wtfplay

[LLiu]

I have been away for a while trying out other network streaming alternatives and software, no matter how much efforts I put into the network optimizations & other players once I switched back to the WTF player, I no longer have any urge to try other players or re-connect to the network again. Thanks Frd again for the excellent efforts in continuing your true audiophile no compromise approach in developing the software. For audiophile like me, software operating with large overheads and specializing streaming and up-sampling related features are not doing any good to the SQ, at least to my ears, so having a software like WTF is a real treasure.

To do justice to the high quality sound from WTF, I am planning to get one of those audiophile PCIE USB cards, I wonder, would there be any software compatibility issue, e.g. USB driver, for running PCIE USB card such as Jcat USB https://jcat.eu/product/usb-card-femto-audiophile-usb-audio-output/ or tX-USBexp https://www.sotm-audio.com/sotmwp/english/portfolio-item/tx-usbexp/ ? Thanks …

Liu

[frd__]

Hi Liu,

 

Thanks for the kind words.

 

In terms of PCIe USB cards both should work under wtfplay-live without problems.

 

I remember that years ago, Amanero USB did not work properly with USB3 cards that were based on a certain Renesas/NEC XHCI chip. I think Jcat cards used that chip at that time. I believe that this was completely resolved with Amanero firmware update. I just mention that in case you use Amanero with a very, very old firmware.

 

F

 

[motberg]

Hi Folks!

 

I am considering setting up a WTF player and have 2 computer options:

Asus B150M-PLUS w. i7 45w (advantages, more memory available [up to 64GB], extra pcie slots) or;
Supermicro X10SBA (4GB, SoC, 1 x pcie slot for USB card).

 

For either of these I have adequate LPS capacity, good USB card [Matrix H, JCat, PPA], fanless, etc.

 

Any suggestions on which would offer the better sound quality?

 

I am thinking about using an external 4TB 3.5 HDD (with USB isolator inline and LT3045 LPS) for storage, so was thinking the Asus may handle that better using a separate PCIE lane and USB card. I have not seen a lot of comments on best sounding storage suggestions except for the @bodiebill post (still waiting on the fiber/battery/external drive test results..jejejeje..). SSD in the Supermicro would be no problem also.

[bodiebill]

2 hours ago, motberg said:

I have not seen a lot of comments on best sounding storage suggestions except for the @bodiebill post (still waiting on the fiber/battery/external drive test results..jejejeje..).

 

Still waiting for my fiber usb cable (ordered in China)...

 

But I must say that the SQ differences between (1) 8TB small RAID box with two 2.5" disks and clean power, (2) same detached while playing and (3) internal 16GB Optane M2 drive were much smaller than I expected, other than some hardly audible noise from the (Yottamaster) RAID box. So the fiber usb cable could help there.

 

I am now experiencing a relative audiophiliac stupor. A week ago I replaced my DC cables with expensive DIY Mundorf silver/gold wire ones. Unexpectedly I find that the sound has seriously deteriorated, but I am told burn in takes 500 hours, so have to be patient before judging...

 

In the meantime -- inspired by the positive results of a minimal approach -- I have ordered (in a wild mood) an SDTrans384 -- minimal Japanese SD transport -- and a HXMelody HX500 -- less minimal / more versatile Chnese transport. After the network, also my PC would be rendered superfluous by these. My comparisons of the different setups to follow in another thread in due time...

 

In the meantime happily playing music (in spite of the 'silver sound') with wtfplay (preferred for PCM) and Aplayer under wtfplay OS for my wv-DSD files. 

 

[bodiebill]

Does anyone know how in wtfplay a usb drive name (such as /dev/sda1) can be made persistent (static) when remounting or rebooting?

[frd__]

@bodiebill: The names for the devices are allocated as the devices are detected. Exactly the same situation is with drive letters allocation under Windows.

 

The auto-mounter in wtfplay-live is very simple and it uses device names only. It was not designed with versatility in mind. I guess it could also use filesystem labels to make the paths more persistent, but this is not implemented.

 

F

[bodiebill]

Thanks @frd__ for explaining.

[Slainte]

I just want to say 'thank you' to @frd__ for this player. It's unbelievable! I have tried them all, but this is by far the best.

 

I think the 'magic' is silence, tranquility and peace. There is only music.

Everyone should try this!

 

[Slainte]

I use a Gigabyte GB-BACE-3000 barebone with 4 gig RAM for wtfplayer. Less is better is my experience.

 

I always booted with legacy bios (never thought about it, was the default I guess), but today I switched to uefi bios for "better" font.
To my surprise the sound is different with uefi bios, more harsh, sharp.
Have more people experienced a change in sound with different bios? Is this even possible?

 

[LLiu]

Thanks Frd regarding the USB info, I am putting the USB card option on hold as I am looking into the option of extracting I2S signal from the mobo PCIE lane using Pink Faun I2S bridge. I am wondering would the WTF player support this output at the software level? If not I will go back to the USB option.

