piCorePlayer with Logitech Media Server - step by step installation and REVIEW

Step by step installation of piCorePlayer with Logitech media server with material skin and other tips, tricks and my opinion about this software solution for Raspberry Pi as a network audio player. If you like this video you can support me and buy me a coffee :) here: www.buymeacoffee.com/techroad...
Note: The only thing not mentioned during the installation is IP address of your raspberry pi (as access url) which you can find with programs as "angry Ip scanner" or directly in your router settings where you can allocate a static ip for your raspberry pi, each router differs so I didn't cover that but you can find easily tutorials for that.
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Check my website for more reviews: www.techroadtrip.com

[@larsnormann8082]

Wow, this was so useful. I tried to set up my server/streamer for days now. Watching your tutorial a little earlier would have saved me hours of frustrating work. Thank you so much!!!!

[@TechRoadTrip]

Thank a lot Lars, happy to hear it helped.

[@joaquim8025]

Lifesaver ! I spent days looking for a suitable solution for my Hifi system (SMSL AD18 + raspberry pi 4). Now, it works like a charm. Merci pour cette video !

[@grangermacy]

Thanks so much! It really helped orient me to all the steps. It took me less than an hour to set the whole thing up. I'm using Pi4b with a usb output and it sounds great.

[@davegibson8726]

This is so clearly explained and proved so helpful. I am a complete Pi novice but followed this easily enough. Thanks so much. After following the instructions, the only thing I couldn't work out was how to transfer my existing mp3 collection stored on a NAS to the new data folder on the Pi SD card - as the data folder wasn't showing on my network for some reason. Advanced IP Scanner sorted that out for me though. Tidy. Its given a new lease of life into my lovely old logtech squeezebox boom and UE Smart radios after the BBC stopped its old streaming service in favour of BBC sounds.

[@Mare0912]

Thanks for this video. I just ordered a RPI and Allo DigiOne and was looking for a network player system which supports Deezer. The only one I could find was the picoreplayer and your tutorial helps a lot, since I am a first time RPI user.

[@SeanLozano]

thank you.. i followed as directed and created my first piCorePlayer.. was able to mount my Synology NAS as well.. thanks a million!

[@sardine158]

Really good overview. Many thanks!

[@donkrachoYT]

Very welcome notice to the Material Skin. With this LMS looks much better and handles better on mobile devices. Thank you.

[@Vissers1984]

Thanks man. You just made my day. I was a volumio user and I was so angry about it. With this tutorial am happy again. I have now all what I want. Thank you :)

[@aibarra11]

so glad i watched this first before installing. that's a good chunk of things that would have added many hours to the process

[@CraciunAlexandruGh]

I followed this tutorial, thank you so much for the time you spent making it. Notes: - any other skin than default causes a JS error on the wizard and it never loads (regardless of browser) - the samba storage cannot be found on the local network, but using the IP directly works - the wifi is a bit of a pain to setup and skipped in the tutorial - Spotify is again a third party plugin but for the moment, it seems to work. The only issues I have encountered with playback is that the squeezebox android app will occasionally jump to home or up one level. Other than that, storage and spotify playback seem to work well.

[@andymok7945]

Nice to see some new videos for the piCorePlayer. I have have 2 of them setup and used to 3 years now. piCorePlayer needs more exposure.

[@yvesbrunelle2920]

Hi, this is a perfect decription. Really well done. I ve followed this video. It is working perfectly. Thanks so much

[@TechRoadTrip]

Thanks. Glad it was helpful.

