Lyrion Music Server (LMS) is a

streaming audio Streaming media refers to multimedia delivered through a network for playback using a media player. Media is transferred in a ''stream'' of packets from a server to a client and is rendered in real-time; this contrasts with file downloadi ...

server supported by the LMS community and formerly supported by

Logitech Logitech International S.A. ( ) is a Swiss multinational manufacturer of computer peripherals and software. Headquartered in Lausanne, Switzerland, the company has offices throughout Europe, Asia, Oceania, and the Americas. It is a component of ...

, developed in particular to support their

Squeezebox The term squeezebox (also squeeze box, squeeze-box) is a colloquial expression referring to any musical instrument of the general class of hand-held bellows-driven free reed aerophones such as the accordion Accordions (from 19th-centur ...

range of digital audio receivers. The software is designed for

streaming Streaming media refers to multimedia delivered through a network for playback using a media player. Media is transferred in a ''stream'' of packets from a server to a client and is rendered in real-time; this contrasts with file downl ...

music over a network, allowing users to play their music collections from virtually anywhere there is an

Internet The Internet (or internet) is the Global network, global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a internetworking, network of networks ...

connection. It supports

PCM Pulse-code modulation (PCM) is a method used to Digital signal (signal processing), digitally represent analog signals. It is the standard form of digital audio in computers, compact discs, digital telephony and other digital audio application ...

audio formats including

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany under the lead of Karlheinz Brandenburg. It was designed to greatly reduce the amount ...

FLAC FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software ...

WAV Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced or ) is an audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on personal computers. The format was developed and published for the first time in 1991 ...

Ogg Ogg is a digital multimedia container format designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of digital multimedia. It is maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation and is free and open, unrestricted by software patents. Its name is ...

Opus Opus (: opera Opera is a form of History of theatre#European theatre, Western theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by Singing, singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera ...

, and

AAC AAC may refer to: Aviation * Advanced Aircraft, a company from Carlsbad, California * Airborne aircraft carrier, a type of aircraft * Alaskan Air Command, a radar network * American Aeronautical Corporation, a company from Port Washington, New ...

, as well as

transcoding Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital conversion of one encoding to another, such as for video data files, audio files (e.g., MP3, WAV), or character encoding (e.g., UTF-8, ISO/IEC 8859). This is usually done in cases where a target ...

. It also supports DSD audio formats such as DSF, DFF and DSD WavPack. It can stream to both software and hardware receivers, including the various

models, as well as any media player capable of playing MP3 streams. Plugins from Logitech and

third-party source In commerce, a third-party source means a supplier (or service provider) who is not directly controlled by either the sales, seller (first party) nor the customer/procurement#Roles in procurement, buyer (second party) in a business Financial tra ...

s are also supported, allowing additional functionality to be added. Lyrion Music Server supports grouping clients in order to synchronize playback among all clients within a group. Lyrion Music Server is

free software Free software, libre software, libreware sometimes known as freedom-respecting software is computer software distributed open-source license, under terms that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, distribut ...

, released under the terms of the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

. While no longer distributed in conjunction with any Logitech hardware product, LMS continues to be developed.

Compatible players

Hardware

Logitech's own

hardware players existed in a variety of configurations, offering wired and wireless

Ethernet Ethernet ( ) is a family of wired computer networking technologies commonly used in local area networks (LAN), metropolitan area networks (MAN) and wide area networks (WAN). It was commercially introduced in 1980 and first standardized in 198 ...

analog Analog or analogue may refer to: Computing and electronics * Analog signal, in which information is encoded in a continuous variable ** Analog device, an apparatus that operates on analog signals *** Analog electronics, circuits which use analog ...

and

digital audio Digital audio is a representation of sound recorded in, or converted into, digital signal (signal processing), digital form. In digital audio, the sound wave of the audio signal is typically encoded as numerical sampling (signal processing), ...

outputs,

touchscreen A touchscreen (or touch screen) is a type of electronic visual display, display that can detect touch input from a user. It consists of both an input device (a touch panel) and an output device (a visual display). The touch panel is typically l ...

interfaces and a variety of remote controlled options. Logitech discontinued their hardware players in 2012. Lyrion Music Server also works with networked music players, such as the

Roku Roku ( ) is a brand of consumer electronics that includes streaming players, smart TVs (and their operating systems), as well as a free TV streaming service. The brand is owned by Roku, Inc., an American company. As of 2024, Roku is the U ...

