Dead silent dedicated Linux music server for USB DAC's.

jkelly · « **Reply #760 on:** 2 Aug 2011, 12:18 am »

No - I am just comparing it to the Mac Mini source in the same system.

Alexdad54 · « **Reply #761 on:** 5 Aug 2011, 11:11 pm »

Just wanted to show off my new custom black ART Legato with it's Triode Wire Labs power cord and ART SPDIFf and USB cables (plus one Nook Color to bind them).

Pat at ART really went the extra mile (more like a furlong!) to get a black case and face-plates for me (at a very modest extra cost) to match my other components and he also confirmed that this is the first use of a Legato with a Linux-based system on my Alix/Keces/modded MHDT Havana DAC setup. It already provides a tremendous improvement in transparency and sound-staging even before break-in.
Also many thanks to Nick for his help in getting me to this point....

TJHUB · « **Reply #762 on:** 6 Aug 2011, 04:12 pm »

I took the Alix over to a friend's house for a listening session and the only thing that won't work is GMPC. I can't even get NCMPC to run on the Alix as it says "connection refused". Any ideas what could be going on?

ted_b · « **Reply #763 on:** 6 Aug 2011, 05:20 pm »

Terry, stupid question but doesn't a new environment (friends house) require major edits to fstab and mpdconfig as the network, permissions, ip address, music file locations, etc are all different.

TJHUB · « **Reply #764 on:** 6 Aug 2011, 05:26 pm »

Quote from: ted_b on 6 Aug 2011, 05:20 pm

Terry, stupid question but doesn't a new environment (friends house) require major edits to fstab and mpdconfig as the network, permissions, ip address, music file locations, etc are all different.

Not a stupid question at all. The answer is yes. We just setup his network to mimic mine. EVERYTHING works fine except for GMPC and NCMPC. I can't figure it out. Doesn't matter now as we gave up.

nyc_paramedic · « **Reply #765 on:** 6 Aug 2011, 06:46 pm »

Quote from: TJHUB on 6 Aug 2011, 05:26 pm

Not a stupid question at all. The answer is yes. We just setup his network to mimic mine. EVERYTHING works fine except for GMPC and NCMPC. I can't figure it out. Doesn't matter now as we gave up.

Did you chnage the IP address the ncmpc and gmpc will connect to on the new network?

TJHUB · « **Reply #766 on:** 6 Aug 2011, 08:39 pm »

Quote from: nyc_paramedic on 6 Aug 2011, 06:46 pm

Did you chnage the IP address the ncmpc and gmpc will connect to on the new network?

Everything was working fine. I could use WinSCP to SSH into the Alix and the Alix saw the Windows share just fine. The only thing that wouldn't work is GMPC. Then I also couldn't get NCMPC to work either. It doesn't make any sense why it didn't just work. Oh well, I'm heading home now anyway...

nyc_paramedic · « **Reply #767 on:** 6 Aug 2011, 09:07 pm »

Quote from: TJHUB on 6 Aug 2011, 08:39 pm

Everything was working fine. I could use WinSCP to SSH into the Alix and the Alix saw the Windows share just fine. The only thing that wouldn't work is GMPC. Then I also couldn't get NCMPC to work either. It doesn't make any sense why it didn't just work. Oh well, I'm heading home now anyway...

Because GMPC or any client need the correct IP and port of the MPD daemon their connecting to. If your Alix was on a new network with an IP of 10.x.x.x and your GMPC was setup to connect to 192.x.x.x, i.e., the IP address of the Alix on your home network, then it can't connect.

TJHUB · « **Reply #768 on:** 6 Aug 2011, 11:03 pm »

Quote from: nyc_paramedic on 6 Aug 2011, 09:07 pm

Because GMPC or any client need the correct IP and port of the MPD daemon their connecting to. If your Alix was on a new network with an IP of 10.x.x.x and your GMPC was setup to connect to 192.x.x.x, i.e., the IP address of the Alix on your home network, then it can't connect.

Nope, not the issue. We setup his network to mimic mine. The Alix was still the original IP address and the network share computer was setup to be exactly as at my house. Even the gateway was the same. In my mind it should have worked.

Eudyptes · « **Reply #769 on:** 9 Aug 2011, 04:33 pm »

It's a couple of months since my first encounter with VoyageMPD, and that was only in the way of an experiment with a virtual machine. I've done nothing more since then.