[@SlowMenThinking]

I find the different takes on setting up hifi streaming interesting with all being valid solutions to how do we do this! What I put together was software via the command line from a clean install of Raspberry PI OS I started with the 64 bit version (for kicks and giggles) then installed SMB Apache Fuse and any other tool I thought I would need and then some streaming server software. My goal was to replicate what when I was young using 486's and early pentiums back in the late 90's... I ended up building a Raspberry pi 4 with 8 gig memory strapped a 500 gig SSD to it over usb 3.1! it made a great server storage solution, noizy outputs over USB though (the USB 2 Ports where cleanest) ended up making a PI zero W as a dedicated player in to the $1000+ DAC via USB and have been impressed. Only because i had done the server player model in the past was the reason why I did it the way I did. It's small noise free and I do not have to run the main PC, There is even web based control and or an App for the package I used. If I was starting from scratch what you showed looks very appealing for an ease of setup.

[@tellmekazumba4480]

Lifesaver! Thanks a million.

[@onurzrhl2859]

Thanks for the guide

[@mootzeroni]

This is so, so helpful. Thank you!!

[@TechRoadTrip]

Thanks. Glad you found it helpful.

[@kitussan]

Awesome tutorial!! Thanks a lot!! LMS rocks! One question: could you point me in the right direction to find information on how to enable tidal and Spotify connect?

[@chrisvanderaa6706]

Thank you. Very good tutorial. But how do I add a network mount to my NAS? I can't get it working. It just drives me crazy.

[@GregorMima]

So i borrowed friends pi3 just to test if it would work... oh yeah and how it works, gonna grab myself pi 3 or 4, will build a nice enclosure and use it as a great music player.. THANK YOU!

[@vanderslagmulders]

Really nice tutorial. Can’t wait till it’s weekend to give it a shot! 😀I’m only going to use it for LMS in a multiroom setup of old Squeezeboxes. Would that work well with an RP3?

[@TechRoadTrip]

Thank you for your comment. Yes, that should work fine.

[@AnanthapuriElectronics]

Thanks🙏

[@paddirooney1449]

Hi, i was just wondering are you able to use the player interface to then send to devices on your LAN, i have 3 Naim Muso devices (2x QB), and i would lie to have a single point interface to access , my music and streaming services (recently just picked up the Pi4), and i take it i can just set up a samba share for any pictures i wanted to share on the network (looking for a complete solution really), thanks

[@alessandrotesser6841]

Thank you very much! I managed to install picore + lms in 30 minute!. I don't understand why some mqa from tidal are correctly streamed to my full decoder DAC (green and blu light) and why some other are passed as 16 bit 44.1khz (yellow light). Does someone know why?

[@minaskky]

Thank you very much for this step-by-step guide. I was wondering if there's any additional benefit to using a portable hard drive to store music instead of the SD card? Thank you once again.

[@TechRoadTrip]

Thanks for your comment. Re your question, I believe it's more about the safety reason as if there will be a system update, full update something can go wrong and you can loose the data and also if you don't do a proper software shutdown but switch raspberry pi's power the sd card can get corrupted and you might loose data, also if the sd card is not fast enough might effect playback of larger files.

[@minaskky]

@@TechRoadTrip thank you for your response. From your response it seems a portable hard then may be better for storing music files compared to the SD card.

[@TechRoadTrip]

@@minaskky ssd or a hard drive will be more reliable as a storage for your music collection indeed, but the new micro sd cards from well known reliable brands should be fine I believe too...

[@scslite5206]

Thanks for the step by step it helped me tremendously! In my case I did not need to copy any files and skipped the Samba install steps as all I needed is to stream Tidal which works great. However, after updating to the Material Skin I can no longer access the "Configure LMS" page on port 9000 just a blank page. Any idea what the issue is? Streaming works otherwise.

[@TechRoadTrip]

Thanks. Noticed that too. You can access all the settings from right top corner (3 dots) and then choose server settings.

[@AlessandroRaco]

this is a super guide thank you! what about music quality? can you hear any difference between picore and moOde or Volumio? anyway its clean interface is lovely i'll give it a try very soon

[@TechRoadTrip]

Thank you. I have almost ready a comparison video between all tree player where I address also the question of sound between these as I tested them a-b-c side by side

[@AlessandroRaco]

@@TechRoadTrip looking forward to it! Good job👍🏻

[@leopold9999]

how can you have 2 completely different music libraries? as in, instead of a my music with everything below it, can you have a "His Music" and "Her Music"?