SoundBridge SoundBridge is a hardware device from Roku, Inc. designed to play internet radio or digital audio streamed across a home network, over either Wi-Fi or ethernet. SoundBridge devices directly browsed the Radio Roku guide. As of 2008, all Roku S ...

M1001, although Logitech does not officially support these competing products. Chumby devices also support streaming music from a Lyrion Music Server, as does the Rio Receiver when running replacement software to emulate the SliMP3 device, although it is limited to modest bitrates (<128kps). In late 2015 support was added via a plugin to use Google's Chromecast Audio device as a headless player which can then be connected to any audio system or powered speakers. Recently the O2 Joggler has proven a popular device for running Logitech's open source SqueezePlay software, providing a similar interface to the Squeezebox Touch on a 7" display. The Raspberry PI, using the piCorePlayer streams from LMS and in some cases LMS is run on the Raspberry PI too.https://www.picoreplayer.org SqueezeAMP, a free open source hardware player.

Software

SqueezePlay is based on SqueezeOS, the operating system that drives the hardware devices ''Squeezebox Duet, Radio'' and ''Touch.'' Written in Lua, it is also

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is Software, computer software that is released under a Open-source license, license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and Software distribution, distribute the software an ...

and sees regular updates through Logitech's SVN releases. There is also a free

software Software consists of computer programs that instruct the Execution (computing), execution of a computer. Software also includes design documents and specifications. The history of software is closely tied to the development of digital comput ...

emulator In computing, an emulator is Computer hardware, hardware or software that enables one computer system (called the ''host'') to behave like another computer system (called the ''guest''). An emulator typically enables the host system to run sof ...

version of the Squeezebox, called Softsqueeze, which is written in

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

and can be run easily as an

applet In computing, an applet is any small application that performs one specific task that runs within the scope of a dedicated widget engine or a larger program, often as a plug-in. The term is frequently used to refer to a Java applet, a program ...

inside a web page. A third player, SqueezeSlave, is also available, which operates similarly but without any display. SqueezeSlave is designed to be run on a server connected to an amplifier/speakers, and can be controlled through the standard Lyrion Music Server web interface. At this time, SqueezeSlave is incompatible with Logitech's

Spotify Spotify (; ) is a List of companies of Sweden, Swedish Music streaming service, audio streaming and media service provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. , it is one of the largest providers of music streaming services ...

plugin due to a lack of support for 'direct streaming'. In 2012, work began on Squeezelite, a cross-platform, headless, LMS client that supports playback synchronization, gapless playback, direct streaming (for use with Spotify, etc.), and playback at various sampling rates. In 2019, Squeezelite has been ported to the ESP32 WiFi/BT chipset and works on WROVER and ESP-A1S module or any board that includes an ESP32 and 4MB of SRAM (e.g. SqueezeAMP) There is as well three free open source "bridges" that allow UPnP/DLNA, ChromeCast and AirPlay devices to appear as regular SB players. AirPlay devices can be synchronized with other SB players. Chromecast groups are recognized as well as Sonos (UPnP) group, but they can only play synchronously within their own respective brand.

Server hardware and plugins

The Lyrion Music Server software is written in

Perl Perl is a high-level, general-purpose, interpreted, dynamic programming language. Though Perl is not officially an acronym, there are various backronyms in use, including "Practical Extraction and Reporting Language". Perl was developed ...

