Self-Hosted Sound: Building My Personal High-Fidelity Music Streaming Setup

🎵 Self-Hosted Sound: Building My Personal High-Fidelity Music Streaming Setup

In a world where everything is now a subscription — from task managers to weather apps — streaming music has become another monthly bill we all accept without thinking. But as someone who has always leaned into open-source and self-hosted solutions, I began to ask myself a simple question:

Why pay every month for compressed audio when I could host my own music server — in full lossless quality — and actually own my collection?

🎯 Why I Decided to Host My Own Music Server

My journey into self-hosting started with file storage and backups, but I always knew I’d eventually get to music — a deeply personal part of my daily life. After experimenting with Raspberry Pi NAS setups and finally settling on the Synology DS923+ (more on that in my previous post), it was time to bring my music dreams to life.

😤 The Frustration with Streaming

Services like Spotify and YouTube Music are convenient — but only to a point. Once you start paying attention to audio quality, especially with decent headphones, you start noticing:

• Artifacts and muddiness in MP3s
• Lack of instrument separation
• Inconsistent mastering across tracks
• And most importantly: no real control

Even the platforms that do offer lossless (like Apple Music or Tidal HiFi) either cost more or lock you into proprietary apps and ecosystems.

🎧 Understanding Audio Quality: Why FLAC Wins

Let’s compare a few popular formats:

Why FLAC?

• Compresses audio without sacrificing a single bit of quality
• Open-source and widely supported
• Gold standard for digital archival

Most streaming services still use lossy formats like OGG or AAC. FLAC, on the other hand, lets you experience music as it was meant to be heard — every breath, every reverb tail, every subtle cymbal decay.

🛠️ My Self-Hosted Music Stack

Everything runs on Docker, orchestrated with Portainer on my Synology DS923+. Here’s the tech stack I use:

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version: "3.8"

services:
  plex:
    container_name: plex
    image: lscr.io/linuxserver/plex:latest
    devices:
      - /dev/dri:/dev/dri
    privileged: true
    network_mode: host
    environment:
      - PUID=1026
      - PGID=100
      - VERSION=docker
    restart: unless-stopped
    volumes:
      - /volume1/docker-config/plex:/config:rw
      - /volume1/Movies:/Movies:rw
      - /volume1/Music:/Music:rw

  ytdl_material:
    image: tzahi12345/youtubedl-material:latest
    container_name: ytdl_material
    restart: always
    depends_on:
      - ytdl-mongo-db
    ports:
      - "8998:17442"
    environment: 
      ytdl_mongodb_connection_string: 'mongodb://ytdl-mongo-db:27017'
      ytdl_use_local_db: 'false'
      write_ytdl_config: 'true'
    volumes:
      - /volume1/docker-config/ytdl/appdata:/app/appdata
      - /volume1/Music/:/app/audio 
      - /volume1/docker-config/ytdl/video:/app/video
      - /volume1/docker-config/ytdl/subscriptions:/app/subscriptions
      - /volume1/docker-config/ytdl/users:/app/users

  ytdl-mongo-db:
    image: mongo:4
    container_name: mongo-db
    restart: always
    logging:
      driver: "none"
    volumes:
      - /volume1/docker-config/ytdl/db:/data/db

Key Components

• Plex — My media hub that serves both music and movies. With Plexamp, I get a slick music player with offline sync, gapless playback, loudness leveling, and proper metadata matching.
• YouTubeDL-Material — To grab music directly from YouTube in high-bitrate MP3 or even convert to FLAC.
• MongoDB — Required for managing subscriptions and media metadata for ytdl-material.
• Portainer — Manages all containers and stacks.
• Tailscale VPN — Secure remote access to my stack from anywhere.

🗺️ Architecture Overview

Below is a diagram of how everything fits together:

Plexamp: My go-to music player for a high-fidelity, self-hosted experience.

🎧 Listening Setup: Audiophile on a Budget

People often think that to enjoy lossless audio, you need to spend thousands on gear. That’s not true. I use the KZ EDX Pro — a no-frills In-Ear Monitor (IEM) that costs under $10, and yet delivers sound quality that puts most $100 earbuds to shame.

Why In-Ear Monitors?

• 🎧 Neutral tuning — Hear what the artist intended.
• 🔇 Passive noise isolation — Great for immersive listening.
• 💸 Insanely affordable — No need to break the bank.
• 🛠️ No digital trickery — Just clean analog sound.

Pair this with a lossless FLAC stream from your own server, and you’re getting an audiophile-grade experience for a fraction of the price of a streaming subscription and AirPods.

🎼 Sourcing FLAC Media: A Topic of Its Own

Building a high-fidelity music library starts with collecting quality FLAC files—and that’s a journey worth its own deep dive! There are several ways to build your collection:

• Buy FLAC Albums Online:
  Support artists and get lossless audio directly from reputable sources:

  • Qobuz – Buy and download FLAC albums in various resolutions.
  • Hindi Lossless – A blog for Hindi FLAC music collections.
  • TamilFLAC – India’s No.1 lossless music shop & downloads.

• Community Recommendations:
  Music forums and audiophile communities often share tips on where to find high-quality, legal FLAC downloads.

• And yes, there’s always Telegram…
  Some music enthusiasts use Telegram channels to share and discover FLAC collections. Just remember to respect copyright and support artists when you can!

Stay tuned for a future post where I’ll share my favorite methods and tips for building a top-notch FLAC library!

📝 Final Thoughts

There’s a strange joy in pressing play on a song and knowing it’s yours, stored on your hardware, playing through your software, and sounding the way it was recorded.

Self-hosting my music is about more than just sound quality — it’s about control, privacy, and a love for technology. It’s about owning the entire stack, from disk to driver.

Whether you’re into open-source, into audio, or just tired of handing money to companies for things you could do yourself — setting up a lossless self-hosted music server might just be the best next step in your homelab journey.

Have questions or want to share your own setup? Drop a comment or reach out!