Okay guys, so today after quite a long time
of testing all three of these audio software solutions for raspberry pi I believe I can
give you the best overall summary and in-depth comparison how each of these players stand
against each other and which one might be the best solution for you. This video will be quite
long and in-depth so grab a cup of tea or coffee and enjoy. First I would like to point out that
this comparison is based on the latest versions of these players and yes, there were some updates
of each of those. I structured this comparison to chapters so you can skip between the sections you
are interested in most but I suggest you to watch all as there are particular things I discovered
about each of these players which uncovers particular weaknesses and pluses you definitely
want to know and you don't want to miss it. We will have a look on: Installation time and overall
difficulty, The ways of use, Streaming services, Hardware support, UI design and speed, Features,
Price, Sound, Community Support and at the end I will do some final Conclusion about which of
these I believe is the best for your needs and your current situation. First let me say,
there is so far no perfect player in this field and at the end it might be quite a mixed bag of
opinions about them but it all depends on your needs and how you will use them. I will explain
everything in a detail so let's go through it. Okay, so when it comes to the installation I
can say all of these players are quite easy to install and use. I have made detailed step-by-step
installation and full review videos for each of them so I recommend you to watch these before
you start your own experience with these audio players for Raspberry Pi. From all of these three
I would say a bit more difficult to set it up is piCorePlayer in a case you will want to use it
with Logitech media server, repartition your SD card and set samba, as I did as piCoreplayer is
a bit more complex in that regards but as there are different options how to use each of these
players, for example if you will use piCore player just as a Squeezelight client, already after the
first boot up you are ready to go as with all the other players, you will just need to set the
output and that's it, if you would like to use it as mentioned and suggested with Logitech media
server and set samba for the possibility to copy your local music files over the network on your
sd card then it requires a bit more time to set it up, but I covered all how to do it in my
step-by-step installation guide so better you watch it first before any frustration in that
regards. If you follow my steps it will be easy and again a question of minutes Volumio is I
believe the most user friendly overall guiding you at first with the initiate setup wizard after
the first boot mode audio player after it boots up needs to know your output as all the rest of the
players too and then is also ready to play/stream. Both mood and Volumio have samba active and
configured so you can copy files over your network with ease immediately. MoOd audio player needs one
click of a button to enlarge your sd card using all your free space in the partition, volumio
is already ready for that after the first setup. The ways of use. Now this is one of the most
important things which will differentiate and also unite these players quite a bit depends
what you are interested in, in my example i have a personal collection of music which are digital
files and then i also use Tidal as my streaming service every day, your scenario might differ but
let's say everybody nowadays uses his favorite online streaming service and i believe most of
us also have some small or bigger collection of digital files so all of these players are capable
to play high-res audio files including DSD files, all players allow you to use for your local
library external drive, the actual free space on your sd card and a NAS drive on your network,
all of them have the same capabilities in that regards. Now, each of these players allow you to
use them as a UPnP or DLNA renderer / browser, what that means is that from your UPnP client /
server which can be running on your computer or as an app on your mobile phone you can play, stream
music to these players without them accessing anything else online. Basically how it works is
the UPnP software on your pc or mobile device connects to a source of your choice, which
can be again your audio file stored on your pc or mobile device or it can be a streaming
service which is supported through your upnp client this upnp client then collects the data
and sends them via your network to Raspberry Pi and it plays it, the advantages and advantages
of this way of use of these players are these: if you use this way of streaming you always will
need your phone or device you have the upnp client on in your hands as another main remote control
and you will rarely use the web user interface of these players after the first setup, if you don't
mind using it this way all of these players work fine as a upnp renderers but I found there are
some bugs and another downsides of this way of use the upnp clients, I mean the apps differ
and some support more streaming services, some less another difference is how the actual
data are sent. I found out that for example from BubbleUPnP the cover art sometimes
show sometimes the covers don't show, also the resolution is very low on another
upnp client I mean the cover art worked fine but i couldn't skip tracks with BubbleUpnp I can
skip tracks but also the bitrate limit is 16 bits 44 kHz for most streaming services so most
preferable way of use of these players at least for me is as we already mentioned a playback of
local files and then streaming services supported natively with the player that is the
solution i was looking for and prefer. Why is native support of your favorite
music streaming service important? Because in that case the player communicates
for example with Tidal or Qobuz directly, so there is no other processing in the path and no
need of extra device to select and control music. Now, how is the integration of the service
implemented also matters as maybe it will have some missing parts, features you use normally
but the integration will not feature it.. so we will focus on supporting streaming services
in next section, before that let me mention also that all of these players thanks to raspberry