, and will run on

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

Apple Macintosh Mac is a brand of personal computers designed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 1984. The name is short for Macintosh (its official name until 1999), a reference to the McIntosh (apple), McIntosh apple. The current product lineup inclu ...

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...

, and piCorePlayer platforms. Lyrion Music Server itself can run on a number of NAS devices, such as QNAP Turbo NAS,

Synology Synology Inc. () is a Taiwanese corporation that specializes in network-attached storage (NAS) Computer appliance, appliances. Synology's line of NAS is known as the DiskStation for desktop models, FlashStation for Flash memory, all-flash model ...

Disk Station,

Netgear Netgear, Inc. (stylized as NETGEAR in all caps), is an American computer networking company based in San Jose, California, with offices in about 22 other countries. It produces networking hardware for consumers, businesses, and service provide ...

ReadyNAS, Buffalo Linkstation, Linksys NSLU2, Thecus N5200 & N7700, Xtreamer eTRAYz and any device running

FreeNAS TrueNAS is a family of Linux and FreeBSD based network-attached storage (NAS) storage products developed by iXsystems. The products consist of TrueNAS Enterprise and TrueNAS Community Edition. TrueNAS Enterprise is a storage appliance, with fu ...

software. Lyrion Music Server also comes pre-installed on the VortexBox Linux distribution and VortexBox appliance. This generally results in lower energy consumption than running Lyrion Music Server on a

personal computer A personal computer, commonly referred to as PC or computer, is a computer designed for individual use. It is typically used for tasks such as Word processor, word processing, web browser, internet browsing, email, multimedia playback, and PC ...

, whilst offering the same feature set (albeit with a slightly less responsive web interface under certain circumstances). Some NAS devices may require more effort than others to get Lyrion Music Server running, though. Logitech only supported the Netgear ReadyNAS NAS devices.

Skins

It is possible to customize the user interface using skins by installing a plugin. The Material Skin for LMS provides a fully responsive HTML5/Javascript user interface for Lyrion Music Server, suitable for both mobile and desktop usage.

Plugins

There are numerous plug-ins and

device driver In the context of an operating system, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabli ...

s available for Lyrion Music Server, which include features such as support for automation systems from Clare Controls,

AMX LLC AMX (formerly AMX, LLC) is an American manufacturer of video switching and control devices. It is currently owned by Harman International Industries, a part of the Harman Professional Division. Overview Scott D. Miller founded AMX in 1982. AM ...

and

Crestron Electronics Crestron Electronics (or simply Crestron) is an American privately held multinational corporation that manufactures and distributes control automation and integration technology. The company designs, manufactures, and distributes equipment used ...

. Plugins also provide access to additional services, such as the live radio and 'listen-again' features of

BBC Sounds BBC Sounds is an Over-the-top media service, over-the-top audio streaming media, streaming and download service from the BBC that includes live radio broadcasts, Streaming media, audio on demand, and podcasts. The service is available on a wide ...

in the UK.

Alexa

As of September 2019, Lyrion Music Server is controllable by a full-function

Alexa Alexa may refer to: Technology *Amazon Alexa, a virtual assistant developed by Amazon * Alexa Internet, a defunct website ranking and traffic analysis service * Alexa Fluor, a family of fluorescent dyes * Arri Alexa, a digital motion picture ca ...

skill (called 'MediaServer') available in the en-US and en-GB locales. In addition to allowing voice control of hardware and software Squeezebox players, this also allows streaming audio from LMS to an

Amazon Echo Amazon Echo, often shortened to Echo, is a brand of smart speakers developed by Amazon (company), Amazon. Echo devices connect to the voice-controlled Virtual assistant, intelligent personal assistant service. ''Amazon Alexa, Alexa'', which resp ...

device for playback.

Notes

References

External links

*{{Official website, http://lyrion.org/
Source code on GitHub
Free software programmed in Perl Perl software Servers (computing) Audio streaming software for Linux