It’s hot outside, but our little penguin stays cool and prepares some new features for you.

While he’s working on a big iPeng update with lots of new features and iOS 11 support for later this summer, he decided to give you some improvements already now so that you don’t get too overwhelmed with everything showing up at once. J

Roon Playback Support

This is an interesting feature for those iPeng and Squeezebox users who have moved from Logitech Media Server to Roon or for Roon users looking for an iOS player App.

While Roon comes with Squeezebox player support so that you can use your Squeezebox players with a Roon server, this didn’t work very well with iPeng so far.

Now, with iPeng 9.3, we fully support Roon’s Squeezebox interface so that you can use your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch as a Roon player. This works with all functionality Roon supports for Squeezebox players, which includes most of Roon’s general functionality as well as synchronization between Squeezebox players (but currently not between Squeezeboxes and Roon players).

Using iPeng with Roon

You will also be able to start/pause playback or control the volume directly from iPeng, but due to the limitations of Roon’s Squeezebox emulation, this will not work from the lock screen widget or the Watch App (it does work from the control center/lock screen control, though).

iPeng also comes with some integration with the Roon App that allows you to switch directly from iPeng to Roon, and if you do that, you can also directly return from Roon to iPeng.

If you mix Roon and LMS servers, iPeng allows you to move players between the different music sources, and it will identify Roon as such in the server list.

If you use an iPhone or iPad as a dedicated player, you might want to use the “Preserve Connection” setting in iPeng ‘s settings that will keep iPeng waiting in the background for five minutes after you stop playback so that you can start music after your playlist has ended more easily.

Please note: for Roon support you need iPeng’s “Playback”-In-App-Purchase. Roon support only includes player functionality, you cannot browse your Roon library using iPeng.

Find out more about Roon under https://roonlabs.com/

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Playback Synchronization Overhaul

But there are news for iPeng users with Squeezebox setups as well.

We have completely rewritten the synchronization code in iPeng Playback and it should now perform much better considering several aspects:

• it syncs much faster with other players;
• Synchonization should be more stable when used with different player types (depends on the other players also keeping sync stable, which isn’t always the case with software players);
• pausing/unpausing a group of synced players should have a much shorter delay, and sync should be immediately on unpause.

Use Music and Artist Information Plugin as Lyrics Provider

The “Music and Artist Information” plugin can now be used as a lyrics provider for iPeng’s Lyrics Screen Saver in addition to the SongInfo/Song Lyrics plugins supported before.

Since SongInfo/SongLyrics is no longer supported, we recommend to use Music and Artist Information for new setups, but you currently don’t need to switch for existing installations since both plugins currently use the same lyrics services.

And as usual, the update comes with a lot of smaller updates and bug fixes that we can’t list all in one article.

Have fun and a nice summer with iPeng!

We’re getting a lot of questions from iPeng users right now about the future of Spotify in the Squeezebox environment.
As things stand, Spotify seems to be discontinuing Squeezebox support soon (this month) and is sending out emails about this.
There is, however, a pretty good workaround, at least if you use Logitech Media Server (version 7.7.x and newer, 7.9.1 recommended), the new “Spotty” plugin:
http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?107615-Announce-Spotty-the-next-generation-Spotify-implementation

If you currently don’t run your own Logitech Media Server, you might consider using a Raspberry Pi for this, it will probably give you better performance for your Squeezebox system than MySqueezebox.com alone, consumes little power and there are ready-made distributions for Squeezebox available, like Max2Play or piCorePlayer.

And then just go on listening to good music!

You can find more information about the Spotify discontinuation here:

http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?107648-Spotify-on-Squeezebox-UE-Smart-Radio-end-of-life

And directly from Spotify:

https://support.spotify.com/us/listen_everywhere/on_speaker/why-cant-i-use-the-spotify-app-on-my-speaker/

Please note: Under iOS 11, the App Store shows a wrong price. There seems to be some issue on the App Store side making our bundles show the full price for both Apps, even if you already have purchased one of the Apps in the bundle. The way upgrade bundles work is that you have a price for purchasing both Apps together, and whatever you already paid for one of the Apps in the bundle will be deducted from the current price. This is often a bit confusing, especially if there have been exchange rate or tax changes. But now the App Store doesn’t discount the old payment when showing the price at all, even when you click to purchase.
The App Store actually charges the bundle correctly, meaning that after you confirm the purchase, it will inform you that the bundle is actually cheaper; but you have to take the risk to confirm the purchase (which is non-refundable!) first and hope you haven’t made a mistake like choosing the wrong bundle or wrong App Store account. We think this is not really acceptable, but we have no other way to give upgrade discounts on the App Store, and we can’t fix it (after all it’s Apple’s store).