[@TerenceKearns]

Since I have YT premium, I use YT music for all my music streaming but the YT app in LMS is almost impossible to set up. You have to create a project in google console and then they have to manually review the project and verify it. Only then can you do the OAuth thing that the LMS YT app requires. Other than that. It's a nice tool. Your guide was very helpful.

[@TechRoadTrip]

Thank you for sharing

[@kukuhkartikodani1437]

having problem with samba share, after i set share it doesnt start the samba service. I follow ur guide exactly the same. please help me. im using pi zero

[@pkf4124]

mines been running fine for months now but today just decided that Squeezelite wont run. Nothings changed on the Pi and up till it stopped was playing music on my Squeezebox as normal. All the fixes say check your audio device...... The Pi is not used for audio as its just a server as I have several Squeezeboxes, so I never set the audio. Any ideas ?

[@ccshell]

Great video. Ive been using picoreplayer for months and had to follow my own nose. Glad this info is out there. I have a question on an iphone controller. I am using iPeng but wonder if there are any other apps that control it. Do you have a link to the app you are using on your iphone?

[@mbredthauer]

The "app" is a skin for picoreplayer called "Material". The trick is to append "/material" to the ip-address of your picoreplayer when you access the player in a browser. This trick works on a computer-browser as well as on a mobile-browser. (Material skin is smart enough to change automatically between a desktop and a mobile version depending on the device on which it is being viewed.) Let's say your picoreplayer has the ip-address 192.168.0.21. If you just type "192.168.0.21", you will get to picoreplayer's setup-interface. If you type "192.168.0.21:9000" you will see picoresplayer's "player-interface" with the normal Logitech skin. Now, if you type "192.168.0.21:9000/material" in your browser you will get the picoreplayer skinned with "Material". (It really is a fantastic skin. Free but well worth a donation github.com/CDrummond/lms-material#readme ) On an iPhone you can save a browser shortcut on the home screen and by doing that with "192.168.0.21:9000/material" the shortcut will look and act just like an app.

[@dougiehore4570]

Can anyone provide information at to how to mount my NAS, the instructions don't make any sense to me!

[@sydneybird116]

Two issues in this post: setting up Samba and mapping the Data drive in Windows 10 that is on the SD Card. Thanks for the video! Regarding Setup Samba Share, in the Create File Mode box, I didn't see you put anything in that box. I can't Set Shares without a value in there. I used 0664 that shows up when you executed the Set Shares button. How did you know to use 0664? I guess I need a permissions tutorial. Others used 0777 and 0644. Also, I didn't see the drive "Data" on my network like you did after "set Shares". Not knowing how to get it to show up under "Network", I opened File Explorer, right clicked on "This PC" and selected "Add a Network Location". I entered "\\PiCorePlayer\Data" to find my file location, using PiCorePlayer as my server name. Now it shows up as a shared folder under "This PC".

[@STARD00M]

Same here, i have no idea

[@STARD00M]

For me it doesn't turn up at all

[@felipeavalos3404]

I did the same and it shows as a shared folder but it doesn't accept the password

[@GriffithzDream]

To anyone reading this, I had the same issue of the PiCorePlayer not showing as a Device in the Network Section. Fixed it by going to Settings -> Media Steaming Options -> Turn on Media Streaming

[@Sakistns]

Samba not working, the value 0644 doesn't come up automatically and doesn't work if typed manually..

[@frittfrall3220]

Sorry maybe I missed it but what app are you using to control everyting from your phone and tablet?

[@TechRoadTrip]

All these players I have reviewed are accessed/controlled from a web browser of your choice on any device in your home network so you don't need any app unless you want/need to use upnp/dlna app as a secondary remote for your music

[@leonardopapantoniou4227]

2:59 I am stuck here. Please tell me how to boot picore. What is the web address of the player?

