Loxone Music Server advanced issues question

[TomekWaw]

Hi,
I'm using Music Server 4 Lox currently with 5 wireless zones (mostly via AirPlay-bridge) and I'm pretty satisfied with it.
MS4Lox gives a lot of flexibility and great features and will even more if developed further in the future - fingers crossed.
The main gripe is the UI of course, which is not even close to that provided with Loxone MS and probably will never be.
Because of that I'd probably consider using Loxone Music Server in the future. Unfortunately, this expensive product
has also some disadvantages or shortcomings I don't like, so I'm researching if there are ways to overcome it.
I wonder if anyone having Loxone Music Server has sorted out somehow accomplishing following tasks:

1. Enabling AirPlay Bridge plug-in and using AirPlay-enabled speakers as wireless zones.
Don't really see reason why Loxone decided to go uPnP / DLNA bridge only in LMS.
Both plugins has been written by the same person and are even quite similar in configuration.
AirPlay/RAOP protocol is superior to DLNA though as it supports wireless zone synchronization to other LMS zones.

2. Dynamically creating synced zone groups - adding and removing zones from groups on the fly.
Usage example: adding bathroom speaker in sync to living room zone, on bathroom BWM (and removing it on Touch doubleclick).
I see this might be possible with MS4Lox (at least with internal zones for now).
Can it be done with Loxone Music Server? Can't find a way based on audio zone block documentation.

I'm open to any possible solutions (I'm familiar with linux environment).
If this is simply not possible now, is there any chance those features would be added in future versions of Loxone Music Server?
I know Loxone doesn't disclose its plans, but as it's pretty expensive equipment and should be considered a long term investment, some parts of Loxone roadmap with Music Server would be very welcome. Hope someone in Kollerschlag is reading this

[maxw]

Loxone Music Server does work as AirPlay Receiver, but it can NOT - and due to licensing issues will never - stream to other AirPlay devices. That’s what Loxone told me some 2 years ago.

Auto-synced zones is available in V2 of Music Server Software, but there is no known release date for this.

[nufke]

If the native Loxone integration/UI is the issue, we might explore the creation of an loxberry plugin which emulates the Loxone Music Server websocket API and redirects/bridges it to the Logitech Media Server API. I did get a reply from Loxone support in the past that the Loxone Music Server websocket API documentation is not publicly available. We might check again with Loxone or explore ourselves how this websocket works. I cannot test this since I do not own a Loxone Music Server but use LMS4Loxberry instead.

[TomekWaw]

maxw , thanks for your answer and news on V2.

I hardly believe in Loxone statement on AirPlay though.
It's not even clear if they are enrolled to MFi program. Is Loxone Music Server, being an AirPlay enabled receiver, labeled somewhere as "Made for Apple"? Haven't noticed. Secondly, there must be a reason why this and this software has not been put down by Apple. They are known to be very keen on putting things down in case of any license infringements. Finally, Loxone might just be so kind to its valuable customers and leave it to users decision (enabling optional plugins to LMS, without supporting it).
The only reason not to do it I can think of is their current pricing model. They charge for wired zones only and include some extra dlna-wireless zones for free (but they are unable to be synced, so mostly useless). If they where including same number of free airplay-wireless sync-able zones, in some cases it might impact customer demand for wired zones. It's just my hunch.


nufke ,

Loxone put significant effort into creating Music Server and probably still puts lots of effort into this product. It would be unethical to 'steal' their work and create such an emulator which might impact Loxone Music Server sales. I know LoxBerry has a plugin that does the same with the Loxone weather service, but free weather is easily available and lets be frank, they did not put much effort into this service after all.
Putting aside all ethical dilemmas, Music Server API emulator would be probably much harder to do as it's a local device and Miniserver might be using mac address control or any other possible technics to verify if Music Server is genuine.

[maxw]

I own a Music Server, and definitely AirPlay works. Is anyone of the 1000 receivers out there that support AirPlay is labeled „Made for Apple“ ? I don’t think so.

[maxw]

From the Loxone us shop site:

——
Stream music wirelessly with AirPlay


Time to get the party started! Send music from your AirPlay-enabled devices (iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad and Mac) straight to the Loxone MusicServer. With AirPlay you also have access to an unlimited number of music services from the AppStore.

With services such as AirParrot, AirPlay is also possible with Windows devices.

——

https://shop.loxone.com/enus/loxone-music-server.html

[TomekWaw]

Maxw, I understand that streaming from iPhone/iPad to Loxone Music Server works[*] but this is not my concern at all.
Actually I don't have a single Apple device in my home ;-)
I'm exclusively interested in streaming from Loxone Music Server to AirPlay enabled wireless / Wi-Fi speakers (or other network devices such as Yamaha AVR, Denon / Maranz AVR, you name it) with AirPlay protocol, which is superior to uPnP/DLNA.

* - You probably know that Loxone Music Server is based on open source code of Logitech Media Server aka slimserver or squeezebox server. Enabling AirPlay target (for streaming from iPhone) is done by just another LMS plug-in, most probably "Shairtunes2 (fork)". All these plugins are written by the same person, Philippe:



I wonder here why Loxone seems to enable only 2nd and 3nd, and forbidds the first one.
And if any advanced Loxone Music Server user tried to enable it somehow.

[TomekWaw]

You just wrote what Loxone told you 2 years ago. Thank you for that single info (although it might be already outdated, right?) but this is far from topic being "discussed". I also present a very different attitude to problem solving and to my observations, that kind of altitude is welcomed here. With a "Not possible, why discuss this any futher?" attitude we would never have great projects such as LoxBerry.

[orli]

You can easily access the Squeezebox Interface on your musicserver: <IPofMusicserver>:9000/classic/.
Maybe you can add another Plugins in that way. But be careful, this is not officially supported.

[TomekWaw]

That would be great if possible. Unfortunately I can't verify it by myself - I don't have Loxone Music Server (yet).
Could anybody having both Loxone Music Server and any AirPlay enabled device (for example Yamaha/Denon/Maranz AVR)
check out if enabling AirPlay Bridge works and creates wireless zone?
I may provide screenshot of complete AirPlay-bridge settings that work.