Call for testers! Daphile

[kipeta]

Update: coming up on two hours for the restart! And what's weird is that the Synology sits here in my office and doesn't seem to be being accessed. Daphile wouldn't just do this if my pc rebooted to my normal SSD (Windows Server 2012) accidentally, would it? I assume it would say Daphile not found.

Something has gone wrong with the restart. Please do hard shutdown and restart again.

 

Afterwards you'd probably better enable "Warm restart: Reboot through BIOS" setting. If it's not enabled system uses Linux kexec restart that seems to have some problems on some hardware. I'm actually considering to make it default in next version.

[kipeta]

Hi kipeta,

 

I do the following setup and it works (imperfectly):

1. Boot to Ubuntu, edit /etc/grub/40_custom

2. Refer to the /boot/grub/menu.lst in daphileBoot partition, copy the text to the 40_custom file

3. Run "grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg"

Then reboot and it shows the following error, I can press a key to continue. Then everything else are okay.

 

 

Do you have any idea what's wrong with my setup?

Also, do I need to redo the above setup (as it is manual override) each time after firmware upgrade?

Thanks a lot.

 

Try following:

Boot to Ubuntu.

Edit /etc/grub.d/44_daphile:

#!/bin/sh
echo "Adding Daphile menu entry." >&2
exec tail -n +4 $0

menuentry "Daphile" {
   set root=(hd1,msdos1)
   linux /boot/fw1403140824/kernel boot_uuid=d4a32faf-3bc3-4615-819c-4622824fa30a data_uuid=cd064d6f-2d50-49ef-93e3-098e04d12322 daphile=fw1403140824 video=vesafb:mtrr:3,ywrap vga=788 loglevel=0 panic=1 acpi=force console=tty2 processor.max_cstate=1
}

Replace proper values (you can get them from the DaphileBoot partition /boot/grub/menu.lst) for:

• set root=
  
• fw versions at both kernel path and daphile=
  
• boot_uuid and data_uuid
  

 

Remember to run update-grub.

 

This worked on my Ubuntu laptop. Grub2 booted Daphile from USB flash.

[kipeta]

May I know what's the battery meter suppose for? I am running Daphile on my laptop, when I unplug the AC power, the battery icon keeps blinking, and there is a pop up message on every click warning me that the power may run out anytime. In fact, my battery still ok for say one hour more.

 

Should it be a power meter showing the (estimated) remaining time for running or percentage? But it somehow doesn't work on my laptop?

There is a bug that has been fixed in pre-release. It's available at: http://www.daphile.com/tmp.4LbPU6aKEl

 

You can update to pre-release if you go to http://daphile/cgi-bin/Devel and insert the download link of the pre-release version (eg. http://www.daphile.com/tmp.4LbPU6aKEl/daphile-14.03-b131548-x86_64.iso) to input field besides the Install button and press Install.

 

BTW. Pre-release has also option to force the CD drive read speed.

[kipeta]

Ok guys got a new NAS, Synology ds213j. Having trouble getting Daphile to recognize it. Any tips?

 

Preliminary wiki has some tips for you: Storage - Daphile Wiki

[kipeta]

Hi Joel,

I get exactly the same problem as you. It seems the root cause is the name resolution of local area network on iPad when connected via Wi-Fi. Here's my case:

I connect to my home network using my wi-fi only iPad (iPad 3rd gen, iOS 7.0.x). I can't load the page by entering http://daphile. For both Safari and Chrome (latest version). However, it's okay if I connect by using IP address, say http://192.168.0.200 (applies to my LAN only).

 

With iOS browsers you should be able to use http://daphile.local address.

[kipeta]

Joel,

Good idea. Yes, I'll likely do that this time, but large NAS access and loading is important to me (as an overall eval). Kinda like Jplay Mini..maybe it sounds a little better but access and GUI is horrible and not worth the ever so slight tradeoff.

