My Volumio Journey and the PeppyMeter Screen Saver Plugin
My Volumio Journey
• For being a Volumio user since 2020, I have to give a big thanks to the pandemic.
• Besides having a lot of time to ultrasonic-clean my collection of over 3k vinyls, I was looking for a way to improve my streaming quality in terms of sound and vision.
• Before Volumio, I was recording my favorite songs from my LPs into MP3 320kbps, which I listened to with my headphones on the long-haul flight to Thailand. Then I found Volumio (via Google, of course) and with a small investment in a RPi4 and a Topping D50s DAC, the result was incredible. I had to re-record all my songs to WAV format. My past experiences with sound quality, in order from best to worst, were: LP → CD → MP3 → radio. Now: LP → Volumio/CD → radio.
Improved Sound Quality with Volumio
• Now, with my current Volumio setup (RPi5 + Topping D90mqa + Volumio/PeppyMeter), I spend 80-90% of the time listening to Volumio.
The PeppyMeter Screen Saver Plugin
• The reason I like the PeppyMeter Screen Saver Plugin by 2aCD so much is that I wanted to have a screen to show song information and album artwork while I listen to music.
• At first, the Touch Display Plugin gave me everything I wanted, and that should have been reason enough to stay with Volumio. However, out of the blue, 2aCD created an instant hit with the PeppyMeter Screen Saver Plugin in March 2021, and at that time I wanted to have it on my screen really badly.
PeppyMeter’s Popularity and My Involvement
• I contacted 2aCD, showed him what I had done, and made some suggestions on what I thought PeppyMeter should be (for example, the moving song title when the title is too long for the limited space). Believe me, back then it wasn’t as easy as it is today to install—a lot of manual compiling was involved—and 2aCD was kind enough to help me remotely via TeamViewer.
Gelo5 Skins
• Then came Gelo5 Skins, which are the third-greatest thing, besides Volumio and the Touch Display/PeppyMeter Screen Saver Plugin.
Thank you to all of you who made this happen with your passion.
Today, Volumio is still my hobby with 3 RPi4s, 1 RPi5, 1 Asus TBS, Topping D90mqa, SMSL C100.
Andy
ps. I also wanted to thank @nerd for making Volumio boot from USB/NVMe possible.
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