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I'm looking to build a system for multiroom audio streaming from Spotify. I've found a bunch of options, but most of them are ready-made, plug-and-go system images (like e.g. Balena sound, Max2Play...), which may or may not allow running other standard Linux apps&services on them. Because I do want the main server to do just that, I chose a solution that you can install under Raspberry Pi OS, with Snapcast + Mopidy on my RPi4. Now I've figured out that the Mopidy service is not discovered in the Spotify app over Spotify Connect, so I'm considering replacing Mopidy with Spotifyd or Librespot. Now I would replicate that setup on my second RPi (model 3B), but I heard that Raspberry Pi OS Lite doesn't do bluetooth audio - but I'd have a bluetooth speaker as audio sink on that one... Someone told my they'd tried that for a long time and it's just not happening.

My question:

  • Which OS will:

A. let me run Snapcast with Librespot or Spotifyd and

B. reliably output the audio over bluetooth?

It'd also have to work in a way that the bluetooth connection is automatically established at boot... Alternative suggestions to my current server are also welcome - thanks!

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I heard that Raspberry Pi OS Lite doesn't do bluetooth audio

I haven't used bluetooth on a Pi for anything other than a keyboard/mouse, but if it works on the non-lite version, it can work on the lite version -- the only difference between them is their initial configuration. You can take a stock lite install and turn it into something exactly like the full version, and vice versa. So you should try this, and if it does not work out of the box, ask "how to enable bluetooth audio on the lite version" (also see last paragraph below).

You could also just start with the full version. It doesn't matter that there is no screen attached; the GUI won't use any processing power if it isn't being used and shouldn't occupy more than 100-200 MiB of RAM. Also, it is very easy to disable:

sudo systemctl set-default multi-user

You will then reboot into a text console. This may or may not disable the audio, but bluetooth will still be enabled. If your speaker works with the GUI running but not without, it is probably because the audio daemon (pipewire) runs as a user (not system) service. The easiest way to get around that is probably to arrange auto-login for the pi user (this is available in console and GUI mode, see raspi-config), and enable the user service (systemctl --user enable pipewire). As per my comment, this will apply even if you are just using the lite version.

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  • Would you be willing share then how to "disable" the GUI on the full version? I'm not sure what you mean by that exactly. Do you mean just uninstalling the GUI packages?
    – Bennypr0fane
    Commented Nov 26 at 15:40
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    No, you don't have to (and really should not) do that. I've edited in some stuff above about this and did a little digging WRT the audio service run by the GUI (you will need to deal with that no matter what, I think; it will not be automatically enabled by the lite version).
    – goldilocks ♦
    Commented Nov 26 at 16:29
  • Thanks for the pointers! Just a note, when I installed the Lite OS, it did not come with Pipewire ootb (no Pulseaudio either) - it had just bare Alsa. But if I go the route starting from a GUI and disabling it, that's not pertinent.
    – Bennypr0fane
    Commented Nov 26 at 17:18
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    I forgot these things are built on top of each other with alsa at the bottom. Pulseaudio and pipewire are I think mostly about multiplexing (ie., so multiple applications can output sound at the same time), so you may not need them. I've never done much with the audio stack, but a quick search implies you can use a bluetooth source directly with alsa, and since you only have the one input, you might want to keep it simple that way. BTW, when you research these things, search "linux" not "raspberry pi"; it is all more or less the same in this context.
    – goldilocks ♦
    Commented Nov 26 at 18:05
  • Yeah unfortunately it can be very difficult to get bluetooth and audio stuff working on Lite. Bluetooth in particular does not seem to have a robust set of command line tools anymore--most of the higher level functionality (like pairing, configuring, and activating at boot/login) seem to be done by GNOME applets.
    – Jeremy Impson
    Commented Dec 1 at 1:15

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