Case Study / PS Audio Inc
A certified, cost-reduced streaming platform supporting six protocols across PS Audio's entire product lineup.
PS Audio, a leading manufacturer of high-end audio equipment, needed a network streaming platform that could support multiple major streaming protocols, including Roon, Qobuz, AirPlay, Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, and DLNA, while dramatically reducing per-unit cost compared to their existing third-party streaming module. The platform had to be production-ready, certifiable, and designed for long-term field maintainability across multiple product lines including streamers, streaming DACs, and streaming DAC-preamps.
Grinalds Solutions designed and delivered a complete network streaming platform built on a low-cost single-board computer selected for its strong compute headroom and low per-unit cost at scale. Each streaming service runs in its own isolated Docker container, orchestrated via Docker Compose, enabling independent service updates, clean isolation, and simplified debugging. This containerized architecture replaced an expensive, closed third-party module with a flexible, open platform that PS Audio controls entirely.
We integrated six streaming protocols, combining official SDKs for Roon and Qobuz with proven open-source implementations for AirPlay, Spotify Connect, Tidal Connect, and DLNA. A unified ALSA output arbitration layer prevents service conflicts when multiple protocols compete for audio output. Over-the-air updates are delivered through a private Git repository with SSH deploy keys and a redundant filesystem structure that ensures safe rollback behavior, so no device can be bricked by a failed update. Remote diagnostics via Ngrok TCP tunnels give the support team direct field access when issues arise.
The platform achieved Roon Ready certification after approximately eight months of close coordination with Roon's validation team. Persistent logging, implemented after early deployment revealed the difficulty of diagnosing silent OTA failures, now provides full field observability. The result is a certified, cost-reduced streaming platform that supports reliable multi-protocol playback, safe over-the-air updates, and remote diagnostics, ready for deployment across PS Audio's entire product lineup.
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