Need something like airplay transmitter from dumb audio device

[Linwood]

I have a player piano system that is a bit complicated, but the result is that there is an audio output (unamplified line out on RCA jacks) that I need to convey to my main home theater amplifier that is about 40' away.

We just moved the piano. In the old location (about 25' - maybe 50' cable run) we ran a cable and hooked it up directly. It was barely usable, despite lots of effort it still had some hum in it. The new location (maybe 75' cable run) is likely to be much worse, plus the need to fish a cable.

I would like to explore other alternatives. The amp has an Apple TV device. My thought was to find an airplay transmitter (not receiver) to accept the input and broadcast to the Apple TV device as input to the Amp. I have good wifi at the piano (there's a Raspberry Pi that is there already).

But I have yet to find a simple minded transmitter for analog audio in.

The device providing audio out is dumb .. I'll be happy to explain all the limitations, but for the sake of brevity please assume I really do have to deal with the line out analog, and not something that can run an app or accept a USB.

I thought about trying to use the mic input on the PI and broadcast with it, but audio processing quality there is pretty iffy. But I also plan to explore that. But some simple audio->airplay device would be ideal.

Option #2: Buy an appropriate set of (I think the right term is?) baluns and convert to balanced audio at the piano, and convert back at the amp (my amp does not appear to accept balanced. I have never done that, not sure what is an appropriate device to buy. But wireless would be so much nicer.

Advice? Hardware recommendations?

 

[WaynePflughaupt]

I know nothing of Airplay, but you can get Bluetooth devices that can do either transmitting or receiving.

Regards,
Wayne A. Pflughaupt

 

[Linwood]

Ah, you mean get one for each end? That's a possibility, though the distance may be a bit long for bluetooth. But a possibility I'll check out.

Airplay is nice since it's wifi (longer range since the house has multiple access points) and also already connected to the amp.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

why complicate it? Why not use wireless audio?
https://www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=10247

Bluetooth and Airplay will both add latency/delays

 

[Linwood]

I tried something like that when we first put in the piano, as the alternative to a wire (that hummed). It did not work well at all; I think because there is a wifi access point beside the amp. I just looked and think I threw them away, so i can't recall what frequency they operated on. It might be worth trying again though, and forcing the channel assignment on the AP to the opposite end of the 5Ghz range.

So Airplay transmitters don't really exist?

 

[lovinthehd]

Is your "amp" an avr (audio video receiver)? What exactly is it?

 

[Linwood]

Yes, it's an older one, an Onkyo TX-SR608, so I think I'm stuck with some form of audio in, nothing digital. But one input already has an Apple TV set up (old style for audio only).

 

[lovinthehd]

Yes, it's an older one, an Onkyo TX-SR608, so I think I'm stuck with some form of audio in, nothing digital. But one input already has an Apple TV set up (old style for audio only).

Amp isn't a good descriptor unless it's a power amp, compared to more particular ones like integrated amp or an avr like yours is. Was wondering if you had other options built in if it was an avr but like you say your unit is a bit dated....any interest in updating that for other reasons to justify a change?

In some searching think I saw someone had diy'd with a raspberry pi unit....

 

[Linwood]

No real interest, it's mostly used by my wife for watching the DVR, occasional music (usually played through that old Apple TV from her iPad).

How would that help?

Yes, I have a Raspberry pi on the piano. The Pi is a front end for the player system, it holds digital music (to play by hand), digitized music to play via Midi, and Pianodisc music (from the manufacturer) which is the current issue. The Pianodisc music is a (proprietary) digitized format to play the player, but one channel has an audio accompaniment. The Pi feeds this mix (unaltered) to the Pianodisc itself, it splits off the channel with player data, and copies the (mono) accompaniment to the other channel giving a line out that then goes to any kind of amplified speaker system. In our case we want to play it through the above mentioned AVR through the room speakers. The sound quality is mediocre (a lot of this is old and slowly sampled, and all of it is mono). But I need to get it across a fairly long distance to the AVR.

I'm also looking into trying to split the accompaniment before it goes into the Pianodisc, and send it via Wifi with the Pi, but haven't figured out yet how to get ALSA (or whatever) to handle that split and transmission. All the programming I did was using ALSA for the Midi playing, the actual audio aspects of ALSA are a mystery to me, but starting to read up on it.

 

[BoredSysAdmin]

I tried something like that when we first put in the piano, as the alternative to a wire (that hummed). It did not work well at all; I think because there is a wifi access point beside the amp. I just looked and think I threw them away, so i can't recall what frequency they operated on. It might be worth trying again though, and forcing the channel assignment on the AP to the opposite end of the 5Ghz range.

So Airplay transmitters don't really exist?

I could see this being a problem at older 2.4Ghz systems, but at 5.8Ghz unless your own wifi router works on channels 161 or 165.
In addition this should not be an issue since strength of any 5ghz radio thru any barrier (like walls) is drastically reduced.

tl;dr: Try the 5.8ghz system - best to have light of sight between both antenna, pointed directly at each other and double check that wifi router doesn't use channels 161 and 165.
It should work.

 

[Linwood]

Thanks, that may be a solution, though there is a wall in between as well as the body of the piano itself (all the electronics are up underneath out of sight). But my neighbor's wifi doesn't leak 5Ghz so I can choose force any channels there.

I'm going to give 1-2 days of hacking at ALSA and Pulse Audio in the Pi to see if I can solve it there with Airplay (i.e. no other device), but I'm not real hopeful as most things I have found turn a Pi into a Airplay receiver, not transmitter. I've done the receiver part before, it works nicely, but it's the wrong direction here.

 

[rlhamil]

As far as I know, there's no hardware AirPlay transmitter available that can take audio input and send it to AirPlay speakers. It can be done with a computer and suitable software; and I believe someone built something like that for their own use with a Raspberry Pi and free software to act as a dedicated transmitter device, although it sounded like it wasn't the easiest to get everything together. I no longer have the link, because it seemed like something that would be too much bother (esp. a decent case including audio board; the fight with getting the right software, configured properly, I could maybe win, but making a case, not so much).

But here's the kicker: AirPlay (esp. AirPlay 2, which you'd need for e.g. stereo) has considerable latency, because it buffers a lot to be more resistant to variable network performance. It's enough that AirPlay 2 has lots of software hooks for video use, so as to delay the video the right amount to sync with the audio - and it makes pause, fast forward and so on, pretty annoying with their lag. For something like a piano, if you EVER want to play it manually, having the sound come out something like two seconds behind your playing would probably be so distracting as to be intolerable.

Bluetooth does not have this problem, and Bluetooth transmitters are readily available - and newer versions of Bluetooth can have pretty good range; I've walked over most of a small house wearing AirPods, and they held their connection just fine.