But now I'm close to getting some suitable hardware I see VoyageMPD has moved from version 7 to 7.5, but it's no longer based on a reat-time kernel. Can anyone comment on this? Is the absence of a real-time kernel a backward move? Has anyone made the kind of real-time tweaks posted here

http://sites.google.com/site/computeraudioorg/linux-for-audio/setting-up-alsa

and heard a difference?

Eudyptes · « **Reply #770 on:** 13 Aug 2011, 05:00 pm »

I think I can answer apart of my own question now having stumbled across this site after visiting the Voayage MPD pages.

http://kubotayo.web.fc2.com/voyagempd.html#voyagempd075

It says "Recently Linux 3.0 was released. Force threaded irq-handlers is effective in this version without RT patches." which I take to mean some aspects of the RT kernel are availalbe, or at least irq tuning can be done.

But the real question is it of value when you're just using a computer for audio playback?

nyc_paramedic · « **Reply #771 on:** 13 Aug 2011, 08:53 pm »

Quote from: Eudyptes on 13 Aug 2011, 05:00 pm

I think I can answer apart of my own question now having stumbled across this site after visiting the Voayage MPD pages.

http://kubotayo.web.fc2.com/voyagempd.html#voyagempd075

It says "Recently Linux 3.0 was released. Force threaded irq-handlers is effective in this version without RT patches." which I take to mean some aspects of the RT kernel are availalbe, or at least irq tuning can be done.

But the real question is it of value when you're just using a computer for audio playback?

I would say no. Others will disagree. If your _capturing_ multiple streams, i.e., recording on a desktop, I can see where latency can have a major impact. But on Alix hardware/software, i.e., a headless, lean 2 playback machine and 500Mhz being plenty for 24/192 and maybe even 32bit/384Khz, playback of 2 channel audio doesn't warrant precision control of latencies.

ANd IIRC, mpd doesn't have RT support last time I looked. Though ALSA does.

Eudyptes · « **Reply #772 on:** 14 Aug 2011, 09:36 pm »

I suppose in the end you can just add the software tweaks and hear for yourself ... its' all free in Linux.

You mentioned mpd does not have RT support, the site I quoted above appears to have a version for download that does!

praedet · « **Reply #773 on:** 14 Aug 2011, 10:23 pm »

Just a note for the folks using usb to spdif converters. If it doesn't have its own power supply, get it one. It makes a BIG difference...

nyc_paramedic · « **Reply #774 on:** 9 Sep 2011, 11:06 pm »

A couple of things...

I just noticed that an up to date version of Debian Unstable has ALSA 1.0.24 and ALSA utils 1.0.24. So, those who want to use regular Debian on any old PC can have 24/192 capability.

And, I'm selling a Soekris net4801 SBC with 256 MB RAM, This has the PCI slot for those who want to get a Juli@ card up and running with Voyage Linux. Comes with case and I'm only asking exactly what I paid for it: $90. I'll pay the $10 USPS priority mail shipping. I take PayPal or USPS Money Order.

Specs here:http://soekris.com/products/net4801.html

Nick

Sagittarius · « **Reply #775 on:** 13 Oct 2011, 09:45 pm »

Here is my first project 24 bits/192 kHz with an USB to spdif transport April Stello U3 and a V-Dac I

I am using 2 plugcomputers (Dockstar): one as a NAS and tftp server, the other as the MPD server.
The NAS Docktar (nfs, webdavs, tftp) runs Debian on the USB hard disk, has a WiFi usb key and is connected via Gigabit to the MPD Dockstar.
The MPD Dockstar boots through the network and runs archlinux.

Why two Dockstar for the music?
- usually the Dockstar boots on a usb storage (key, hdd). But, I did not want the usb controller to be shared with the usb transport (April Stello U3) to be sure to get the best flow. So the mpd Dockstar boots on the network by tftp (have to say the 2 Dockstar are connected together by the Ethernet gigabit port). So its usb port (and controller) is completely dedicated to the April Stello U3.

- the tftp server function is assumed by a second Dockstar equipped with an usb disk and a small usb wifi key. On this NAS Dockstar, I have also installed an NFS server and a webdavs server.
- with some adjustments made on the NAS Dockstar (masquerade), the mpd server Dockstar music playback and playlists are controlled by every house computers (mac/pc/whatever) and smartphones by just entering its ip.