 

https://www.pinkfaun.com/shop/bridge/69-4072-i2s-bridge.html#/additional_clock_for_bridge-no/bracket_height-79_2_mm_3_118_inch/compatible_i2s_dac_s-please_select_your_dac

 

 

 

Inspired by Slainte, I tried to boot my server, Supermicro mobo, Xeon 4 cores CPU with 4G Apacer ECC ram, on legacy mode, I found similar differences noticed by Slainte, I just loved the legacy mode boot sound, it brings you closer to the music. As for why it sounds better in my system? that's beyond me ..... 

[manueljenkin]

Hi frd, I wish to know if wtfplay can be tweaked to do audio recording. I enjoy wtfplay a lot for music playback, and I wish to have a similar setup to record audio - on my focursite 2i2. I assume whatever improvement I'm hearing over other player software using my dac, I'll also get on my ADC/interface since after all, we are trying to get the noise down for the mixed signal ICs inside the devices.

 

24 bit 192khz file for 5 minutes takes up probably around 300MB which can certainly be held by the RAM. I understand wtfplay doesn't have write permissions, but will it be possible that you can do another distro, say wtfrecord, that just records and then with a command exports to a storage drive? No editing or anything of that sort, just recording.

 

On a side note, are there any plans for an arm version of wtfplay? I have an allo sparky board and I'm interested to see if I can get it to take the job of music playback from my pc.

[frd__]

@manueljenkin:To be honest I haven't looked at the recording. wtfplay-live, in it's current shape, would not be suitable for the recording.

 

Arm version is in the agenda, as many other things. It is very hard to find time to deal with them all.

 

F

[rebone]

Hi frd

You have made an incedible job of providing us with a 1st rate music player for pc.

I started using your player some years ago and I am not looking anywhere else anymore.

What is more is that you are giving us this for free.

Please keep your player as simle as possible as I think this is what gives us the iccredible sound quality.

Do you own thing in your own time and look after your self and yor family.

Stay safe.

[bodiebill]

Today I installed wtfplay on a 2GB micro SD card to run from the SD slot of an Intel NUC. It seems to work well, apart from one thing: the settings are not saved nor is the command line history available. In the NUC BIOS access to the SD card device is set to R/W.

Is this a known problem with booting from SD card? Or am I doing something else wrong?

[frd__]

@bodiebill: I am not sure. What is printed on the screen when you type the following command:

 

findfs LABEL=WTFPLAY-CONF

 

F

[bodiebill]

5 hours ago, frd__ said:

I am not sure. What is printed on the screen when you type the following command:

findfs LABEL=WTFPLAY-CONF

 

 

Nothing, no output.

[frd__]

OK. Thanks. The empty output means that the configuration partition has not been found.

 

How did you create the bootable SD Card for you NUC? What program did you use?

 

This configuration partition is a part of wtfplay hybrid ISO image and the system assumes that is always there. This is the case when the ISO image is written to the target memory stick/card block by block.

[bodiebill]

31 minutes ago, frd__ said:

How did you create the bootable SD Card for you NUC? What program did you use?

 

I used balena etcher as I remember this worked well before. But I guess I should have perused the documentation 😐 Tomorrow I will try Win32DiskImager.

 

 

[frd__]

No need. Etcher works as well as Win32 Imager.

 

I suspect that wtfplay-live does not see the NUC's SD card reader. Would you be able to check something to verify that? After booting wtfplay-live would you remove its SD cards and insert any other card that is formatted with FAT32. It should be automatically mounted in /media directory. I am guessing this will not work either.

 

What is the exact model of your NUC?

 

F

[bodiebill]

Thanks Fryderyk!

  

30 minutes ago, frd__ said:

I suspect that wtfplay-live does not see the NUC's SD card reader. Would you be able to check something to verify that? After booting wtfplay-live would you remove its SD cards and insert any other card that is formatted with FAT32. It should be automatically mounted in /media directory. I am guessing this will not work either.

 

Done and your guess is right.

 

30 minutes ago, frd__ said:

What is the exact model of your NUC?

 

NUC8i3BEK

[frd__]

As far as I can see NUC8i3BEK uses Realtek PCI SD Card reader. Would you be able to confirm that?

I will need to make another build with that driver included. I think I forgot about this driver when making upgrading the kernel to 5.4

[bodiebill]

1 hour ago, frd__ said:

As far as I can see NUC8i3BEK uses Realtek PCI SD Card reader. Would you be able to confirm that?

It seems like it, as far as I can tell from some Google searches.

Not sure how to check from within wtfplay.

 

1 hour ago, frd__ said:

I will need to make another build with that driver included. I think I forgot about this driver when making upgrading the kernel to 5.4

Something like this?

https://github.com/Zibri/Realtek-rts5229-linux-driver

 

[frd__]

The Realtek SD Card reader driver is in the mainline kernel. I simply forgot to enable it.

You can send me the screenshot of lspci -k command and I will know for sure.

 

F

[bodiebill]

6 minutes ago, frd__ said:

The Realtek SD Card reader driver is in the mainline kernel. I simply forgot to enable it.

You can send me the screenshot of lspci -k command and I will know for sure.

 

[frd__]

The card reader is RTS522A (PCI ID: 10ec:522a)