HQPlayer's Network Audio Adapter

[Miska]

11 minutes ago, acatala said:

That feature interests me. It's nice just pushing the power button to power on/off and forget about shuting down.

 

Short push of power button (the type of soft button that most computers have these days) triggers normal shutdown on HQPlayer image as well...

 

13 minutes ago, acatala said:

It would be a nice option too, indeed, but I should run the shutdown command or leave the NAA powered on.

 

You can check if the power button triggers normal shutdown. But at least my HQPlayer Embedded and NAA computers all work that way. So I just push button to power up and then push the button again to power down. Never have to deal with shutdown commands...

 

[acatala]

15 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Short push of power button (the type of soft button that most computers have these days) triggers normal shutdown on HQPlayer image as well...

 

 

You can check if the power button triggers normal shutdown. But at least my HQPlayer Embedded and NAA computers all work that way. So I just push button to power up and then push the button again to power down. Never have to deal with shutdown commands...

 

 

The power supply (LPS) is external, so it powers off the hard way 😀. No option for soft button push.

 

I will issue shutdown commands when I have to. For convenience I was thinking of building a homemade web page in order to shutdown my different end points by just clicking a button on screen. I would parametizer every button in order to send the appropiate shutdown command to the intendend endpoint.

 

I will work on this when I have a few time. Perhaps it would be a fancy feature for HQPlayer Embedded too. I will let you know.

 

[Miska]

36 minutes ago, acatala said:

The power supply (LPS) is external, so it powers off the hard way 😀. No option for soft button push.

 

OK!

 

UPBoard has the button, but if you have the standard passive cooled case for it you need a small tool to push it...

 

[acatala]

3 hours ago, Miska said:

 

OK!

 

UPBoard has the button, but if you have the standard passive cooled case for it you need a small tool to push it...

 

 

I didn't see that power button. It seems easy to push with a simple tool. I will use it. Thanks!!

 

[bodiebill]

Two questions:

 

(1)

I downloaded the naa-356-x64.7z image as I would like to try the NAA-only OS.

I unzipped it, then made a bootable usb stick from the img file using Balena Etcher on my mac.

Alas, my PC did not recognize the stick as bootable.

Then I used Rufus on my Windows PC to create the bootable stick from the image, but again it was not recognized.

What am I doing wrong?

 

(2)

Suppose I get this to work: will the NAA OS recognize my Intel X520-DA1 ethernet (fiber) card?

(This card is plug and play for Ubuntu and Gentoo, but so far did not work on Windows for me.)

[Miska]

13 hours ago, bodiebill said:

(1)

I downloaded the naa-356-x64.7z image as I would like to try the NAA-only OS.

I unzipped it, then made a bootable usb stick from the img file using Balena Etcher on my mac.

Alas, my PC did not recognize the stick as bootable.

Then I used Rufus on my Windows PC to create the bootable stick from the image, but again it was not recognized.

What am I doing wrong?

 

Please check that you have UEFI boot enabled in BIOS settings. Legacy (BIOS) boot is not supported.

 

13 hours ago, bodiebill said:

(2)

Suppose I get this to work: will the NAA OS recognize my Intel X520-DA1 ethernet (fiber) card?

(This card is plug and play for Ubuntu and Gentoo, but so far did not work on Windows for me.)

 

I'm not sure, but I'd expect it to work.

 

[Miska]

Now there's updated build of NAA image for x64 architecture... Version 3.5.6.1.

 

[audiofool]

Testing NAA on a cubox.  I am using a cheap 4 channel dac on my desktop UMC404HD.  Direct connected to computer I can set Channel offset to 2.  This allows the rear channels to avoid the mix controls on the dac.  When using NAA the option is greyed out.  The work around is to map channels 1 and 2 to 3 and 4 - this doubles the network traffic and shouldn't be needed.  I have tried a custom asound.conf to map the channels but networkaudiod seems to ignore asound.conf.  Any ideas?

[bodiebill]

On 6/2/2019 at 11:21 PM, Miska said:

 

Please check that you have UEFI boot enabled in BIOS settings. Legacy (BIOS) boot is not supported.

 

 

I'm not sure, but I'd expect it to work.

 

 

Thanks Miska. I etched version 3.5.6.1 and UEFI boot works!

 

Alas, the X520-DA1 card is not recognized:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/CDWZnANVxyxDWMFbA

 

In comparison, GentooPlayer does recognise it as enp1so: 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/7eMzFDxBKUSmUGJi8

 

Note that I have 3 NIC's: 2 normal ethernet, 1 fiber (the X520). The latter sounds better.

[Miska]

2 minutes ago, bodiebill said:

Thanks Miska. I etched version 3.5.6.1 and UEFI boot works!

 

Alas, the X520-DA1 card is not recognized:

https://photos.app.goo.gl/CDWZnANVxyxDWMFbA

 

In comparison, GentooPlayer does recognise it as enp1so: 

https://photos.app.goo.gl/7eMzFDxBKUSmUGJi8

 

Note that I have 3 NIC's: 2 normal ethernet, 1 fiber (the X520). The latter sounds better.

