Bluesound provider doesn't provide correct metadata

[bazaglia]

What version of Music Assistant has the issue?

2.3.2

What version of the Home Assistant Integration have you got installed?

2024.10.1

Have you tried everything in the Troubleshooting FAQ and reviewed the Open and Closed Issues and Discussions to resolve this yourself?

• Yes

The problem

I have a NAD M10 with a screen for displaying album cover/track info but this gets completely messed up as the Bluesound provider isn't sending the information properly to the Bluesound API. The track name is "Home Assistant", there is no album picture and the song name/artist gets concatenated as part of the album info. As a result, not only info is not showing properly in the BluOS app, but my NAD M10 doesn't display anything useful on its screen. Other units with a built-in screen will surely have the same issue. That's how the music metadata looks like in the BluOS app:

In the player configuration, I've already tried enabling "Try to ingest metadata into stream (ICY)" but it doesn't seem related.

Giving a quick look at the provider code, the current broken behaviour could to be explained since the play media API call to Bluesound is only providing the URI, without anything in additional: https://github.com/music-assistant/server/blob/2.3.2/music_assistant/server/providers/bluesound/__init__.py#L384C61-L384C66

How to reproduce

Play using the Bluesound provider

Music Providers

TIDAL and local music provider

Player Providers

Bluesound

Full log output

No response

Additional information

No response

What version of Home Assistant Core are your running

2024.10.3

What type of installation are you running?

Home Assistant Supervised

On what type of hardware are you running?

Raspberry Pi

[OzGav]

@Cyanogenbot

[Cyanogenbot]

This is something thats a know issue and shortcoming of the bluesound api, sadly we are not able to send along cover art (at least only when sending flacs, mp3's seem to work). but for the other metadata, Ill dive into the code soon! The bluesound devices unpacks the metadata from the stream itself so we need to modify the stream for that

[Cyanogenbot]

When using airplay this is not a problem however!

[Cyanogenbot]

After quickly analyzing this on my own node, The metadata (Being title and artist) is transmitted correctly. The Bluos app seems to change up the UI to also include the name of the source... When looking at the android now playing widget. It does show the right artist and song name. I had to enable the second icy metadata preset for my device though. I'm not sure what it displays on the screen on your m10, so please share that with me, and I'll try to include this in my next update along with working sync.

[bazaglia]

@Cyanogenbot thanks for the info. I also thought of using AirPlay instead of Bluesound as the speaker provider, but I believe that even if the cover artwork, it will lower my sound quality since AirPlay is limited.

The screen on my M10. The bottom smaller part is where the artist's name is supposed to be. On the top, in big letters, it's supposed to be [Song Name] (line break) [Artist name]. Instead, it only says "Music Assistant".

Also, if I disable "Try to ingest metadata into stream (ICY)" it only says "Music Assistant" with no other info.

[Cyanogenbot]

That looks the same as on the app... One thing you can try is to enable mp3 mode through your settings. Unless Lenbrook/Bluesound either improves their api (probably not happening) or we find a way around this I don't think there is a solution to this sadly. Me and @marcelveldt have already tried some workarounds with no avail.

[bazaglia]

@Cyanogenbot Indeed it looks the same as in the app. Also the same as in the media_player card on Home Assistant UI if I enable the Bluesound integration. So I understand the artwork is a limitation. Downgrading to mp3 quality isn't a good option to me. I'm wondering if the other metadata could still be checked? Like the song title is "Music Assistant". This could surely be improved. Happy to help/open a PR if you point directions too. Thanks.

[Cyanogenbot]

Hi @bazaglia there is nothing to fix there! Thats just how BluOS displays external content, you can see the same with radio paradise:

[OzGav]

@Cyanogenbot do we need to add this to the notes/issues section of the docs?

[Cyanogenbot]

@Cyanogenbot do we need to add this to the notes/issues section of the docs?

Yeah I think we should put it in the known limitations section, along the lines of: Album covers are not visible alongside the metadata in the app or on players that have a screen

[marcelveldt]

I also thought of using AirPlay instead of Bluesound as the speaker provider, but I believe that even if the cover artwork, it will lower my sound quality since AirPlay is limited.

There is nothing lowered about it. Music Assistant uses RAOP (Airplay 1) to send audio to devices, which is LOSSLESS CD-quality audio. So full "redbook" 44.1/16 bits.

Do not fall for all the hi-res marketing nonsense. Nobody can hear the difference between 44.1/16 and anything beyond that.
Heck. 99% of the people can not even hear the difference between a lossy compression from e.g. spotify and lossless.

So, if the metadata is important to you, I would just send the audio with Airplay and call it a day.
The metadata will then look beautiful on that M10 screen.
If you insist on playing back Hi-RES (so higher than CD quality) material, then it comes at a cost of no metadata.

@Cyanogenbot you should maybe consider also implement a "airplay mode" like the Sonos provider.
That way people can choose to use the best of 2 worlds. Use all native controls from Bluesound api, including syncing, but just send the audio stream over Airplay.