Tweaker's Rash

[Fran]

I tried AP on an old PC - note it was an old P4 PC with standard power supply not much ram and absolutely no tweaks. My laptop running jplay in standalone mode was miles better. I left it there and moved on.

frd1996 linux build sounded very good indeed though, so YMMV.


Fran

[nige2000]

I tried AP on an old PC - note it was an old P4 PC with standard power supply not much ram and absolutely no tweaks. My laptop running jplay in standalone mode was miles better. I left it there and moved on.

frd1996 linux build sounded very good indeed though, so YMMV.


Fran

Could have done with knowing that a few hours ago
Actually very ordinary for the sound it reproduced

[jkeny]

OK, got my RPi
Made a bootable SD card with Picoreplayer on it https://sites.google.com/site/picoreplayer/home/news
It contains Squeezelite along with TinyCore Linux http://tinycorelinux.net/
Booted it & connected to my router via LAN - the RPi URL is 192.168.0.14
Connected my USB DAC to it & it's recognised fine
Have LMS running on my laptop which is connect to router via WiFi
How do I play music?
Used URL http://127.0.0.1:9000/ on web browser & see the usual squeezelite screen but play doesn't connect
Where do I associate LMS to the RPi URL?
The How-to is here but no mention of LMS connection https://sites.google.com/site/picorepla ... e/how-to-1

[LowOrbit]

John

I can't help. I fully confess I am a Linux thickie. I tried and failed to get a NAS type access working, but that was with Volumio, not Picoplayer. I plan on trying a Squeeze client approach when I have the time, but for now Volumio and a USB drive work well enough.

But I would not think that LMS/client would have a problem if they are on the same subnet.

Mark

[Aleg]

OK, got my RPi
Made a bootable SD card with Picoreplayer on it https://sites.google.com/site/picoreplayer/home/news
It contains Squeezelite along with TinyCore Linux http://tinycorelinux.net/
Booted it & connected to my router via LAN - the RPi URL is 192.168.0.14
Connected my USB DAC to it & it's recognised fine
Have LMS running on my laptop which is connect to router via WiFi
How do I play music?
Used URL http://127.0.0.1:9000/ on web browser & see the usual squeezelite screen but play doesn't connect
Where do I associate LMS to the RPi URL?
The How-to is here but no mention of LMS connection https://sites.google.com/site/picorepla ... e/how-to-1

I believe Squeezelite would normaly autodetect an LMS in the network.
Can you verify Squeezelite is actually running?
Can you ping the ip-adress of LMS machine, from the RaspberryPi?

If so you might try to restart Queezelite with the -s <ip-adress of LMS> parameter, that would bind the Squeezelite to that specific LMS and bypasses the autodetect

Cheers

Aleg

[frd1996]

Not everything that has "linux" and "audiophile" words in the label delivers what it promises. How many windows based players claimed they are "audiophile", just few of them could be called with that name.

Just to put some light on the Linux (messy) audio situation, we have following entities in the the picture:

level 0: kernel drivers: ALSA or OSS (deprecated)
level 1: kernel driver emunation: ALSA can emulate OSS API
level 3: userspace: ALSA lib (just to make it easier to use, but can be setup to do data conversion/upsampling/mixing transparently)
level 4: userspace: media servers (routing): jackd, gstreamer, others .... jackd is for audio only, gstreamer can do video as well
level 5: userspace: consolidation API: phonon is example
level 6: userspace: players (you name it)

Does the above mean that the player must use levels 1-5 to produce the sound. NO. It can though - it is a developer choice. Let's use an example here: AP linux, mentioned here in the thread. It uses a player (does not really matter which one), that talks to jackd, and jackd talks to ALSA (via alsalib). Three elements in the chain. Let's look a the interfaces: player loads the file, say 16bit, so the fomat is INT16, then converts the data into FLOAT32 (because jackd uses such format). jackd takes FLOAT32 and converts it back to INT16/INT24/INT32 - whatever format ALSA driver/lib expects). Of course all conversions are bit-perfect, but the point is that they happen. Of course jackd runs at very high priority, but if you look at this configuration you may ask yourself: why it is even here? Is it necessary?

Look at what MQN is doing in simplification: 1. load the file into memory (and I suppose that at this time the data is converted the to final sound driver format) 2. deliver it to the sound driver. JPLAY I guess have the same principle. Now if it works on Windows, why would not it work on Linux? So ideal situation is this:

level0: kernel driver: ALSA
level1: userspace ALSAlib (passthrough mode - directly to HW)
level2: the player

I exercised configurations as AP linux in the past and they were not satisfactory. My feelings towards AP linux are exactly the same as Fran's: checked it out and moved on.

F

[tony]

Fascinating thread especially when you compare it to the USB thread recently started. Can just watch and listen to what is happening here but with great interest. From what Gordon has suggested with regard to the Nad streamer and I wonder are a lot of devices used by EMM Labs,DCS etc using linux of some sort? Not aware of any information on whether this is how they do it and maybe a lot of it is windows based.

[jkeny]

Hey guys, I feel that rash coming on again - can't fathom what's wrong with my LMS/Picoreplayer setup.
The reason I chose Picoreplayer was that it looked like it was a simple enough process i.e create the bootable SD card & you're done. I also thought that have gone through a bit of a learning curve with LMS/JLP I would be covered in that area. I also liked the idea of remote control from any phone/tablet, etc. & also the possibility of compiling JLP for this

I can ping my LMS server from my RPi. I can log into my RPi. When I look under the player tab in my LMS server settings it reports "Your player was not found"
So even though Picoreplayer on RPi says Squeezelite is running, it seems like it isn't - I used the "TOPS" linux command to see what processes are running & don't see Squeezelite listed.
Looks like I need to hit the Picoreplayer forum to find a solution

Until I get a solution I might try Volumio with local USB audio storage to get an idea of how this sounds through a USB DAC & then through an I2S DAC to get an idea of the sound of this?

Oh, Nige, there are two linear regs on the board a 3.3V one which also feeds a 1.8V one - I reckon a nice 3.3V battery supply here will optimise the power :)

[Aleg]

Fascinating thread especially when you compare it to the USB thread recently started. Can just watch and listen to what is happening here but with great interest. From what Gordon has suggested with regard to the Nad streamer and I wonder are a lot of devices used by EMM Labs,DCS etc using linux of some sort? Not aware of any information on whether this is how they do it and maybe a lot of it is windows based.

Naim streamers, which are very good in their audio processing. only use an FPGA Blackfin for the audioprocessing, like suggested by Frederik, and are not OS-based. Other streamers are usualy some computer based solution, often with a Linux and mpd as player.

Naim's server products like HDX and UnityServe are Windows based, but not their streamers NDS,NDX, ND5XS

Cheers

Aleg

[DaveF]

Blackfin's are DSP chips from Analog Devices, not actual FPGA chips. Xilinx though provide FPGA extender eval boards to offload some of the workload from the Blackfin DSP to the FPGA for rapid prototyping. In Naim's case, that's a hell of a lot of processing power on tap there for something as "simple" as audio.