Volumio is starting to feel like Windows 10

Help and Support
#1

Volumio has been my player for years, but enough bugs have creeped into newer versions that I went looking elsewhere for a more reliable MPD. At this point I’m happier with the other player, but I just wanted to point out the issues that convinced me to jump ship.

-Poor community support. I have posted a few different issues over the years and they have received bupkis in the way of attention. In all fairness the issues I pointed out were trivial, but later when I had more serious issues I didn’t bother posting because I had never received any response to my earlier posts.

-Advanced features locked behind a pay gate. Hopefully the forced subscription model is paying better then the voluntary donation model because it really has alienated a lot of would be Volumio users. One thing I have seen people in disbelief about is that you have to pay to get BT support in Volumio when the two other major MPD programs offer this feature for free. Same thing with web radio.

-The Volumio 3 interface is not a step up IMO. The other two MPD programs have deviated from the Volumio interface a lot and I like the advanced features that have been added like swiping on touchscreen devices, useful error messages that don’t disappear after 2 seconds, and more direct access to your music library.

-Bugs, bugs, bugs! Overall Volumio has gotten more stable over the years, but some annoying bugs have creeped in. I don’t have a very advanced setup, so these are just the ones I know about.

  1. The player screen and the queue shows that it is playing the next track, not the track actually being played.

  2. Trouble with higher resolution files. Best case scenario I get a little hiccup at the beginning of the track. Plays for a split second, small pause, starts playing again. Worst case scenario I get a huge amount of static and my DAC freaks out flickering between several different bit rates. The workaround seems to be rebooting or playing a 16/44 track for a few seconds and then switching back. Neither solution works 100% of the time and neither solution stops it from happening again. I have had this issue with at least 3 DACs, but not the other two MPDs.

  3. Randomly plays the same tracks multiple times. Sometimes gets stuck in repeat loops even though no repeat modes are selected. Sometimes resolves after restarting an album, sometimes requires a reboot.

  4. Access to the web interface randomly drops. Pretty much every time I unlock my phone the web interface take 5-10 seconds to come back. Every now and then I can get it to come up for 5-10 minutes. Sometimes right in the middle of using it. Every now and then it is gone forever until I reboot.

Will check back from time to time to see if Volumio has gotten any better, but for now its no longer my daily driver.

#2

Hi I’m getting some of the same issues, im paid up and still think it’s a great piece of kit, im combining it with an asus tinker in a car install but id be very interested in hearing what alternatives you have tried.

#3

I think the other two MPD based players that branched from the original are RuneAudio and Moode. Rune is dead in the water, no development or releases for a few years.
Moode is said to be more mature and stable and sound better (I’m not at all sure about the sound thing). But, and this is the big but for me, the interface is annoying and fussy (at least for me). It seems to offer more customisation and tweak-ish features, but they are annoying and fiddly to work with.

#4

Completely false on Rune being dead. I know the web site offers a 2014 version, but if you dig into the forum there are newer versions(this year even) that actually are quite nice and offer a few features, like swiping, that neither Volumio or Moode offer.

The reason I’m not using Rune is that the interface in the latest version RuneAudio+R e4 is very slow on my Raspberry Pi 3b+. Maybe it works better on a Raspberry Pi 4. I have not run out and bought a Raspberry Pi 4 to try because of the other reason that I am not using Rune. The sound quality does not seem as good as Volumio. Kind of soft, rolled off, and out of focus.

In the past I did not really care for the sound quality of Moode either. Had a kind of metallic sound to it that was hard to enjoy. Like I said I was fed up enough with Volumio to give Moode another shot and they fixed the sound quality. It sounds great now. Maybe better than Volumio, but I have not tried it on enough of a system to really say that for sure. In the past I have demoed Volumio on some insane systems and it sounded truly amazing. Much better than the best case scenario on a dedicated Windows PC. So much better. This is why I have stuck with Volumio for so long, but the bugs and lack of response to bug reports is becoming a real deal breaker.

Moode is a lot more convoluted to set up and use than Volumio, but once you get used to it, it actually packs some really nice features.

I didn’t create this post to encourage other to leave Volumio or stir up controversy. I’m just telling you what I have experienced and why I switched.

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#5

Wow… That is a long list of issues. I have not experienced any with fresh install of volumio on Pi 3b+. Spotify plugin works well and I am able to even stream Tidal via bubbleupnp app on android phone.

I played with Moode, agree with you on its UX. Its frustrating and not intuitive at all. Sound is no better than Volumio at least on my Pi with usb out to Schitt Modi 3 DAC.

If you want perfection get roon audio. Expensive subscription that also requires dedicated Windows based hub or roon server.

Just my 2 cents.