I am delighted with the sound. Thanks to the April Stello U3 + V-dac. It is much much better than my old CEC CD player.
Decoding 44.1 KHz flac files takes ~ 1.5-2.5% time processor - 96 kHz 5% - 192 kHz 11-12%

For my brother, I'm going to set this other project (24 bits/96 kHz):

adelias · « **Reply #776 on:** 19 Oct 2011, 11:03 am »

Nice job

GarfL · « **Reply #777 on:** 27 Oct 2011, 02:59 am »

Just wanted to add my experience to this thread.

I bought the Voyage MPD starter kit from the Voyage Store. Assembled it rather fast, setup an NFS share, powered it up and it it was live. It was pretty cool to PuTTy into the system and issue commands to play music, all within an hour of opening the box. I then started to scan the forums to see how to configure it. After a couple of hours of research, I realized there was a guide in the box it came in, doh! Still, the guide leaves a lot unsaid. Glad I finally found this thread.

My main playback was jRiver 16, from a local library on my desktop computer running Windows 7 into a Audinst HUD-Mx1 DAC. I have a Windows Home Server 2011 setup, and I toss a copy of my lossless rips and downloads on a server folder there. I assumed I needed to mount using an NFS share, as that was all the information I could find with Google. I realized I had an issue with permissions, and everytime I added a new album, I would run a chmod -R 777 /mnt/public. I got pretty good at that, and kept telling myself I would fix the permissions once I got tired of that.

In the middle of this thread, someone mentions SAMBA and CIFS. So I tried that out last night, and after some effort, got it to work. It turned out the majority of the issues I had was due to permissions on the Windows Home Server, somehow I managed to totally mess the share permissions up when using NFS, and I had to log in as Administrator and take ownership of the entire folder and propagate them down.

After that, it was pure bliss. I could even update the database from within my MP clients! Really, it was rather simple once I realized what it was that I needed. That was the hard part, realizing what you actually need in your system. It was very much like any music player setup, except configuring from the command line. Setup your library. Point MPD at the share. Configure it for bit perfect playback. Pretty much the same thing I did for jRiver.

If anyone has a similar setup, please feel free to ask me any questions.

nyc_paramedic · « **Reply #778 on:** 31 Oct 2011, 03:06 pm »

Quote from: GarfL on 27 Oct 2011, 02:59 am

Just wanted to add my experience to this thread.

I bought the Voyage MPD starter kit from the Voyage Store. Assembled it rather fast, setup an NFS share, powered it up and it it was live. It was pretty cool to PuTTy into the system and issue commands to play music, all within an hour of opening the box. I then started to scan the forums to see how to configure it. After a couple of hours of research, I realized there was a guide in the box it came in, doh! Still, the guide leaves a lot unsaid. Glad I finally found this thread.

My main playback was jRiver 16, from a local library on my desktop computer running Windows 7 into a Audinst HUD-Mx1 DAC. I have a Windows Home Server 2011 setup, and I toss a copy of my lossless rips and downloads on a server folder there. I assumed I needed to mount using an NFS share, as that was all the information I could find with Google. I realized I had an issue with permissions, and everytime I added a new album, I would run a chmod -R 777 /mnt/public. I got pretty good at that, and kept telling myself I would fix the permissions once I got tired of that.

In the middle of this thread, someone mentions SAMBA and CIFS. So I tried that out last night, and after some effort, got it to work. It turned out the majority of the issues I had was due to permissions on the Windows Home Server, somehow I managed to totally mess the share permissions up when using NFS, and I had to log in as Administrator and take ownership of the entire folder and propagate them down.

After that, it was pure bliss. I could even update the database from within my MP clients! Really, it was rather simple once I realized what it was that I needed. That was the hard part, realizing what you actually need in your system. It was very much like any music player setup, except configuring from the command line. Setup your library. Point MPD at the share. Configure it for bit perfect playback. Pretty much the same thing I did for jRiver.

If anyone has a similar setup, please feel free to ask me any questions.

Do you like the sound better than your Jriver setup? Notice any difference?

GarfL · « **Reply #779 on:** 2 Nov 2011, 12:14 am »

Yes, I like the Voyage MPD better than the jRiver Windows 7 setup. I don't know if I have the experience to quite articulate what it is, but it seems more natural. The Windows setup seems a bit more upfront in certain areas, but that might be because of the gain settings, making it hard to compare.

I haven't done a lot of A/B testing, nor do I plan to. I have enjoyed finding what I think are minor flaws in recordings, but whether that is because of better listening ability over time, headphone break in, or the Voyage MPD itself, I cannot say. Maybe over time I can put this into more objective terms instead of subjective. For now, I will likely always prefer a natural sound, with a bias towards the high ends, I can't stand things too boomy.