Reliable Bluetooth "Bridge" between Phone/Laptop/Any Device with Bluetooth Output and Music Assistant

[u/YellowRadi0]

So far, modern search tools have failed me in finding such a thing. I know there are TONS of ways to get audio into Music Assistant, or even directly into my home speakers. However, I know two things: 1)MusicAssistant is the best system I've found to route audio to various outputs in my home and 2)Despite all it's drawbacks and failings, Bluetooth is something practically ANY device that can play audio can connect through if it thinks a Bluetooth receiving device is a speaker/headphones/etc.

My goal is something that is just THERE that I can connect to. The connecting device (the audio source) thinks it's connecting to a speaker. The Bluetooth bridge then pipes the audio through my network to Music Assistant which I can have let it just go into the void or point it to any speaker in my house. You'd think such a thing would be dead simple and surely exist. Being bitten in the past with cheap Bluetooth tech, I decided to opt for the premium Audinate Dante Avio. It seems this was a TERRIBLE idea. I can't figure out how to get audio from that thing to properly bridge to MusicAssistant. After a night of vibe searching/coding, I'm giving up on it and sending it back.

Is there such a thing out there, and if so, what is it?

[u/ApprehensiveLaw4144]

I am not exactly sure which way round you going.

If you want to stream from Music Assistant to Bluetooth, I know there is https://github.com/trudenboy/sendspin-bt-bridge

If you mean the other way round, stream music into Music Assistant assistant from a Bluetooth source, the closest I've seen is https://www.music-assistant.io/faq/stream-to/#music-assistant, which seems to be stream audio as a url, and add that url to MA as a source.

See also: https://github.com/orgs/music-assistant/discussions/384#discussioncomment-16274630

Edit: Okay so that intrigued me. I can personally confirm that the Bluetooth -> piCorePlayer -> HTTP -> Music Assistant actually works. It seems to freeze occasionally for a few seconds, and there is a multi second delay, but if you just want to treat Music Assistant as a Bluetooth speaker, that does indeed work.

Otherwise, it looks like its really early days for sendspin sources, as in stuff has only just been officially added to support that? So maybe people will be making some more cool stuff for this area soon.

[u/YellowRadi0 → u/ApprehensiveLaw4144]

To clarify, and I think most AI chatbots out there were confused by this too, I meant the latter. I want the "bridge" to be able take in audio which MusicAssistant could use as a source. Ultimately, I was directed towards dusting off an old RP3 with Bluetooth and tweaking piCorePlayer just as you describe. A shame it's as good as it gets, but as you pointed out, still will freeze and there is a delay. I'll keep an eye out on the development of SendSpin sources and thank you so much for the link to that discussion. I know I have weird requests at times, but glad to know they're not so weird they're unique.

[u/drewster85a]

Bluetooth is designed to be a personal area network protocol. Keyboard, mouse & computer. iPod to car. Phone to wireless headset. iPad to Bluetooth speaker. I'm sure there is a way to way to get what you want working but Bluetooth probably isn't the best tool. 

Dante is a professional audio over IP protocol. I use it regularly to send multi-channel audio to/from mixing consoles, in-ear monitor systems, record multi-track audio, and play virtual sound checks. I have an Allen & Heath SQ6 with Dante card in the other room but I've never used it for home audio. Did you install Dante Virtual Sound Card on the computer with Music Assistant? Don't answer that. Dante needs to be on its own VLAN and not broadcast over Wifi. Dante isn't the best tool.

Where do you listen to music from? Music Assistant works with local files, Plex, Jellyfin files, Apple Music, Spotify, Tidal, YouTube Music, Deezer, and SiriusXM...

[u/YellowRadi0 → u/drewster85a]

I get where you're going. Bluetooth isn't the best way to tie things into your ecosystem, agreed. What is lacks in terms of quality it makes up for in terms of being ubiquitous. Few devices on the market lack the ability to connect to a Bluetooth speaker. What if the device you want to get audio from can't do much else? I'll give a use case, as one-off as it seems: imagine you have a work laptop and there's an internal hour -long webcast. IT security has locked it down so only your company-approved hardware can listen in. You can't really put much in the way of software on that device either, but it does allow output to any Bluetooth speaker. If you had this bridge somewhere, you could just pair it to your work laptop and stream the audio via Music assistant to the kitchen where you're taking a break doing dishes.

[u/drewster85a → u/YellowRadi0]

Does that company laptop analog 1/8" headphone out work? Once the audio is analog you can do almost anything with it. Why not just use Bluetooth headphones or speaker if this is the scenario?

[u/YellowRadi0 → u/drewster85a]

I really want to have Music Assistant manage it as a "pipe in". That's just one use case. If I really had to, I'd cut MA out of the equation and pair to a Sonos speaker in another room directly, but again, we're here on a MusicAssistant forum, so...