Add AirPlay support to Bluetooth speaker with Raspberry Pi

I've owned the Harman Kardon Aura Studio for five years now. It still boasts impressive sound quality, and its design is clean and minimalistic. However, it lacks AirPlay support.

Since receiving the HomePod mini as a gift from my wife, I've begun to appreciate its advantages. You don't need to navigate to your Bluetooth settings on your iPhone or MacBook to switch the sound output and wait for a connection. While listening to music, you can use your phone as usual, and notifications and other app sounds will be directed to your phone speaker, rather than a speaker somewhere in your apartment.

I also have a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+, which, despite being quite old, serves well as a HomeAssistant controller, PiHole DNS server, or for other tasks where you don't need a powerful computer with active cooling and high power consumption.

I decided to explore Raspberry Pi-compatible receiver software for AirPlay, which can receive sound input from Apple devices and send it to my HK Aura Studio via Bluetooth. After spending several evenings trying to install and configure it on my RPi, I've successfully set it up and wanted to share the instructions here.

Required Hardware

• Raspberry Pi with a memory card. I personally use the 3B+ model with a 32GB microSD card. For AirPlay 2, it is recommended to use at least a Raspberry Pi 2, Raspberry Pi Zero 2 W, or a more advanced model. While a less powerful model can be used for AirPlay 1, this post will specifically describe how to set up AirPlay 2.
• An Apple device compatible with AirPlay 2, such as an iPhone, MacBook, iPad, or any other Apple device you have. Please note that iTunes on Windows does not support AirPlay 2 from the Raspberry Pi, but it does support AirPlay 1.
• Any speaker or headphones with Bluetooth, USB, or 3.5mm input. Raspberry Pi can connect to various devices, but for this guide, I will use the Bluetooth speaker Harman Kardon Aura Studio.

Installing OS

We will use Raspberry Pi OS Lite, the latest version as of 2024 (Debian 12 "bookworm"), along with Shairport-sync as the AirPlay receiver and Bluealsa to enable output to a Bluetooth device.

Raspberry Pi OS Lite is a lightweight version of Debian without a graphical user interface (GUI). I chose it because it doesn't include PulseAudio, which I found challenging to set up with Shairport-sync.

You can download Raspberry Pi OS from the official site: https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/operating-systems/

Install it on your memory card using the Raspberry Pi Imager, available at: https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/

Using SSH

I prefer using SSH to connect to my RPi, and you can set it up before flashing the memory card with the Imager—just enable it in the settings. After booting up, you can connect to your RPi using SSH:

ssh pi@raspberrypi.local

Alternatively, you can use a keyboard and monitor to set everything up, but then you won't be able to copy and paste commands easily. 🙂

Setting it up

Now, let's build and install Shairport-sync. You can follow the original instructions on GitHub using this link.

For your convenience, I've listed every command I used for the installation:

sudo apt update

apt install --no-install-recommends build-essential git \
  autoconf automake libtool libpopt-dev libconfig-dev \
  libasound2-dev avahi-daemon libavahi-client-dev libssl-dev \
  libsoxr-dev libplist-dev libsodium-dev libavutil-dev \
  libavcodec-dev libavformat-dev uuid-dev libgcrypt-dev xxd

git clone https://github.com/mikebrady/nqptp.git
cd nqptp
autoreconf -fi
./configure --with-systemd-startup
make
sudo make install

systemctl enable nqptp
systemctl start nqptp

git clone https://github.com/mikebrady/shairport-sync.git
cd shairport-sync
autoreconf -fi
./configure --sysconfdir=/etc --with-alsa \
    --with-soxr --with-avahi --with-ssl=openssl \
    --with-systemd --with-airplay-2
make
sudo make install

Adding Bluealsa Repository

To simplify the installation process, we'll add a new repository for Bluealsa. Alternatively, you can build and install Bluealsa manually from source.

echo "deb http://archive.raspbian.org/raspbian/ bookworm main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/armbian.list

printf 'Package: *\nPin: release n=bookworm\nPin-Priority: 100\n' | sudo tee --append /etc/apt/preferences.d/limit-bookworm

sudo apt install bluez-alsa-utils

Connecting your Bluetooth speaker

Let's make an attempt to connect our Bluetooth speaker. Begin by making it visible to other devices, and then proceed with the connection:

bluetoothctl scan on
# here you will see devices, you need to find yours
# which should be shown as
# [NEW] Device B8:01:01:01:01:01 HK Aura Studio
# copy that MAC adress and use it for pairing:

bluetoothctl pair B8:01:01:01:01:01

# after pairing, connect to the device and make it trusted
bluetoothctl connect B8:01:01:01:01:01
bluetoothctl trust B8:01:01:01:01:01

Next time, you can find your speaker's MAC address using the bluetoothctl devices command.

Now, let's test the connected speaker. Reduce the volume and download an example .wav file to play:

# set the desired volume level using alsamixer, I'd say 30% is enough
alsamixer -D bluealsa 

# let's test!
wget https://www2.cs.uic.edu/~i101/SoundFiles/BabyElephantWalk60.wav
aplay -D bluealsa BabyElephantWalk60.wav

You should be able to hear the music.
Verify the volume level; if you can't hear it, it might be set too low for your speaker.

Setting up the new output device

Create a new configuration for your speaker output device:

sudo nano /etc/asound.conf

pcm.hk {
 type plug
  slave {
    pcm {
      type bluealsa
      device <mac address of your device>
      profile "a2dp"
    }
  }
  hint {
    show on
    description "HK Aura Studio"
  }
}

aplay -D hk BabyElephantWalk60.wav

You should be able to hear the music once more.

Configuring shairport-sync

Now, we need to update the Shairport-sync configuration:

sudo nano /etc/shairport-sync.conf

general =
{
	name = "HK Aura Studio";
};

sessioncontrol =
{
	allow_session_interruption = "yes";
};

alsa =
{
	output_device = "hk";
};

Testing and setting up shairport-sync daemon

Now, let's restart the Raspberry Pi and test Shairport-sync:

sudo reboot

Verify that your speaker is connected after the reboot:

bluetoothctl info

# You should see the following:
# Paired: yes
# Bonded: yes
# Trusted: yes
# Blocked: no
# Connected: yes

Start the server:

shairport-sync -v

Connect to it with your Apple device and play music; it should be successfully played through your Bluetooth speaker.

Next, enable the server daemon:

sudo systemctl enable shairport-sync
sudo systemctl start shairport-sync

That's it!