A little project of mine — SROVA

[Sasha Masand]

Hi all,

While surfing the net looking for audio-related forums, I stumbled upon AudioShark and could hardly believe it — an actual friendly place for audio people to hang out. Well done!

A little about me. My background is in TV broadcasting, production and voice-overs. These days I spend most of my time developing software, and I am fortunate enough not to need to work for money anymore.

That led me to start what I call a B-ME project — a Beyond Money Endeavour.

That project became SROVA.

I probably consume at least six hours of music a day and have always loved tinkering with hardware. Over the years I have used all sorts of music software, including Roon, LMS and others. I liked different things about each of them, but the fact that a lot of good audio software also costs a fair amount of money got me thinking:

What would I build if I could make a music player work exactly the way I wanted it to — and then simply give it away?

So that is what I did.

SROVA is a free, open-source, bit-perfect audio player that can run on something as modest as a Raspberry Pi 4. It is essentially my take on the way I like to listen to music, built around the three sources I use most: TIDAL, my local FLAC library and Internet Radio.

The player itself can sit out of sight connected directly to the DAC, while I control everything from a phone, tablet or browser.

Version 1.4 has just been released, and I am particularly pleased with the SROVA Cast part of it. That was enormous fun to build. It lets a small Pi Zero 2 W drive a dedicated Now Playing display while the actual audio continues through the main player and DAC.

You can see the whole thing here:

https://srova.music

I completely understand that Linux can be a deal-breaker for some people. But in 2026, thanks to AI, I don't think it necessarily has to be anymore.

Point your favourite AI assistant at srova.music, tell it what computer or Raspberry Pi you have, and ask it to walk you through installing SROVA step by step.

Then watch the magic unfold. ;-)

I will be very happy to answer any questions, technical or otherwise.

All for now,

Sasha

 

[Kingrex]

I use Euphony Stylus. Great software. Limitation are the search function. No filters to look for say, rock or classical. It only puts up what Qobuz lists in Qobuz order. And texh support is non existent.

 

[Sasha Masand]

I use Euphony Stylus. Great software. Limitation are the search function. No filters to look for say, rock or classical. It only puts up what Qobuz lists in Qobuz order. And texh support is non existent.

Hi Kingrex,

Thanks for the detailed reply — that is useful context.

I had not used Euphony Stylus before, so I had a look at it after reading your post. It is clearly aimed at the same general kind of listener who wants the computer to disappear into the system and just leave the music and the DAC in front of them.

The Qobuz filtering issue you mention is interesting. Some of that comes down to what the streaming-service API actually exposes, but there is also scope for the player itself to build a better discovery/filtering layer around the metadata it receives. So I can understand why that would be frustrating if you are trying to browse by things like genre rather than simply follow Qobuz’s own presentation.

SROVA only supports TIDAL, local FLAC files and Internet Radio at the moment, but Qobuz is definitely something I plan to add in the future.

One of the things I want to avoid is adding services just so I can tick another box on a feature list. I would rather wait until I can integrate Qobuz properly and make it fit the way SROVA is meant to be used.

The support issue you mention is also something I take seriously. One of the nice things about building SROVA as a Beyond Money Endeavour is that I can spend time talking directly to users without worrying whether the conversation is commercially worthwhile.

If you do get a chance to try SROVA at some point, I would be very interested to hear what you think coming from Stylus.


Sasha

 

[Shadowfax]

Welcome!

 

[NewAlkyogre]

what you need for a player without compromises

good power supply
low power consumption
good compartments
a good oxco clock
well shielding
software that cuts down back ground programs
cooling of the system

to.make it this way you cannot build a perfect streamer for a few hundred dollars, sadly not, else I had one.

 

[Sasha Masand]

what you need for a player without compromises

good power supply
low power consumption
good compartments
a good oxco clock
well shielding
software that cuts down back ground programs
cooling of the system

to.make it this way you cannot build a perfect streamer for a few hundred dollars, sadly not, else I had one.

I agree that if someone wants to build a no-compromise hardware streamer, there are plenty of decisions around power, clocks, shielding, cooling and so on.

SROVA is a little different — it is the software player rather than the hardware streamer itself. I wanted it to run happily on something inexpensive like a Raspberry Pi, but there is nothing stopping someone from running it on a much more elaborate dedicated audio PC.

My goal on the software side is simply to get the source audio to the selected DAC bit-perfectly, keep the player headless, and make it pleasant to use.
The nice part is that everyone can decide for themselves how far down the hardware rabbit hole they want to go. ;-)

Sasha