 

Ahh, it is 10 Gbps card, I probably have not included drivers for those...

[bodiebill]

2 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

Ahh, it is 10 Gbps card, I probably have not included drivers for those...

 

If drivers would be added at some future time, I would be delighted 🙂

[Miska]

7 hours ago, audiofool said:

Testing NAA on a cubox.  I am using a cheap 4 channel dac on my desktop UMC404HD.  Direct connected to computer I can set Channel offset to 2.  This allows the rear channels to avoid the mix controls on the dac.  When using NAA the option is greyed out.  The work around is to map channels 1 and 2 to 3 and 4 - this doubles the network traffic and shouldn't be needed.  I have tried a custom asound.conf to map the channels but networkaudiod seems to ignore asound.conf.  Any ideas?

 

Only option at the moment is to use matrix to reroute the channels in four channel output mode.

 

HQPlayer accesses ALSA hardware devices, so the mappings created in  asound.conf don't work. You can try to manually change "hw" to "plughw" in HQPlayer configuration file to enable mappings. But possibly it just drives both HQPlayer and the NAA nuts.

 

[Miska]

4 hours ago, bodiebill said:

If drivers would be added at some future time, I would be delighted 🙂

 

I started adding the drivers and then noticed I had screwed up the build in other ways too. So now the drivers should be there and also the build is otherwise fixed... Please re-download...

 

[bodiebill]

37 minutes ago, Miska said:

 

I started adding the drivers and then noticed I had screwed up the build in other ways too. So now the drivers should be there and also the build is otherwise fixed... Please re-download...

 

 

That is fast, thanks!

The X520 NIC is now recognized and assigned a DHCP address (192.168.1.21).

The music plays... 🙂

[bodiebill]

@Miska

Do you know how to install the X520 drivers on Windows Server 2019 core to be used with the Windows version of NAA?

[acatala]

On 5/29/2019 at 12:39 PM, Miska said:

 

The two images are mainly different in the way they run. NAA image runs from RAM, so it likely doesn't get broken even if you pull the power randomly (HQPlayer image shouldn't either though). But due to that, it boots quite a bit slower than HQPlayer image since it needs to load entire filesystem to the RAM at once.

 

Another difference is that HQPlayer image runs multiple network interfaces in bridged setup, while NAA image doesn't create any bridge and assumes just one ethernet interface being in use. So the NAA image has lower CPU load/traffic for networking functions.

 

You can also disable HQPlayer startup from the image with command "systemctl disable hqplayerd" which will make the HQPlayer image boot even faster.

 

 

Yes, I can try to update it some time soon, for example next week. Ping me if it doesn't appear by end of next week...

 

 

Hi @Miska

 

I have downloaded the new NAA image and installed it in a USB stick. 

 

Native DSD works now with the new image. Thanks!!!

 

I have measured boot times (from power button push to see DSD in Rotel display. The measured times are:

 

HQPlayer image with hqplayerd enabled: ~33 seconds

HQPlayer image with hqplayerd disabled: ~30 seconds

NAA image: ~37 seconds.

 

I guess I will stay with NAA image because I can just push the power button freely 😁. Besides, perhaps if use internal eMMC drive instead the USB stick, it could boot even faster.

 

 

[Miska]

1 hour ago, acatala said:

I guess I will stay with NAA image because I can just push the power button freely 😁. Besides, perhaps if use internal eMMC drive instead the USB stick, it could boot even faster.

 

Yes, eMMC is likely faster. As well as faster USB sticks. Most of the time goes to reading the entire filesystem to RAM. Of which most is binary firmware images for various different hardware (that is never used).

 

[Miska]

3 hours ago, bodiebill said:

@Miska

Do you know how to install the X520 drivers on Windows Server 2019 core to be used with the Windows version of NAA?

 

I have no idea about such things. I would stick with either normal Windows or maybe Windows IoT, but at least not Server for any multimedia use.

 

[audiofool]

20 hours ago, Miska said:

 

Only option at the moment is to use matrix to reroute the channels in four channel output mode.

 

HQPlayer accesses ALSA hardware devices, so the mappings created in  asound.conf don't work. You can try to manually change "hw" to "plughw" in HQPlayer configuration file to enable mappings. But possibly it just drives both HQPlayer and the NAA nuts.

 

I changed the device from hw:.. to default and it used my asound.conf  Seems to be working fine though it reverts when changing some settings.  I also noticed that I can change the period_time to values not available in the menu.  I also noticed that the hw_params switched from RW_INTERLEAVED to MMAP_INTERLEAVED on the NAA.  Shouldn't MMAP be the default mode anyway?

