Some time ago when the Radio Paradise FLAC streams including meta data first came online, I had compared the UI for Moode and Volumio as it relates to these streams on Raspberry Pi.
I looked at that again today as we've been revisiting these FLAC streams, to see if things still stand about the same or not, and to try those new stream links with Volumio.
Earlier today in this thread there are posts with screenshots of Moode, showing the various new FLAC streams and their meta data, along with customized radio station icons that help to visually identify them. Tonight I connected a Raspberry Pi running Volumio, to see how it might render those differently from Moode.
Turns out Moode is superior in all but one case. Volumio does not allow the use of a station icon when creating your own stations like Moode does, so even though the same stream links do work, you can't assign a station icon, and in some cases, the meta data was either not there, or incomplete on Volumio as compared to Moode.
Not a big deal of course, especially for anyone who treats these internet "radio" stations like they would treat an AM/FM broadcast, you don't exactly sit there staring at the frequency readout/display with old school radio, so if treating these internet radio stations as background music, then lack of a station icon or even the meta data isn't going to be a deal breaker if simple music playing is the goal.
But if using internet radio for music discovery purposes, then the meta data is actually important in identifying exactly what you are listening to at a glance.
There is one interesting exception to Moode's superiority in this regard, and it's the same as the last time I had compared Moode to Volumio for internet radio. Somehow with Volumio having built an actual Radio Paradise plug-in for their distro, they remain the only game in town offering both the meta data and actual album art on those Radio Paradise FLAC streams, and with that, Volumio is the best looking and most polished UI for Raspberry Pi when streaming the Radio Paradise stations:
I chose the custom background skin of a vinyl LP record, but the rest of the above is the standard Volumio UI for the Radio Paradise FLAC streams with meta data, and it is best in class for Raspberry Pi.
In some ways I'm surprised Volumio doesn't just apply that same coding to the UI for all internet radio streams that support meta data, however from where they are getting that album art is a mystery to me, and as far as I know a proprietary exclusive for displaying internet radio streams of this kind.