 

I can't remember, the settings had a default folder structure for music on the Daphile's flash drive. Was it simply /Music?

 

If you are running Daphile from the USB flash that's created with unetbootin or similar it will not support very large music libraries. That kind of Daphile setup is meant to be used as an installation media or for quick testing. It reserves by default only 128MB (you can set the size larger with unetbootin "Space used to preserve..." parameter) space for storing the internal media server databases, etc... It's not enough for large libraries and there will be some unexpected problem (media server crash most certainly) when the storage space runs empty.

 

So I really would recommend to store some music on flash and do the initial testing with that. And for more serious usage I strongly recommend to make full installation. That's done by using the unetbootin created flash and the web UI at Settings -> System Firmware. You will need another empty disk (USB flash, HDD or SSD) for that. It really needs to be empty, i.e. all partitions deleted manually. This inconvenience is due to system security. I didn't want to implement a system where you could accidentally (or intentionally) delete/overwrite existing data.

[kipeta]

Kipeta,

Thanks for the involvement here. I am willing to try this again. I am going to reformat the USB thumb drive and start over. Now that I know the nomenclature to attach via NFS my Synology folders the hard part is done.

 

Question: although my Chord Qute EX DAC's USB input does not seem to be Linux friendly (come up "dummy" at 48khz, and no Linux driver seems to exist) my two USB-SPDIF boxes are. I am most interest in getting the Audiobyte Hydra-X+ working cuz it does 384k and DSD128 (both of which my DAC can handle). The aborted attempt yesterday included Daphile recognizing the Audiobyte USB box, showing it at 384k max, etc. No problem...except that it seemed to be passing no signal to the DAC. The Audiobyte showed a USB signal, music was advancing on the web interface, time was elapsing, but my DAC was unaffected. Why would that be? And did it have anything to do with the checkboxes of hw, 1 and hw,0 as "mixers"? My lesser-but-still-good Matrix X-SPDIF was also recognized but everytime I went to it on the web interface it was reset to "disabled". I did get it to play for a few minutes but did something else to muck up the install before I got a chance to hear it seriously.

 

You could contact me via the form at www.daphile.com and we could continue with email exchange.

 

Please send also the output from address: http://daphile/cgi-bin/audioinfo.cgi

 

And I could also recommend to try the latest pre-release that's available at: http://www.daphile.com/tmp.4LbPU6aKEl/

[kipeta]

CHANGES on March 26th 2014:

• Faster kexec reboot disabled by default. It does not fully initialize the hardware and this is known to cause some very strange problems.
  
• Drive partition table erase tool in initial settings at console (USB-boot)
  
• Configurable sample rate change and DoP-PCM mode switch delay parameters for Squeezelite player
  
• Credits at Info tab to show license information of included packages
  
• Some new configurable options for CD ripping
  
• Bug fixes and other minor changes
  

Update via your Daphile web UI or download from www.daphile.com.

 

Any feedback is warmly welcomed!

[kipeta]

Regarding the CD ripping, I just tried and get some comment:

...

5. Even though the system can search and display Chinese text of my Chinese album, after ripping, I found the filename can't stored in Chinese text (see attachment)

....

It's seems that the default filename clean-up is a bit too effective ;-).

 

Could you please try the pre-release that has an option to disable "Filename clean-up". When disabled Daphile still removes the illegal characters so that the filenames should be compatible for Windows, OS X and Linux.

 

You can install pre-release if you go to address http://daphile/cgi-bin/Devel of your Daphile PC (requires full installation; not compatible with unetbootin flash) and copy following download link into the input field besides the Install button and press Install.

http://www.daphile.com/tmp.0EDjoLMRBZ/daphile-14.03-b281231-x86_64.iso

 

I'll consider those other proposals later. They require a little bit more thinking. Thanks anyway for the feedback.

[kipeta]

CHANGES on March 31th 2014:

• Linux kernel series 3.12 with realtime patch is still having some issues and that's why the kernel is reverted to latest stable RT patched version in the 3.10 series (please contact if this causes problems on your setup).
  
