RPI3, hifiberry and some noob questions

[powaq]

Hi, I’ve very happily been using OSMC for quite some time now in my TV room and yesterday I found a few small 40W 6ohm speakers that I would like to put in my TV room to be able to stream AirPlay music to from my iPad or iPhone. So I was thinking about getting a HifiBerry AMP2 (already using a HifiBerry DIgi+ in another room with great satisfaction) to add to my OSMC Rpi2.
That should be easy enough to install but what I want is only to have AirPlay play through the HifiBerry AMP2 and leave all the other audio flowing through HDMI. Anybody know if this would be possible? And if so, how to do it, set-up wise?

thanks in advance!

[fzinken]

@powaq

And if so, how to do it, set-up wise?

I moved your question here as I believe it is identical to what we discussed in here. Check out some of the earlier posts.

[donleut]

I think I was a few weeks ago in the same situation as shamael. Finally, I went for the stereo amp since I thought that I will be listening less to “real” surround sound than stereo.
Since I wanted to use one of the optical inputs of the amp, my setup was first RPi → HDMI → TV → Toslink → Amp. Having the TV on when listening to music started to annoy me and I bought the hifiberry digi sound card to go directly from the Pi to the amp and that I could stream via airplay. In my case I just have to switch then between the inputs on the amp.

@powaq I use shairport for the airport streaming. Here is a good introduction, but I still had to play a lot with the settings.

AirPlay Audio Server

AirPlay support in Kodi is hit and miss (nothing appears to work with iOS10). These instructions will get an AirPlay audio server up and running on OSMC using the excellent shairport-sync package from Mike Brady (GitHub link). Most of these instructions are covered in his README.md file, but I got confused with Linux audio – this write-up covers all steps in the setup in one place. This is tested and working on a Raspberry Pi 3 running OSMC (2016-10) and iOS 10 devices. AirPlay audio is output …

I would be a bit in doubt if the Hifiberry Amp would be powerful enough, but according to the specs it should be good.

Good luck!

[shamael]

@powaq

Anybody know if this would be possible? And if so, how to do it, set-up wise?

Regarding my own research I found the below link that may help you:
https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=192480

I’ve no Hifiberry amp but I don’t see in the spec if the 25w output is under 4 ohms or like more generally 8 ohms. It all depends about what output quality you expect but the power will be an issue (distortion) at high volume.

[fzinken]

@shamael

I’ve no Hifiberry amp but I don’t see in the spec if the 25w output is under 4 ohms or like more generally 8 ohms.

Here it sounds like it is on 4Ohm

Amp+ questions

[shamael]

@donleut

Since I wanted to use one of the optical inputs of the amp, my setup was first RPi -> HDMI -> TV -> Toslink -> Amp

No far from my concern (see the beginning). I finally took a AV receiver in 2.0 mode for all the integrated technology and will be able to manage music with smartphone or else (Kodi remote). Maybe the plugin spoken above may worth the trial AUTOMATIC (and/or manual) AUDIO SWITCHER for different Audio Output .