Radio Paradise

[RPI4 Rambler]

Cos that plugin would take a lot of effort to integrate and given that the direct flac streams are available it's not needed.

As @MikeyFresh  mentioned, he and others including myself have very few issues with the flac streams except for some occasional audio glitches and the metadata anomalies causing unnecessary UI updates which you won't even be aware of unless you enable a specific debug.

The issues you are having with these streams suggest some sort of breakage in your image or some other problem thats external to stock moOde 652.

Hmmm. I don't think my 652 installation is broken, but what do I know? There aren't any other problems with the radio section (or, indeed, MPD)? But if it's broken, I need to get rid of it, right? Not to brag, but I have lots of audio hard- and software (including a number of different RPI's) that operate within the same habitat so I can't see what external cause there could be. My 652 install is a virgin one, was verified by Etcher image creation and configured as prescribed, and I haven't gotten round to tinker with it. It is a replacement of a 5xx install, and written to a virgin Sandisk microSD. I daresay I tried about all RPI audio systems out there (including a number that no longer exist), so I know a bit about the quirks of most systems. Volumio, for instance, their RP plugin has had many problems before it finally worked as intended. And its third party creator is still working on it. Haven't used it for a while now, but still.

I just know that back in the day, when RP first started lossless streaming, developers had a hard time integrating it into their own products, partly due to the volatile nature of RP's streaming strategies. And now, the separation of streams with and without meta data. It's rather like removing meta data from DAB radio or RDS from FM radio, by toggling a letter in the stream addressing. Well, you're the man and naturally I respect your decisions. After all, I started with my "2 cents". 

Cheers