spotify) who are moving into high res and lowering prices.
I have used the stations but I have never used the mobile app. The stations work well as does “Discovery Weekly” and the Daily Mix 1-6 etc. I have Spotify installed on my laptop(s). So like right now it is playing on my “TV” system while I’m on the internet doing my morning checks…
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Yes, it’s a mobile only app specifically named Spotify Stations.
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That’s right, Spotify has no interest with a tiny company like Roon. They want to keep and control the metadata for their own use. Integration with Roon goes against this model.
We’re circumventing Roon lack of direct input capability by leveraging an extension (Entrypoint) and manually setup Radio station url.
For those interested, Jan and I collaborated on this setup and cowrote the documentation here:
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not sure if it’s germane to the entrypoints discussion, but I use a Pi running RopieeeXL for Roon. It accommodates Librespot and Shairpoint, so I can use my Pi streamer as Spotify Connect or Airplay endpoints.
Can’t use the Roon software, but I can use the same streamer without doing anything but opening spotify and connecting to the streamer.
Sure, many use the now discontinued Chromecast Audio or other device or software as you have to inject Spotify into our systems and they work great but the main disadvantage is one cannot take advantage of DSP provided by Roon or in my case further down the line using HQPlayer.
I’ve always loved the Spotify Connect implantation.
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yeah, i basically use those (CCA or spotify) if I have friends over and am just playing dinner/party music throughout the house, and for that, the sound quality is just fine.
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Unfortunately I would rate the SQ via raspotify as slightly worse than CCA but it’s being actively developed (rather librespot is advancing) and hopefully it improves over time and allows for CD-quality once Spotify makes it available.
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For about a year, I used Spotify Connect in the following configuration and I was amazed how great lossy could sound.
Mac mini (headless)i running the Mac OS Spotify app (acting as an endpoint) in addition to Amarra Sq+ app which increased fidelity tremendously. Then via USB into a PS Audio NuWave DSD.
iPad used as a remote with the Mac mini Spotify app selected as the Connect endpoint.
So good.
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