pi hardware can play stream music via bluetooth and there is also an airplay support on each
of them, all of these players also support multiplayers i mean multi-room streaming and
all can be used as a Roon endpoint device. I believe most used music streaming services
are currently Tidal, Qobuz, Deezer, Amazon HD and Spotify plus indeed some people like to listen
to podcasts and online radios in regards to online radios all of these players support a huge amount
huge amount of them sorted by different criteria and so on so I believe you will find some of
your favorite ones when it comes to high-res audio streaming services Volumio and piCorePlayer
support Tidal hi-fi and Qobuz natively, Spotify is in some way supported on all of them, Deezer
is supported natively only on piCoreplayer but don't be disappointed that even if you pay
for hi-fi subscription of Deezer unfortunately it will stream only low-res not
high-res stream from Deezer, big disappointment there but seems
it's more a ball on Deezer's side, they have to work on and seems so far
they don't want to help to support it, Amazon HD is not supported on any of these players
yet and also none of upnp clients supports it as i know till now. Hardware Support, all of
these players are keeping up pretty well with a driver support for majority of raspberry pi
external hardware, digital transports, dacs and other from all known brands also if you will be
using external usb dac i never had a problem with any of these players to recognize them without any
driver as they are all linux based distros, when it comes to MQA currently only Volumio supports
MQA if it recognizes attached proper MQA dac. Design UI and speed: when it comes to
design of the web user interface of each of these players as always it's very
subjective but in my opinion visually Mood Audio with that adaptive background looks the best,
just be aware the adaptive background color works only for locally stored files didn't work
for me when i was streaming via upnp but i believe the previous version i tested worked fine all the
time, the boot up time if it matters to you is the fastest on Mood audio then on piCoreplayer and the
slowest booting time i experienced with Volumio, as second when it comes to look very close to Mood
audio is piCoreplayer with the material skin which has a lot of customizations and I personally like
it a lot in the dark version. Volumio comes as last as still even with the adaptation of the
new theme called contemporary it still needs some proper design tweaks to make it work for
me as a pleasing experienced visually i mean, but from intuitiveness point of view and ease of
how you navigate through...Volumio is the best, but once you get used to each of these interfaces
they all work very well so no problem there. Speed wise all of those interfaces are very
similar, it's based on your internet speed and but overall when all is cached, all
the artworks everything, works fine. Other Features. Well , piCoreplayer and also
Volumio have quite extensive plug-in support which opens up the possibilities how to use
these players with piCorePlayer being on the top in my opinion, how you will see a use of
those depends completely on your needs Volumio for example also includes Amazon Alexa support and
can be controlled via Alexa for basic commands, Volumio also now has a feature called Tidal
Connect so, can be remotely controlled directly from Tidal app, piCoreplayer includes
also a possibility to display lyrics and find some basic artists metadata which might help
you to find out more about your favorite artist, similar but better looking
metadata based discovery feature offers Volumio in their highest priced
plan which brings me to the price. Both Mood Audio and piCorePlayer are completely
free with all the features mentioned but Volumio differs with the free plan you can use volumio for
streaming of your locally stored files and as a upnp renderer but if you want to use native Tidak
or Qobuz integration you need to pay approximately 3 US Dollars monthly, also with the basic free
plan you can't use bluetooth. The highest plan which is almost 7 US Dollars, offers the new
feature called music and artist credit discovery and you can use it in up to 6 devices if you
are interested in that multi-room multi player solution. Sound: This is going to be also very
subjective and controversial to talk about so let me first start that i experienced strange
issues with upnp streaming of my Tidal music over Mood audio player, tested with both upnp clients i
used the bitrate wasn't equal what the source was on the other hand with Volumio i was pleased
with the possibility to truly get maximum of the resolution as the streaming offered in other words
the output was equal to the input pi core player unfortunately doesn't support higher resolution
than 16 bit 44kHz when it comes to Tidal so it was a slight disappointment there. All local
digital files are played from all of these players in a bit rate as they are so the output equals the
input. Sound wise overall when playing and testing on the same file should be all equal i believe
unless there is some post processing or EQ cooked in from the developers as i had that feel on Mood
audio last time but with the current versions the best sounded to me was Volumio this time, then
Mood and piCorePlayer equal, but that is very, very subjective indeed so don't take me on that..
Support: overall well i became a member on forums of each of these players to see how people respond
to questions and i found out that all players have a good support from the members on the forums
and people always tried to help me with any issue i had so what is my Conclusion: what is the best
player from these three? Well, it all depends what you use as your favorite streaming service, what
is your hardware, which way of use you prefer, another question is. Are you
willing to pay for volumio? If not piCorePlayer would be my choice to go with.
Volumio in this new version supports Tidal Connect and the native integration supports now features
even the Mixes section i was complaining, it was missing before, so big pluses to me
but then if you don't like how Volumio looks, again it's up to you to choose your winner, but
it's a tough one i know... I brought this in-depth comparison to you so you can choose what is the
best for you. Thank you for watching, more videos are coming up soon so don't forget to subscribe,
like and i'll see you next time, take care...