• Some other minor bug fixes and changes
  

Update via your Daphile web UI or download from www.daphile.com.

 

Any feedback is warmly welcomed!

[kipeta]

Hi,

 

I found two issues with this version:

1. With the "Devel" mode enabled, as you know, there's a debugging footnote under the main screen (shown when mouse scroll to bottom). However, when I click "disable devel mode" and press "save", the "Devel" button on left side menu is gone, but the debugging footnote still exists, even I press other menu buttons to refresh the page.

2. I add a 2T blank disk into daphile as a second drive. It allows me to create Daphile system (boot and data partition). Everything is ok. After reboot and change the share name, I can see this 2T DaphileData share in network. However, when I copy files to it, I found the copy halt after some time and then I can't copy anything to it anymore, due to permission denied (it has write permission before, but no write permission after that halt). At first I thought that's my hardware not stable that overheat, after detail checking the temperature, I found this is a program bug triggered by the Squeezebox server rescan of library. I guess when it is doing scanning, the system force stopping the CIFS service and restart as read-only mode sharing. That makes my copying fails after every few minutes of copying.

 

Item1: They two different option. You have to disable "Show CGI and environment variables on every page" on Devel page.

 

Item2: Do you mean that you are booting Daphile from disk 1 (that has also DaphileData partition) and the other "DaphileData" partition on disk 2 is the one that you are having problems with? Please contact me on this with the contact form on www.daphile.com and we could continue by email exchange.

[kipeta]

Not sure if this has been asked already but does daphile not support .shn format? I just replaced some badly converted mp3 bootlegs with the original .shn and found I can't play them in daphile? If not should I try and convert them to flac and at what bitrate?

I don't think that Shorten (.shn) is supported. Recommend definitely to convert them to FLAC - both are lossless formats.

[kipeta]

My friend who is using Daphile to play DSD files, he told me that the server keep refreshing the music library while he was playing DSD files. He stores the music data file on NAS and he said he has not change (add/delete) any file on the music library. Do you have any idea?

 

Or, is it possible to allow user to define how often to do the music library scanning?

 

I think your friend already contacted me by email.

 

I'm guessing that the library scanning hasn't ever completed successfully. It's quite possible that there is only one problematic file (not necessarily DSD file) that's interrupting the scanning. And when the "new" non-scanned files are accessed via the "Music Folder" hierarchy (as they are not available at "Album/Artists/Genres/Years" database hierarchy) the media server always triggers a new rescan. Note, I'm just guessing at the moment.

 

I recommend to increase Scanner logging verbosity at Settings -> Advanced Media Server Settings -> Advanced -> Logging. Rerun "Clear library and rescan everything" and check the log file for possible errors.

[kipeta]

Why it shows only two temperature values now? As I remember, sometimes it shows three values, the third one should be the CPU temperature. It seems having different behavior in this page if Daphile is running on USB flash or running on SSD (like now).

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]11848[/ATTACH]

 

Is there repeatable difference between SSD and USB boot? Or random behavior in case of USB boot? Is this on the same computer where you had USB DAC detection problems when booted from USB (message on 04-12-2014, 06:25 PM)?

[kipeta]

CHANGES on April 17th 2014:

• Squeezelite promoted as the default player (SqueezePlay still available)
  
• PCM resampling configuration for Squeezelite
  
• Configuration options for ALSA buffer time and period count parameters
  
• Package updates, eg. security update for openssl
  
• Other minor changes and bug fixes
  

Update via your Daphile web UI or download from www.daphile.com.

 

Any feedback is warmly welcomed!

[kipeta]

Kipeta:

I've been further testing your software and various hardware for it.

 

To my surprise the audio quality of the ANALOG out of the Shuttle SX36V is astonishingly good.

