Device support
Recommended
balenaSound has been developed and tested to work on the following devices:
| Device Type | Default mode | Standalone mode (STANDALONE) | Multi-room mode (MULTI_ROOM) | Multi-room client mode (MULTI_ROOM_CLIENT) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Raspberry Pi (v1 / Zero / Zero W)1 | STANDALONE | ✔ | ✘ 2 | ✔ |
| Raspberry Pi 2 | STANDALONE | ✔ | ✘ 2 | ✔ |
| Raspberry Pi 3 3 | MULTI_ROOM | ✔ | ✔ 4 | ✔ |
| Raspberry Pi 4 3 | MULTI_ROOM | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| Intel NUC | MULTI_ROOM | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
| balenaFin1 | MULTI_ROOM | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ |
Notes
[1]: We recommend using a DAC or USB sound card for these device types. See audio interfaces for more details.
[2]: Multi-room master functionality is disabled on Raspberry Pi 1 and 2 family devices due to performance constraints. They can however function in multi-room client mode in conjunction with another device that supports multi-room mode. Read more about modes of operation here.
[3]: There is a known issue where on the 64 bit version of balenaOS no output is coming through the audio jack/hdmi. See troubleshooting section here (Scroll down to No audio when using balenaOS 64 bit on Raspberry Pi 3's)
[4]: There is a known issue with all variants of the Raspberry Pi 3 where Bluetooth and WiFi interfere with each other. This will only impact the performance of balenaSound if you use a Pi 3 as the master server to do multi-room bluetooth streaming, resulting in stuttering audio (Airplay and Spotify Connect will work fine, as well as all streaming methods with multi-room disabled). In this cases we recommend the use of a Raspberry Pi 4 as the master server or a Pi 3 with a bluetooth dongle.
Experimental
Devices with experimental support have been tested to work, though we have found compelling reasons for not including them as first-class citizens of balenaSound. If you are shopping for parts, we do not recommend you buy a device from this list.
Some of the reasons we've flagged devices as experimental include:
- device requires multiple extra hardware pieces (USB dongles, adapters, etc)
- device has known bugs that prevent some features to work properly and the timeline for a fix is not clear
| Device Type | Standalone mode (STANDALONE) | Multi-room mode (MULTI_ROOM) | Multi-room client mode (MULTI_ROOM_CLIENT) | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA Jetson Nano | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | - Requires WiFi USB dongle (or ethernet cable) - Requires Bluetooth USB dongle. - No built-in audio support (see this bug). As a workaround, requires USB or DAC soundcard. |
| BeagleBone Black | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | - Requires WiFi USB dongle (or ethernet cable) - Requires Bluetooth USB dongle. - Requires USB sound card - Requires USB hub as it has a single USB port |