wtfplay

[AnotherSpin]

5 hours ago, rando said:

Your work is very much appreciated I assure you.  

 

Very much agree, Fryderyk is doing fabulous work.

[jmmbarco]

it really has a special appeal. Great great job!

[frd__]

@rando wtfplay started as an experiment, without clearly defined goals
other than SQ. I treat this project as a hobby. Initially this software
was for my own use. I started sharing it and people started liking it. This
is how we got to where we are at the moment.

 

I do not think that I have a crystal clear vision of what is the ultimate
shape of wtfplay. I think the experiment will continue and we will see what
will happen. I mean - if I come up with ideas that may potentially boost the
SQ then I will try them. There are also other areas that I would like to
explore. The main ones are:

 

  * single board computers (ARM, x86) as the potentially the target platform
    for wtfplay.

  * network support, either via accessing remote filesystem, or via treating
    wtfplay as streaming endpoint. That would also include some sort of
    remote control.

 

In any case, I do appreciate the feedback of the users and I note the
suggestions.

 

I hope that this answers your question.
 

[bodiebill]

59 minutes ago, frd__ said:

  * network support, either via accessing remote filesystem, or via treating
    wtfplay as streaming endpoint. That would also include some sort of
    remote control.

 

That would be really welcome function-wise, but could it be done without a negative effect on SQ?

[rando]

@frd__Most certainly did.  It occurred to me this question might have been the most difficult request possible.  A better place is a great answer considering what you've assembled already.  This summed up my thoughts very well.

 

On 10/3/2016 at 1:21 PM, Norton said:

For me the ultra light, no frills approach just seems to make sense SQ-wise. Looking forward to seeing where this project goes, but really hope you keep Wtfplay true to its first principles.

 

[bodiebill]

On 18/09/2017 at 2:22 PM, bodiebill said:

For now I have decided to keep loading the music files from a 64GB MSEX SLC (not that the type should matter) usb stick, also because I prefer to off-line convert flac to wav anyway for serious listening.

 

It is all a matter of mind set.

In the old days we treated every vinyl disk with care, cleaned it, and turned it over half-way.

Later we had shelves of CD's which we took out and played one by one.

And now we are spoiled? We want to have a 4TB collection at our fingertips from a lazy couch?

Why?

Why not see my NAS music collection as a set of CD shelves. I can easily and quickly convert many albums to the preferred WAV or DSD format putting them on a usb stick (for instance with JRiver which automatically creates a logical folder structure), and feed wtfplay with that. Just like taking out a stack of CD's to play in the next few days.

And somehow it feels good: no frills, hardly any tweaking (killing Windows processes is a science in itself – not needed for wtfplay), only 2 usb ports used (the usb drive and the dongle for my wireless mini keyboard), and great sound which has further improved (or am I kidding myself?) after I disconnected the ethernet cable, which is no longer needed.

[AnotherSpin]

4 minutes ago, bodiebill said:

 

It is all a matter of mind set.

In the old days we treated every vinyl disk with care, cleaned it, and turned it over half-way.

Later we had shelves of CD's which we took out and played one by one.

And now we are spoiled? We want to have a 4TB collection at our fingertips from a lazy couch?

Why?

Why not see my NAS music collection as a set of CD shelves. I can easily and quickly convert many albums to the preferred WAV or DSD format and put them on a usb stick within minutes, and feed wtfplay with that. Just like taking out a stack of CD's to play in the next few days.

And somehow it feels good: no frills, hardly any tweaking, only 2 usb ports used (the usb drive and the dongle for my wireless mini keyboard), and great sound which further improves (or am I kidding myself?) when I disconnect the ethernet cable, which is no longer needed.

 

Agree. I can not understand all the praises on certain popular software solutions only because they provide album covers on a screen, artist's info or give some advisory on what listen next by analogy (what a bullshit!). Wtfplay command line is more than enough, imho.

[bodiebill]

Two questions, probably for Fryderyk:

(1) With larger files I get short gaps or dropouts when playing. Is there any wtfplay setting to remedy this?

(2) I have a Supermicro X11SAE-M motherboard and cannot find any option to (de-)activate HPET in the BIOS. Can you elaborate a bit on how this affects wtfplay performance?