However I cannot get the analog out of my Fit-Pc2 or Fit-Pc2i to work. Same goes for the integrated SPDIF out. Both outputs seem closly connected, and maybe require drivers? I'm not sure. Would be nice though, as these Nettops are TINY !!!! USB works excellent of course.

 

Another point:

Wouldn't it be nice to have a shutdown timer or automatic option? Say if there is no audio played for xx minutes, daphile shuts down to save power?

 

Good work!

Regards,

Tobi.

Does Daphile recognize the audio devices on Fit-PCs? If there is player initialized for them but they are just muted then you have to check the "Mixer controls" settings for the Audio Device. You probably have to enable some of them, eg. Speaker. If you want you use digital SPDIF output you should probably change the "Device:"-selection (quite often something like Digital out [hw:1,1]. SPDIF also requires IEC958 "Mixer control" enabled.

 

I think you could implement the shutdown functionality with "srvrpowerctrl"-plugin (https://code.google.com/p/srvrpowerctrl/).

[kipeta]

Could someone please explain what each of the following settings will affect?

 

I'm assuming at least the first two impact latency, but would love to know for sure and more specifically what these settings do.

 

Thanks,

 

Joel

 

Buffer time (ALSA)

Period count (ALSA)

nrpacks

 

Buffer time defines the size of the ALSA ring buffer in milliseconds for the audio samples.

Period count "divides" the ring buffer to periods and one period is the interval of interrupts to the audio application (in order to fill more samples to ring buffer).

 

nrpacks is related to USB audio device driver and it basically defines maximum number of 1ms packets that are transferred per one USB Request Block.

 

So what?

 

My own view and experience is that if you have good enough asynchronous USB DAC (really asynchronous, independently powered, galvanic isolation between USB receiver and actual DAC+analog circuitry, etc...) those parameters don't effect on sound quality as long as the parameters are sensible and don't cause any buffer underruns (and have also some tolerance for high system load situations). If the DAC does not meet those requirements the chances that computer HW+SW effect on sound quality are much higher and the effects may be caused by many reasons (HW, SW, parameters, specific combinations of them, etc...). You just have to experiment and try to find the best settings (or buy better DAC ;-).

[kipeta]

Thank you for your answer, I tried activating ALL Mixers, no luck either.

I can chose in the main settings between SPDIF out "Digital out [hw:1,1]" and "Analogue [hw:0,1]" both will not work.

I assume it's a driver thing with this mini Computer.

You should not probably enable all of them. Please send me the output from address: http://daphile/cgi-bin/audioinfo.cgi

If you contact me using the contact form on www.daphile.com we could continue with email exchange.

[kipeta]

Hi Kipeta,

 

I´m now using a new DAC that use Tenor usb chip, unfortunately this dac couldn´t work with hi res files, I just wondering when you planning to update Daphile with a new RT Kernel or maybe implement some apps from triode, here is the link:

 

WORKING: Audio-gd Async USB to Squeezebox Touch (up to 192k / 24b). TEAC UD-H01 and other TE8802L - based DACs may work, too.

 

Regards,

 

Alexandre.

 

I contacted Triode who has made the patch for Squeezebox Touch but he did not recommend it: "It was a complete hack which is incompatible with normal dacs so I would not recommend it.".

 

The code snippet on the forum is unfortunately not a complete patch and it's also for an older kernel version. So it's not even easy to try using on that. It seems to be fixing the errors that should be fixed on the DAC firmware and Tenor does not seem be interested to it. Is the company even alive anymore? I could not access their website.

 

I found one Tenor named patch (tennor_8802-linux.patch) from Polish site: 4HiFi.pl :: Artyku

However this change was already in the kernels that the previous and the current Daphile versions use.

 

So currently I'm not able to do anything for this but if you found some more information about possible fix (patch for the driver) I'm willing to take another look.

[kipeta]

New Daphile version is now available! Holy yes, it is getting better every time!

 

Thanks!