#6

Thanks for sharing your experience, it’s very useful for us. Our goal is delivering the smoothest experience possible.
What you report in issues 1,3 and 4 look to me like they could come from a third-party plugin (unfortunately, if not coded properly they can cause general malfunctions).
Can you tell me which plugins did you have installed?
Re number 2, how was your volumio instance connected to the music? USB, network?

#7

No plugins installed. I have the Allo Digione(original) I have files on my SD card, a USB flash drive, and a network share. The static when switching from 16/44 to anything higher happens randomly from all 3 sources.

#8

Hi, I have the same problems (except n. 2), the only plugin installed is Spotify (which works well).

#9

Hi, I once experienced a kind of static or fizzing with a Cyrus Soundkey at the start of each track as the DAC worked out the bitrate. Irritating to say the least so I got rid of it and now use a Dragonfly in one room and an ‘old’ Arcam irDAC in another. The Arcam is connected by SPDIF but I have tried both usb and optical. No static and music source is NAS over WiFi. So, could the problem be your DAC or being set correctly as the output device?

#10

The static at the beginning of the track when starting playback from a stopped or paused state I have always considered more of a DAC problem. On some DACs the issue will manifest as the first half second of the track being cut off. Logically the issue is probably that the DAC has to default to something for bit depth and sampling rate and that something probably isn’t 16/44 which is what most people play. I once had a DAC that made in audible click in the speakers between tracks when previous owner never had this issue. We figured out that his PC was sending a constant signal to the DAC where as my Digione powered by Volumio was not. An option to have Volumio send silence, if that’s possible, or at least a low inaudible signal to the DAC when playback is stopped or paused would solve these types of issues. Kodi has this feature, but Kodi is not an MPD and definitely not audiophile software.

In stark contrast the static when starting anything above 16/44 never goes away and on a Burson DAC and a Rega DAC I can also hear a relay madly clicking away when this happens. It didn’t harm the DAC for at least the few seconds until I stopped playback and I was using headphones so no harm to my speakers either. Again, I’m using the Digione. I can also test with a rig that has a Kali reclocker board outputting to a Mamboberry DAC board if that would be helpful.

#11

You could try running the Pi on a battery pack/charger to see if the psu is causing the glitch. I use one when I have enough time for a long listen as the combination with a reclocker makes for a much darker background. Failing that, try another OS to rule out the RPI?

#12

I have the IFI IPower which is about the lowest noise power supply there is other than a battery, but the difference is negligible.

The reclocker made a big improvement when I was still using a Raspberry Pi DAC board. The thing that made a much bigger improvement was getting a Digione so that I could use “real” DACs.

My original premise was that Volumio was the issue since everything got better when I switched to Moode. My main purpose for bringing this to light is that Volumio is much more novice friendly(once its set up), but I cannot upgrade friends that I have using Volumio to newer versions if it is going to cause them more headaches.

#13

I want to rise my hand and say that I’m a happy Volumio Primo user. Yes, my start was not without problems, but I found some hints in this Forum and got responses from Support. Yes, there are some features which I would add. Volumio Primo is my 4th or 5th DAC (PCs and Macs with USB-Clockers and other Players are not countered here) which I tried in a search for something what sounds great, has a good UI and key features I need, like access to my NAS via CIFS. In Volumio Primo I “found my peace”. Now, I would like to stop searching for more and more software / hardware perfection for a (long) while and so be able to spend more time to listen to the music :wink: And, IMHO, it is good that Volumio Primo helped me with this. Just my 2 happy cents :wink:

#14

Sorry, just to add. I also have very few tracks which are played with random breaks cut-offs into silence. Those are DSD512 tracks. I think, this DSD bitrate is just too much for the ASUS board used in Primo. Anything lower than DSD512, any kind of FLAC, not mentioning MP3 work rock-solid.

#15

Issues 1 and 3 I get on my RPi3+, but they’re not repeatable predictably, so I don’t worry. They’ll work their way out over time and other fixes/enhancements. v2.791 works well enough on 24bit FLACs and I’m old enough not be able to hear anything different about DSD, so I don’t worry about using it. I think your issue 2 is a local one, and I don’t think it’s anything to do with Volumio, which appears to be a symptom of ‘something’. Odd suggestion, I guess, but have you tried replacing your RPi SD card with a new one? Reason I say this is that almost every ‘odd’ think that my RPis have thrown up have been resolved by replacing the SD card…

#16

Could you provide a link to this, please?

#17

this is what I can find as the latest version on runeaudio.

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#18

Latest version of RuneAudio is Rune+Re6 (I run both Volumio and Rune systems):

https://www.runeaudio.com/forum/runeaudio-r-e6-t7141.html

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