[rando]

What is the file size relative to installed RAM?  You might be bumping up against the margins of storage in RAM.  Your description has more earmarks of a power allocation related issue though.  If your MB wasn't designed for such heavy and constant RAM usage it may be causing dropouts despite full file existing in RAM.  Just a guess again.

 

Quote

If you have a really big file and you are are not sure whether your file will play here is a simple rule to follow: your RAM size must be at least twice as large as the WAV file that you want to play and at least four times larger that the FLAC file size that you want to play.

 

I have a question of my own.  Does wtfplayer use any data such as replay gain or dynamic range that is embedded in metadata?  If so, is it suggestive of improving SQ or system/hardware dependent? 

[Ipoci]

15 hours ago, AnotherSpin said:

....Wtfplay command line is more than enough, imho.

 

Totally agree. I consider wtfplay an anomalous cd/sacd disk player and I love the minimalist approach. Sound quality first, 37MB overall system size for easy boot and full RAM playout and execution.

 

I'm currently considering the possibility to build a custom fanless computer connected to a small (8"-9" inches) monitor. I would like to avoid a full keyboard connected to it, so I'm trying to understand if a small "programmable" keyboard can do the job. I mean a keyboard with 10 keys remapped to the main functions of wtfcui <shift> <a><A><d><D><L><q><F10> ... are you aware of something useful for the scope?

 

Have a nice day. Massimiliano

[bodiebill]

8 hours ago, rando said:

What is the file size relative to installed RAM?  You might be bumping up against the margins of storage in RAM.  Your description has more earmarks of a power allocation related issue though.  If your MB wasn't designed for such heavy and constant RAM usage it may be causing dropouts despite full file existing in RAM.  Just a guess again.

 

The Supermicro motherboard is brand new with Intel i3-6100T and 16GB of ECC RAM. So I do not expect the RAM size to be a problem.

Yesterday I did change some wtfplay settings: -f 8192 -n 4 -p 85, and since then I have heard no stutters/gaps.

We will see...

[lateboomer]

Hi Norton,

 

Are there any reasons why you choose Zotac sbc over Intel NUC?

 

[frd__]

Let me answer in bulk:

 

@bodiebill

Quote

(1) With larger files I get short gaps or dropouts when playing. Is there any
wtfplay setting to remedy this?

 

The dropouts may happen in some rare situations, but at this stage I do not
know what exactly causes them. Long time ago I got two other cases with this
issue. I started investigation, but unfortunately, I never had a chance to
get to the bottom of it.

 

Initially, I assumed that an XRUN occurs in the kernel sound driver, but
with some debugging we concluded that this is not the case. An XRUN would
have been reported to the player application, but this was not happening.
The player was completely unaware that there was a disruption in the
playback.

 

Another observation that we made, was that this is related to the specific
hardware configurations. For example: same motherboard, two different USB
DACs and only one of them experiencing short dropouts. Or another situation:
same motherboard, two different USB controllers, the same USB DACs and the
dropouts happen only in a single case.

 

Based on your report, it seems that the file size may have something to do
with it. It is really hard to come to any conclusion without accessing the

hardware.
 

Anyway, if you experience more dropouts and you observe some regularities 
or patterns please let me know. That will be helpful.

 

Quote

(2) I have a Supermicro X11SAE-M motherboard and cannot find any option to
(de-)activate HPET in the BIOS. Can you elaborate a bit on how this affects
wtfplay performance?

 

In early stage of testing wtfplay my test team and I tried various BIOS
setting and HPET was the one affecting the SQ. Enabling HPET improved the
SQ. The overall improvement was not huge, but it was clearly noticeable.

 

Most of the tutorials on how to optimise the MS Win for audio playback
talk about disabling HPET. With Linux and wtfplay we found the opposite to
work better, that is why I recommend to keep HPET enabled.

 

Please keep in mind that on certain platforms Linux kernel will not use
HPET, even if it is enabled. Broadly speaking this is due to
instability/unreliability of the timers. One example of such platform is
Intel Baytrail.

 

The best way to check whether HPET is used or not is to type the following
command:

 

dmesg | grep -i hpet

 

This will print any any line from the kernel log where HPET is mentioned.