 

CHANGES on May 14th 2014 version:

 

• RT-kernel upgraded to 3.12.19-rt30. RT 3.12 series reached stable status. KNOWN ISSUE: Some AMD multicore CPUs don't boot without C1E disabled in the BIOS settings (same problem with RT 3.10 series).
  
• Backport patch for USB audio driver: Improve buffer size computations for USB PCM audio (no more nrpacks kernel driver parameter).
  
• Option to initialize a new empty data drive in Settings -> Storage.
  
• DFF ID3 tag scanning fixed. "Clear library and rescan everything" required.
  
• Other minor changes and bug fixes
  

Any feedback is warmly welcomed!

[kipeta]

Hi Kimmo,

 

It seems that the latest version has unify the URL to http://daphile.local'>http://daphile.local .Am I right? Because I was able to use http://daphile on my Windows 7 (w/Chrome) to access to Daphile but now I need to use http://daphile.local'>http://daphile.local instead.

 

http://daphile.local'>http://daphile.local does not work on my Windows 7.

http://daphile. works (notice dot at the end; I think it's the way Windows handles mDNS but I could be wrong; I don't use Windows).

http://daphile works on my setup because my router supports local DNS and Daphile get registered on router with DHCP.

[kipeta]

So far everything sounds good on my setup. Do you have an rsync or similar backup solution planned yet?

I have considered it but I don't have yet a robust and clever enough solution in my mind. I was considering rdiff-backup for long but then I read about its data loss problems... I don't want face that kind of problems with Daphile. Backup feature is something that people want to trust.

[kipeta]

Hi Kipeta, do you have any references/docos to this partition prep process?

 

I'm trying to install Daphile on a OSX SSD partition. The PC is a Mac mini 2011 running 10.9.3. SSD has OSX, Bootcamp and recovery partitions on it.

 

BTW, I have managed to run Daphile from a USB stick. My DAC is also on the USB bus and I would like to run Daphile either from an SD card or from a SSD partition to reserve the USB bus for the DAC only.

 

I have experimented with SD card option and it looks like you cannot boot from a SD card. Adding a second HDD/SSD is not an option.

 

Many thanks for your effort. Daphile sounds decent and is very lightweight. Nice work.

 

Hi,

 

I installed once Daphile to my wife's MacBoor Air (MBA) and here is a rough description how I did it:

- feed some space from the HDD by reducing the size of OS X partition using OS X Disk Utility (I recommend 4-8GB)

- installed rEFIt (rEFIt - An EFI Boot Menu and Toolkit)

- booted MBA with gparted live USB and did following with gparted:

- Create 1024MB DaphileBoot ext4 partition (Partition -> New)

- Create DaphileData ext4 partition and give it the remaining disk space

- "Apply" changes on gparted

- booted MBA and executed rEFIt gptsync i.e. "Start Partitioning Tool" at boot menu

- booted Daphile from USB

- installed Daphile to HDD using the web UI

 

That's all if I remember right. You should get Linux Penguin to rEFIt boot menu.

[kipeta]

CHANGES on the May 22nd 2014 version:

• Kernel upgrade to the latest stable version 3.14.4. CONFIG_PREEMPT_RT patch dropped. Improved stability and compatibility.
  
• Experimental support for the DICE based Firewire DACs, eg. Mytek Digital Stereo192-DSD DAC and Weiss INT202/203/DAC202 (none tested).
  
• Suspend functionality
  
• Power button configuration possibility
  
• Some other minor changes and bug fixes
  

Update via your Daphile web UI or download from www.daphile.com.

 

Any feedback is warmly welcomed! I would be especially interested to hear how do the DICE based Firewire DACs work.

[kipeta]

Hello kipeta,

I tried the last daphile-14.05-b220905-x86_64 on my mac mini. My Mytek Digital Stereo192-DSD DAC (with firmware 1.7.6) is not recognized with the Firewire.

I look forward to the future versions!

Thanks for trying. If you would like to help me on debugging the problem please contact me through the contact form on www.daphile.com.