[@lonaj86]

works with native tidal MQA ?

[@anandshah71]

Can I get Netflix amazon price apps too I want to add more media player with airplay and currently can only find apple Tv Can I get an apple Tv option airplay and streaming apps key

[@turbo2288]

2:52 How did you get the welcome screen?? do you connect the pi to a Hdmi TV or screen first??

[@TechRoadTrip]

Hi, it's mentioned in a description of this video. You don't need to connect any tv or screen to raspberry pi to set it up or use it as a network/music player . You can access any of those players/raspberry pi from any device on your home network via any web browser, you just need to know- enter your raspberry pi ip address if "local" doesn't work for you. I will be publishing video about these basics soon too.

[@turbo2288]

Thanks

[@alamoudimoh]

Question, what about the client

[@skddinable]

Hi @Tech Road Trip, A really useful video, but I'm stuck at Installing additional file system. It keeps telling me "There was an error downloading ntfs-3g.tcz". Any fix for this. I confirmed that the internet is reachable from my RPi.

[@TechRoadTrip]

Hi, thanks. If you follow my instructions all will work. I did a fresh installation from scratch some time ago again and all worked seamlessly. Based on the error message it shows you, seems there is some temporary error when downloading on the server or it could be a problem with your sd card, always use reliable brand, freshly formatted not any cheap sd cards. If there was a problem on a server, try another day, should work then or report the problem on picoreplayers forum. If problem persists and reported with more I will have a look into it when have a time.

[@alamoudimoh]

Take it from me, the best and informative (effective) tutorial. Make a living of it, you are GOOD Question, can i integrate youtube music? Say yes please

[@TechRoadTrip]

Thank you. There is possible to install KZbin plugin but I have not tried it, I believe it's unfortunately just for LMS and videos not as a youtube music service.

[@AdamsBrew78]

Been trying out Roon for my 5TB local lossless album collection …first impressions are a huge “meh” for being $15 a month for most of what apps like Logitech do for free .. The dense metadata is nice - but it covers less than 10% of my music. It’s either LMS or Audirvana for me. Roon is way overpriced.

[@PhuongNguyen-ql6tx]

What app did you use on your phone and tablet?

[@TechRoadTrip]

It's not an app but, piCorePlayer with Material skin plugin, web interface which can be saved as an app (without menu and address bar) so it looks as an app then

[@MentalProtuberance]

I had a password protected samba share on a UnRAID NAS and I spent hours with the vers3.0 or ver. the whole "well try a different vers and giving me zero way to see the exact actual erroor that Setup Network Disk Mount failed no mater the research. I installed the "cifs-utils.tcz" extention. I sshed in to the pi and of course there are not all the Linux commands installed. If I can get a Wireguard TinyLinux VM setup and working I should be able to get a music streamer connected to my NAS. Nope. It worked over USB just fine, but that's not what I wanted. Moode worked just fine for the network share as expected. The implementation of accessing shares and available documentation for piCorePlayer is incomplete. I would like to try it as it looks lighter on resources for older hardware. The piCorePlayer has a lot of extentions and it looks like the programmers care, but it's more than a little obtuse at the moment.

[@TerenceKearns]

Set Samba 4 "Create File Mode" to '0775'

[@audiophilipp]

Where did u find the app for android ?

[@BurntWeeny435]

did you find this out? i cant find it

[@copstan]

Hi can anyone help me please, how can I fix it when the player image has disappeared off the top of the screen. Thanks.

[@TechRoadTrip]

Hi, that can be caused by multiple reasons but all associated with the output you are using. Can be hardware failure of the audio hat you are using or driver issue. Restart can help if not check squeezelite settings, your audio output and alsa settings below that.

[@dummag4126]

Matrioska??? ...ahhh material skin...lol

[@johanvanderpoel6099]

in future videos like these, please stop the useless scrolling up and down. It's really annoying as a viewer