Connecting Foobar to WiiM Pro through WiFi on Windows machines to stream local music files

[Cebolla]

@excelsius, to simplify things I suggest you remove the old foo_upnp plugin (which hasn't been maintained by its developer for several years) and instead install the well supported foo_out_upnp plugin (as highlighted by @DuckToller's 2nd pic). This will give you a far simpler user interface, with the ability of selecting in foobar2000 the WiiM Pro, or any other UPnP/DLNA streamer on the network, as if it were an output device.

 

Basically, the foo_out_upnp  plugin packages fb2k's own audio output as a (continuous) network audio stream, with the choice of it being either just plain raw 16 bit LPCM (aka L16) or in a WAV container or in a FLAC container. 

[Cebolla]

11 hours ago, excelsius said:

Just couple of clarifying questions:

 

1. I still cannot advance the tracks through the WiiM remote. I have to do it through Foobar only. Is there a way to control playback through WiiM? Luckily at least it still supports Pause/Play
2. With this plugin, I can only control the volume through the WiiM Pro remote. The Foobar or Windows sound control doesn't work as it did with the old plug in. Is there a setting that I need to change perhaps? It gives me the below error:
   1. Scalar volume control not supported with this device.
      Please use volume up / volume down menu commands or keyboard shortcuts.
3. Is there a better way of setting up this entire process?
4. Finally, I'm curious if any of you have experience with Roon or other paid services and whether they make playback much easier than this setup.

 

1. As I mentioned earlier, the foo_out_upnp plugin's purpose is to provide fb2k's audio output as a network stream - so the only part of the entire playback process that the Wiim can have any control over is the final flow of the networked audio data that it is receiving. If you require to actually remotely control fb2k's audio file player's functions, you really ought to use a fb2k remote control app.
2. 1. I should first point out that if you were actually using the old foo_upnp plugin's Control window as shown in your pic, the Control window has a volume control slider specifically for that purpose - I'm not sure how you managed to control the Wiim's volume without it (so by instead using fb2k's main window volume slider or Windows sound control).
   2. The reason why you are getting that volume control error message with foo_out_upnp is because your custom volume control slider doesn't know that you've installed foo_out_upnp, which uses fb2k's alternative (non-dB) using method for handling volume control. The developer of the custom volume control that you are using ought to have taken that into account. If you had instead been using fb2k's original default volume control slider, you would have noticed that it would change to a pair of volume minus/plus buttons & a volume mute/unmute button (see @DuckToller's first pic)  whenever you select a UPnP streamer as fb2k's output device. See this post by foo_out_upnp's developer Peter on the hydrogenaudio forum for further info:   https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php/topic,118190.msg976311.html#msg976311
3. If your plan is to continue using foobar2000 on your computer as the user interface, then there's really no better way of setting this up.
4. No (non-trial) experience with Roon, as I'm quite happy to continue using the free open source Logitech Media Server, via the web browser user interface provided by the Material Skin and the Music & Artist Information LMS plugins:                                                                                                     
5.