Thanks again Miska

 

[Miska]

3 hours ago, audiofool said:

I changed the device from hw:.. to default and it used my asound.conf  Seems to be working fine though it reverts when changing some settings.  I also noticed that I can change the period_time to values not available in the menu.  I also noticed that the hw_params switched from RW_INTERLEAVED to MMAP_INTERLEAVED on the NAA.  Shouldn't MMAP be the default mode anyway?

 

MMAP is useful only in some cases, with USB drivers it just burns extra CPU. I recommend using "plughw:" instead for "default" unless you have defined default to be of type "plug" and routed it explicitly in asound.conf. (normally "default" ends up going to something like PulseAudio for rate conversion and mixing)

 

And yes, changing settings overwrites the manually done changes, so you need to redo...

 

[audiofool]

21 hours ago, Miska said:

 

MMAP is useful only in some cases, with USB drivers it just burns extra CPU. I recommend using "plughw:" instead for "default" unless you have defined default to be of type "plug" and routed it explicitly in asound.conf. (normally "default" ends up going to something like PulseAudio for rate conversion and mixing)

 

And yes, changing settings overwrites the manually done changes, so you need to redo...

 

I have the following asound.conf that routes the stereo channels to the back channels 3 and 4.  I am overriding the default.  Seems to still be working well.

pcm.!default {
   type route
   slave.pcm "hw:CARD=U192k,DEV=0"
   slave.channels 4
   ttable.0.2 1
   ttable.1.3 1
}

That's interesting about mmap.  Seems that using any type of plug switches to mmap mode.  I couldn't find a way to avoid mmap mode except to use hw:....  Sending 4 channels over the network almost doubles the CPU usage on the NAA so asound.conf seems to be the solution.

The UMC404HD is extremely fussy, I believe it polls extremely and incorrectly fast trying to minimize latency.  With the default NAA image I get regular clicks.  I modified the NAA image to move the usb and ethernet interrupts and pinned the cpu's.  CPU usage is down to 4% and clicks are now gone.

SOME OF THE CHANGES:

echo -n 'performance' > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_governor
echo -n 'performance' > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/cpufreq/scaling_governor
echo -n '792000' > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_min_freq
echo -n '792000' > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/cpufreq/scaling_min_freq
echo -n '792000' > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq
echo -n '792000' > /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu1/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq

# MOVE USB0 DAC INTERRUPT TO CPU2
echo -n '2' > /proc/irq/57/smp_affinity

# MOVE ETH0 INTERRUPT TO CPU1
echo -n '1' > /proc/irq/59/smp_affinity
 

Thanks again

[Miska]

3 hours ago, audiofool said:

I have the following asound.conf that routes the stereo channels to the back channels 3 and 4.  I am overriding the default.  Seems to still be working well.

pcm.!default {
   type route
   slave.pcm "hw:CARD=U192k,DEV=0"
   slave.channels 4
   ttable.0.2 1
   ttable.1.3 1
}

 

OK, in this case it should become similar to plughw.

 

3 hours ago, audiofool said:

That's interesting about mmap.  Seems that using any type of plug switches to mmap mode.  I couldn't find a way to avoid mmap mode except to use hw:....  Sending 4 channels over the network almost doubles the CPU usage on the NAA so asound.conf seems to be the solution.

 

For this case mmap is likely best anyway.

 

3 hours ago, audiofool said:

# MOVE USB0 DAC INTERRUPT TO CPU2
echo -n '2' > /proc/irq/57/smp_affinity

# MOVE ETH0 INTERRUPT TO CPU1
echo -n '1' > /proc/irq/59/smp_affinity

 

The image has irq-balance running, so it should reach something similar automatically...

 

[audiofool]

10 hours ago, Miska said:

 

OK, in this case it should become similar to plughw.

 

 

For this case mmap is likely best anyway.

 

 

The image has irq-balance running, so it should reach something similar automatically...

 

I couldn't find irq-balance running or any service?

[acatala]

@Miska,

 

my Up Gateway now boots the NAA image version 3.5.6.1 from the eMMC drive. The boot time is ~33 seconds.

 

The procedure was quite simple:

 

I prepared a microSD card + USB adapter in wich I copied with Rufus a Debian Live image.

I downloaded de compressed NAA image. After that I uncompressed it and copied it in my NUC running Debian. This is the NUC where Roon Core and HQPlayer both run. I copied here for convenience, so I can use scp from the Debian Live.

I booted the Up Gateway with de Debian Live image and run:

scp root@ip_nuc:/root/naa-3561-x64.img . (do not forget the final point!)

 

Then I executed:

sudo dd if=/root/naa-3561-x64.img of=/dev/mmcblk0

 

After a few seconds the NAA image was ready in the eMMC drive. Then, with the USB still inserted, I booted again the Up Gateway and went into the BIOS and set the eMMC as the boot device.

 

That's all!

 

 

[Miska]

On 6/6/2019 at 8:34 PM, audiofool said:

I couldn't find irq-balance running or any service?

 

Does "systemctl status irqbalance" say anything?