Newbie - Dont quite understand point?

[nila]

Hi all,
I randomly ran across Rune audio and it all sounds great - except I'm not quite sure what 'all' it is?
I've read the description and I still dont quite understand I'm sorry to say.

I already have a Raspberry Pi 2 running Kodi/XBMC which is connected to my TV via HDMI. All my music (mp3's) are on a NAS drive which Kodi has scanned and has all the music for. I can then use Kodi to playback any music I want easily.

I'm just wondering what exactly Rune Audio is giving me? Is it just the same functionality as I'm getting from Kodi on the Pi with it aware of all my music?
What benefits does Rune have over Kodi? I've setup Kodi running from a centralised DB so I can have as many clients as I want playing any of the media from the central library.

All help appreciated..

A n00b

[nila]

Been reading up on this stuff all day and so I 'think' that if I get it, this is just providing me with an OS I can put on a Pi somewhere to create a uPNP renderer?

So basically I attach it to some speakers and I can then throw music to it from my server and play music in whichever room I want to?

[ACX]

Hi nila, welcome to this community.

What benefits does Rune have over Kodi?

RuneAudio is similiar to Kodi in the way it can access to your music on the NAS.
But the main differences are:

• RuneAudio is specifically designed for audio only
• The system is highly optimized to achieve best sound quality possible
• It comes with a complete and platform agnostic web interface (RuneUI) who allows you to configure and control the player, so you won't need a connected TV to control the music (well, Kodi also has remote control apps, but RuneUI is specifically designed around that)

I also use Kodi (OpenELEC) on another Rpi in my living room, and it's a wonderful piece of software, but I only use it to watch movies and TV series, not for music.

[nila]

Thanks for the reply.

It's sounding like there's not going to be too much difference for a 'lay' person like me with 'average' speakers attached just using mp3s?
With Kodi I'm having all my movies integrated as well and it's acting as the uPNP Server for all my media too.

[ACX]

My suggestion is: try it by yourself It's as easy as burn an image to a SD card, like you did for Kodi.

[surfninja]

Long time lurker but I registered just to reply to this post.

I have a my pi+wolfson DAC. I too have OpenELEC and RuneAudio. Each have support for the Wolfson DAC.

When I want to watch a movie or tv show, I boot an OpenELEC SD card.

When I want to listen to music I boot a RuneAudio SD card. I also have a Volumio SD card but that hasn't been used for a while and plan to re-purpose the card when I need one.

Yes, I could use OpenELEC to play music from my NAS but I find RuneAudio has better audio sonics, web radio stations and a much better GUI from my browser and android phone.

If you enjoy your 128kb MP3s on your TV speakers and you can navigate to your music within the OpenELEC gui, OpenELEC is probably good enough. If you want plan to connect to your pi to your stereo and listen to music, you probably will want a better audio out (DAC?) and a better audio player.

Like ACX said, try it.