Open source multi-room audio

Seamless audio in every room

Strobe actively maintains perfect synchronisation between all the players in your home.

Play the same song in every room, listen to different things upstairs & downstairs or make every room different — either way Strobe will ensure that everything sounds perfect.

Affordability without compromise

Powered by Raspberry Pi. You provide the amplifier and speakers that suit your home and budget.

Strobe is equally perfect for bringing new life to that old set of computer speakers you have lying around or for powering your top-of-the-range amplifier. You can start small or go big — it’s up to you.

Audio perfection

Strobe delivers your music via CD-quality lossless streams.

Your music is not re-encoded or re-compressed. If your library is stored as 16-bit 44,100kHz FLAC files, then that’s what your Strobe will deliver.

Modern home networks are more than capable of dealing with 176,400 KB/s raw PCM streams, so why compromise?

For hi-quality digital-to-audio conversion Strobe uses IQaudIO’s Pi-DAC+ or Pi-DACZero.

Plug & play

Just plug things in and you’re good to go.

Strobe eshews knobs, dials, settings, configuration and tuning. There’s nothing to understand beyond some basic concepts. Nothing to type except your wi-fi settings. Nothing to tweak except the volume.

Cutting edge technology

Strobe is a modern re-imagining of streaming audio built on the latest, greatest technology.

Strobe is powered by a Elixir server which leverages Erlang’s famous reliability to provide an audio system that’s always there when you need it. The player software is compiled to an embedded application using the Nerves build system.

The user interface is built in Elm — a functional language that compiles to a fast Javascript application and communicates over Websockets so that the user interface is fast and responsive.

Open source

The source code to the Strobe system is made available under the terms of the GNU General Public License version 3

So that you’re free to copy, modify and contribute to the system that we hope you come to rely on.

Subscribe for Strobe Audio updates

Strobe is in heavy development. If you're interested in using it in your home but aren’t comfortable in the command line then subscribe to the mailing list and we’ll be in touch with progress reports.

What kind of mobile phone do you have?
What desktop operating system do you use at home?
Where would you prefer to stream you music from?

Work in Progress

Strobe is a work in progress. Although the streaming & synchronisation side of things are working and stable, the user-facing aspects (e.g. installation and interface) are very much a work in progress.

You’re welcome to try Strobe, and we’ll do our best to help, but this is not a finished product.

About Strobe

Strobe was started as a side project by Garry Hill prompted by a general dissatisfaction with the open-source multiroom audio solutions that were available and out of a desire to learn the programming language Elixir by solving a real problem.

It seemed like a good idea at the time.

Now nearly 2 years of development later the “20%” project has has successfully scratched the original itch and is now providing the Hill family home with high quality audio in perfect sync.

Working on the assumption that other people might be wanting the same thing, the only sensible option was to release the result to the world...