 

@Ipoci

Quote

I'm currently considering the possibility to build a custom fanless computer
connected to a small (8"-9" inches) monitor. I would like to avoid a full
keyboard connected to it, so I'm trying to understand if a small "programmable"
keyboard can do the job. I mean a keyboard with 10 keys remapped to the main
functions of wtfcui <shift> <a><A><d><D><L><q><F10> ... are you aware of
something useful for the scope? 

I can recommend asking sligolad on this forum. As far as I know he is using
one of such keyboards. I have seen it in action and it works like a charm.

 

@rando

Quote

I have a question of my own.  Does wtfplayer use any data such as replay gain
or dynamic range that is embedded in metadata?  If so, is it suggestive of
improving SQ or system/hardware dependent?

 

The player does not use metadata at all. It plays exactly what is in the
file.
 

 

 

[rando]

Thanks.

[bodiebill]

2 hours ago, frd__ said:

...

 

Anyway, if you experience more dropouts and you observe some regularities 
or patterns please let me know. That will be helpful.

 

...

 

The best way to check whether HPET is used or not is to type the following
command:

dmesg | grep -i hpet

This will print any any line from the kernel log where HPET is mentioned.

 

Thanks Fryderyk! I will keep you posted on dropout behaviour. No news = good news.

 

The dmesg command yielded the following output:

 

[sligolad]

5 hours ago, Ipoci said:

 

Totally agree. I consider wtfplay an anomalous cd/sacd disk player and I love the minimalist approach. Sound quality first, 37MB overall system size for easy boot and full RAM playout and execution.

 

I'm currently considering the possibility to build a custom fanless computer connected to a small (8"-9" inches) monitor. I would like to avoid a full keyboard connected to it, so I'm trying to understand if a small "programmable" keyboard can do the job. I mean a keyboard with 10 keys remapped to the main functions of wtfcui <shift> <a><A><d><D><L><q><F10> ... are you aware of something useful for the scope?

 

Have a nice day. Massimiliano

Hi Massimiliano, I have used a 12 key programmable keypad in the past but it had a hard wired USB connection, easy to program and there are various options available if you google for a programmable keypad.

I ended up going with the recommendation by Bodiebill for the Mele F10 at the bottom of page 4 for the http://androidpcreview.com/mele-f10-deluxe-fly-mouse-review/2946/

This works very well and is wireless. I have stuck some labels on it to remind me of the seldom used commands.

The up and down arrows after boot up once you have found your way around wtfplay initial setup gets me to most of what i need given the last used commands are immediately available.

Having the pause, skip forward and back tracks as well as move about 10 seconds back and forth easily available on the Mele are great for moving through music when required.

 

I am on holidays at the moment so just picking up occasionally, great to see so much activity on here at the moment.

Cheers, Pearse.

 

[AnotherSpin]

And here is what I have on dmesg command. Does it mean hpet is enabled? Sorry for dummy's question))

 

[frd__]

Yes - HPET is enabled on both screens.

 

F
 

[Norton]

14 hours ago, lateboomer said:

Hi Norton,

 

Are there any reasons why you choose Zotac sbc over Intel NUC?

 

 

I've had it for  a few years, it was about the cheapest fanless pc at the time (<£100 barebones) but quad core Celeron was pretty quick for  the money and v. well equipped interface-wise (inc SD card slot) etc. Possibly the NUC at the time were not actually fanless, I can't remember. It also looks like a bit of HIFi kit...

[lateboomer]

Thank you. Sd card slot is a good option. The Asrock j3455b-itx I just bought doesn't have that

[bodiebill]

On 21/09/2017 at 11:44 AM, frd__ said:

 

@bodiebill

 

The dropouts may happen in some rare situations, but at this stage I do not
know what exactly causes them. Long time ago I got two other cases with this
issue. I started investigation, but unfortunately, I never had a chance to
get to the bottom of it.

 

Initially, I assumed that an XRUN occurs in the kernel sound driver, but
with some debugging we concluded that this is not the case. An XRUN would
have been reported to the player application, but this was not happening.
The player was completely unaware that there was a disruption in the
playback.