If you are still using iPeng Classic on your recent iPhone or iPad with iOS 10, you will have noticed warning messages telling you that future iOS versions will no longer support the App. Apple will probably make this step with the release of iOS 11 this fall.

The solution for this problem is of course iPeng 9. Originally launched as “iPeng 7” three and a half years ago, iPeng 9 has been a 64-bit-App from day one and is seeing continued development and regular updates.

The reasons for making a new App back then instead of updating the old iPeng (Classic) Apps were both technical and commercial. Commercially it wasn’t feasible to do ongoing development without generating revenue from new App sales. And technically we wanted to combine the previously independent iPhone and iPad Apps into one to make maintenance easier, which had become possible because the original technical reasons for the separation had fallen away.

Since our new App launched with iPeng 7 in 2013, it has already seen lots of updates with the addition of features like the Apple Watch App, the lock screen widget, multitasking support and new functionality like QuickSwitch and Playlist and Favorites editing.

Now, if all of this hasn’t been reason enough for you to make the upgrade from iPeng Classic to iPeng 9 yet, we have a special offer for you today: a discounted upgrade path.

For existing users of iPeng Classic there are now two new upgrade bundles available on the App Store (one for iPeng Classic for iPad and one for the iPhone App), giving you a discount when upgrading to iPeng 9^*). Just purchase the “bundle completion” on the App Store for the reduced price.

With it you can enjoy all the new features of iPeng 9 instead of listening to Apple’s annoying deprecation warnings and lean back as the release of iOS 11 approaches.

And to spare you the App Store search: here are the direct links to the bundles:

iPhone

iPad

As usual: have fun with iPeng!

*) The exact discount depends on how much you have paid for iPeng Classic. For someone buying the Apps right now this would mean a 22% discount but if you purchased the App longer ago when it was still selling at e.g. US$10 the discount will be bigger while for users who purchased the App at a lower price the discount will be smaller.

We understand that this isn’t ideal, especially in non-US markets where price tiers have been changed due to currency fluctuations. But this is how the App Store works, we can’t influence this mechanism.

Today we present you an article that might strike some of you as a bit unusual here because it’s mostly not about software but about a cool piece of hardware.

It’s a Squeezebox built from a Tivoli Audio alarm speaker, and for the impatient ones among you, here are the key features and a picture:

• Tivoli Speaker and case using the original speaker and 3W output;
• WiFi;
• runs on battery for a whole day (more than 12h);
• rotary and push controller for volume and play/pause;
• separate alarm clock;
• fully Squeezebox compatible player using a Raspberry Pi zero and SqueezeLite;
• very simple and power-efficient 5V design.

And since Coolio and I do software in the first place, the whole project has its own software as well, in this case our open-sourced solution to power the volume and play/pause control. It’s quite cool, too :), you can find it on GitHub at https://github.com/coolio107/SqueezeButtonPi-Daemon

If you want to read the full story, you can find it here:

The Tivoli Squeezebox Radio

Apple just released iOS 10, and your favorite penguin hasn’t been lazy but made iPeng ready for the new operating system.

Unfortunately, iOS 10’s most prominent feature – Siri voice control support for apps – is not available for music apps yet. But since under iOS 10 widgets have become much more powerful, our iPeng 9.2 update includes some decisive improvements considering their usability.

What Has Changed?

First of all widgets have a new look in iOS 10, and being able to switch between a large and a small version of a widget – a feature iPeng’s widget has offered from the beginning – has now become a system feature. Widgets can also take up a bit more space on the screen, allowing us to improve their legibility.

But iOS 10 also makes widgets available in a lot more places and situations: in the search screen, for instance, and as a quick action on your home screen (if you force-touch the icon; iPhone 6s and newer only).

In both cases, the “compact” widget style is being used by default, so besides adapting the design, we decided to make the most important commands – play/pause, skip and volume – available directly from the compact window as well. This way you no longer need to start the app to start or stop playback, just do it right from the app’s icon.

Dynamic Type

Under iOS 10 the widget now also supports Dynamic Type, an iOS feature that lets you define the text size on your device. This helps to further improve the accessibility of the app.

Deep Integration with Apple’s Remote Control Commands

As another novelty iPeng now supports Apple’s remote control commands. If iPeng has been the last audio app you have used, you will be able to control it through the iOS control center (or remote control accessories such as docks).

Now generally this has been possible with iPeng for a long time, but with iOS 10 the support of the remote control interface has become much more powerful and reliable: It will now even launch iPeng’s playback feature if it has been stopped in the background, so if you just want to continue playing, here’s another case where you don’t even have to open the app at all.

Have fun!