New Raspberry Pi Owner...

[CityCentreFox]

Good Morning All

I am the proud owner of a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+!


I bought it for streaming music so I also have a IQaudiO DAC+, official 5V 2.5A power supply in a IQaudiO DAC case all bought from IQaudiO.  I am running Rune Audio at the minute and to be honest it sounds very good.  All my music is stored on a external hard drive via USB.  It is gapless playback so I am able to play my Jarre, Floyd etc..  I was previously using Plex and a Roku Premiere+ and the 2 second gap between tracks make listening impossible.


I did try PiCorePlayer, Max2Play and Volumio but whilst they all had their plus points I opted for Rune Audio.  Being honest I came across MoodeAudio completely by accident.  I was looking to see if I was able to connect Bluetooth headphones to my player.  My first impressions on MoodeAudio is that the player interface and setup whilst not unlike Rune's I did find it looks more user friendly.


I am looking to replace RuneAudio as it doesn't support Bluetooth headphone and having looked at a number of forums including this one, Volumio and PiCorePlayer I have found no real answers to my question regarding Bluetooth headphones.  Is it possible to connect a pair of Bluetooth headphones to a Pi without all of the fuss with coding etc..  I was looking at a transmitter that I could plug in the back headphone socket but if I could avoid that expense that would be nice.

Does Moode support Bluetooth headphone use out of the box?

Regards

CityCentreFox

[ApXuBaToP]

I've tried my Bluetooth speaker with moode and it works good. I think headphones are supported too.

[TheOldPresbyope]

@CityCentreFox

Yes, moOde can drive Bluetooth headphones. There's the usual Bluetooth scanning, pairing, and connecting steps, followed by switching output to the connected Bluetooth device. All this is done through the moOde UI.

However, there's also the question of the codec(s) supported in the headphones. 

The specs for Bluetooth advanced audio (A2DP) *require* support for the low-complexity subband codec (SBC). Guaranteed to work.

The specs also *allow* the use of alternative codecs such as AAC, LDAC , and aptX. (For a non-techie comparison, see, e.g., https://www.soundguys.com/understanding-...ecs-15352/) If both sender and receiver support one of these codecs, then it will be chosen during negotiation of the Bluetooth connection.

As currently built, moOde supports only the SBC codec (via the third-party software component bluez-alsa). 

This means no matter what BT headphones you use, you will be in SBC mode.

In my case, I have Sennheiser HD4.50 BT headphones. They support the aptX codec but fall back to the default SBC codec when connected to my moOde player via the RPi 3B+ BT transceiver. 

I get around this by using an Creative BT-W2 USB-Bluetooth audio adapter on my moOde player. It looks like a USB DAC to moOde and uses the aptX codec for the BT stream to my headphones.

Regards,
Kent

PS - It's no secret that experimental support for AAC, aptX, and/or LDAC can be built into the bluez-alsa component. The legality of this is questionable, especially in the case of aptX.

[Norbert]

=> I get around this by using an ASUS BT400 USB adapter on my moOde player.

Thank you for this tip!
- Is it operating in both directions / can the device also receive aptX ?

Regards
Norbert

[TheOldPresbyope]

=> I get around this by using an ASUS BT400 USB adapter on my moOde player.

Thank you for this tip! Two questions:

- How do you select the BT400 (instead of the build-in BT), and
- Is it operating in both directions / can the device also receive aptX ?

Regards
Norbert

Hi, Norbert

First let me apologize for an egregious error. I was speaking of the Creative BT-W2 adapter and thoughtlessly referred to it as the ASUS BT400 I happened to be doing something else with at the moment. I'm correcting my response after I post this followup. 

I described how I set up the BT-W2 in a post back in July. 

- this adapter appears to moOde as a USB DAC so I select it in the MPD Config panel as Device type: "USB audio device". 

- I have no experience using it as a Bluetooth receiver and cannot comment on your second question.

Note that switching back and forth between this DAC and an I2S DAC (driving an amp and speakers in my case) is a multi-step process with the current moOde configuration scheme. Switching between this DAC and another USB DAC requires physically unplugging the one and plugging in the other.
 
Again, it's the Creative BT-W2 adapter I'm using with my Sennheiser headphones. Sorry for the brain fart.

Regards,
Kent