 

Another observation that we made, was that this is related to the specific
hardware configurations. For example: same motherboard, two different USB
DACs and only one of them experiencing short dropouts. Or another situation:
same motherboard, two different USB controllers, the same USB DACs and the
dropouts happen only in a single case.

 

Based on your report, it seems that the file size may have something to do
with it. It is really hard to come to any conclusion without accessing the

hardware.
 

Anyway, if you experience more dropouts and you observe some regularities 
or patterns please let me know. That will be helpful.

 

Update on the dropouts:

 

They were still there the last few days, and they were quite many. And they did not seem to be related to file size:  dropouts also occur with small 16/44 files. And with each dropout Audio Aéro DAC briefly gets a 'no lock' on the screen.

It seemed to me a communication problem between the player and the DAC: when I use another player (in Windows) with the same DAC, there are no dropouts; and when I connect another DAC (Lampizator) using wtfplay, there are also no dropouts.

 

Between the PC and the Audio Aéro DAC is an Audiophilleo 1 (USB SPDIF converter), and today I looked at its manual. There is a 'Status Bits' setting on the Audiophilleo with a 'Level I' option which sets bit 28 for a Level I clock (50ppm). The manual says "Note that some DACs do not support Level I. If you cannot get lock with this setting enabled, please disable it." So I disabled Level I, and since then (an hour ago) no more dropouts. Fingers crossed...

[Norton]

Frd_

 

I'm using WtFP booted from thumbdrive with a fanless PC and music on SD card.  When used under Win10 the PC's card reader works fine with both SDHC and SDXC cards, but WtFP only recognises SDHC.  I guess this is because of file format required for SDXC.  Is there a simple way of updating WTFP via a software package to use with SDXC?  As far as I know (haven't tried) , I can't just re format SDXC as FAT 32.

 

The PC also has an internal SSD which is not used in above setup.  Would there be any SQ benefit in unmounting/powering down when WtFP is running?  If so how?  

 

Thanks.

[rando]

My understanding, probably flawed, is wtfplayer runs on top of the OS.  Unless the OS is loaded into RAM as well you introduce a litany of risks attempting to remove the drive it is stored on.  

[Norton]

3 hours ago, rando said:

My understanding, probably flawed, is wtfplayer runs on top of the OS.  Unless the OS is loaded into RAM as well you introduce a litany of risks attempting to remove the drive it is stored on.  

WtFP is a Linux "system on a stick"  that runs instead of the normal OS, for example you could use it with a diskless PC.  As I use the same PC with Win10 at other times that's not an option, but I would like to know if it's worth unmounting/powerering down the unused SDD when using WTFP

[frd__]

Hi Norton,

 

It is perfectly safe to remove wtfplay-live memory stick after it booted. In other words, if you see the command prompt you can remove the memory stick if you want. There is one thing that you need to remember when you shutting the system down: if the boot memory stick (or disk) is not found at that time, then the command line history and other settings will not be saved. That is the only consequence.

 

A practical approach would be to boot wtplay-live, then run wtfsetup and pick your settings. After you are done with this, then you reboot immediately (with reboot command or CTRL+ALT+DEL). That will save your settings onto the boot memory stick. After the system is booted the second time those settings will be loaded automatically. At this stage you can remove the memory stick.

 

In terms of SDXC cards - by default they are formatted with exFAT filesystem. wtfplay-live does not support that. The cards however can be easily reformatted to FAT32 (or any other filesystem). Here is more information on this topic:

 

https://www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/installation/sdxc_formatting.md 

 

In regards to the additional hard disks in your system, you can easily unmount them with umount command. Here is a small example. Assume that I have the following disks mounted: /media/sda1, /media/sdb1, /media/sdc1, /media/sdc2.  If I want to unmount the sdc, then the commands are:

 

umount /media/sdc1

umount /media/sdc2

 

With this commands it will be easy to check whether this has any influence on SQ. In my opinion, this will not change much. If disks are not used by any application then the OS have no reason to exchange any data with them, especially that they are mounted in read-only mode. Modern disks typically go into power save mode (slow down, park heads).

 

Kind Regards,

F

 

PS. Sorry for the late reply. I am a bit busy these days.