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A novel way to massively improve the SQ of computer audio streaming


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Most important: please realize this thread is about bleeding edge experimentation and discovery. No one has The Answer™. If you are not into tweaking, just know that you can have a musically satisfying system without doing any of the nutty things we do here.

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49 minutes ago, Dev said:

 

Looks like "-D" is an invalid option. When I removed it, I am able to play 44.1 but not anything higher. Still figuring it out...

 

Also - I should have made clear that I am using the regular squeezelite (a package that Piero compiled and sent me), so there is an off chance it may be squeezelite-R2 that's the issue.

 

 I will say that I initially got the same errors with squeezelite as I was getting with squeezelite-R2, which I only resolved by adding the -a and -D options. I just assumed that if I went back to R2 it would still work, but I have not done that.

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6 minutes ago, austinpop said:

 

Can't offer any expert help, as I also kinda futzed with it to get it to work. Does your DAC accept DSD natively, or via DoP? You need -D for DoP.

 

A couple other things to play with:

  1. Remove the -a options to let them default
  2. Try -o default:CARD-P20

 

DAC only accepts DoP.  the -D option doesn't seem to work for me.

 

[root@audiolinux audiolinux]# squeezelite -o hw:CARD=P20,DEV=0 -b 1048576:1048576 -D

Option error: -D

Squeezelite Copyright 2012-2015 Adrian Smith.

 

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11 minutes ago, austinpop said:

 

Also - I should have made clear that I am using the regular squeezelite (a package that Piero compiled and sent me), so there is an off chance it may be squeezelite-R2 that's the issue.

 

 I will say that I initially got the same errors with squeezelite as I was getting with squeezelite-R2, which I only resolved by adding the -a and -D options. I just assumed that if I went back to R2 it would still work, but I have not done that.

 

Ahh...that explains....

 

On the LMS side, there is an option "Enable DSD-over-PCM" settings in DSD player. That doesn't seem to work as well ?

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54 minutes ago, greenleo said:

The actual comparison:

Control PC: Win7 running HQP.

Audio PC: AL headless RAMBoot Extreme (realtimne priority extreme).  Physical setup of the Audio PCs.

1. Using my audio PC described before, ASUS mobo, 8GB RAM, i7 6core CPU. 

2 SLC SSD were connected but not mounted.  Hence no access.

2. NUC7CJYH, 4GB RAM, no local storage.

 

I tried 2 first, finding it sounding even better.  Then I check against 1 if it was a placebo effect or expectation bias.

 

Regards.

 

I am confused what your comparison is....you have two #2's, and you said you like #2.

 

what was your final configuration that you are sold on for life?

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On 11/21/2018 at 12:38 AM, lmitche said:

The ISO Regen adds clarity. Pianos and guitars are less wooly.

I found tone color to be more solid for 16 bit music but 24 bit music seemed to suffer with AL and ISO Regen, more forward in treble with loss of sound stage, not a good thing for sopranos in Solti's "Die Walkure".  It's odd, before AL the ISO Regen was night and day difference  for improvement.

Regards,

Dave

 

Audio system

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15 minutes ago, davide256 said:

Has anyone made the transition to AL server + NUC AL endpoint? Trying to understand if NUC AL endpoint is significantly additive for improvement to the change AL server makes or if the microRendu is fine to stick with.

 

My microRendu is long sold but from audio memory the Celeron NUC as a streamer outshines it by quiet a margin and will cost less, assuming you have a decent power supply for the NUC. I am gone through quiet a few different streamer before, like low powered mini-itx w/ JCAT femto USB and the AL NUC simply sounds better in my system at this time.  

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43 minutes ago, davide256 said:

Has anyone made the transition to AL server + NUC AL endpoint?

For those who have tried both, what makes a bigger difference to sound quality ... AL/NUC endpoint or AL server?  I'd expect the endpoint is more important, but I'm just speculating.

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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2 hours ago, greenleo said:

AL running on different endpoints will produce different SQ as it should be.  However, a more powerful endpoint doesn't guarantee a better SQ as shown in my case.

I wish we knew why ... is it the motherboard/SOC or the lower clocked CPU in the NUC that accounts for its superior sound.  Which of those two factors is more important?

 

I guess I'm wondering how an NUC8i7BEH  running AL would compare with a Celeron NUC running AL.  The NUC8i7BEH has an i7-8559U but it's still a SOC.  I know there's no passive cooling case for NUC8i7BEH.  We would want to use power supplies of comparable quality.

 

It's fantastic that so many people agree from experience that a Celeron/Pentium NUC running AL sounds great.  I guess it's all a fairy tale to the folks on that other thread.  I just love the been there/done that, we've already made all the right tradeoffs in our product attitude.  Or the it can't possibly make a difference attitude.

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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32 minutes ago, Narcissus said:

@greenleo I'm confused too, can you please clarify..

The key point of my post was to compare AL running on different endpoints.

 

I can live with the following end point very happily.  NUC7CJYH with 4GB RAM running AL Headless RAMBoot Extreme as an NAA through the onboard USB directly connected to my gears.  No other hw is needed and very low cost.

 

For the record, my control PC is an old i7, 16GB RAM, Win7 with lots of software for working, never optimized PC running HQP.  No worth to write home about and I'm sure most of your control PC is better than mine.

 

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Does anyone know how to resolve an issue with my audiolinux nuc running roon bridge but not appearing in roon when I have my core on audiolinux as well? If I run my core on sonicorbitor then I can see it and it works fine but then I boot my sonicTransporter into audiolinux and I can't find my roon bridge NUC. 

 

I am using different usb sticks to boot from (for server and bridge).

 

Anyone else had this problem? 

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5 hours ago, Dev said:

I am unable to play using LMS/Squeezelite.

 

Here are the configs

 

[root@audiolinux audiolinux]# squeezelite -l
Output devices:
  null                           - Discard all samples (playback) or generate zero samples (capture)
  default:CARD=P20               - PS Audio USB Audio 2.0, USB Audio - Default Audio Device
  sysdefault:CARD=P20            - PS Audio USB Audio 2.0, USB Audio - Default Audio Device
  front:CARD=P20,DEV=0           - PS Audio USB Audio 2.0, USB Audio - Front speakers
  surround21:CARD=P20,DEV=0      - PS Audio USB Audio 2.0, USB Audio - 2.1 Surround output to Front and Subwoofer speakers
  surround40:CARD=P20,DEV=0      - PS Audio USB Audio 2.0, USB Audio - 4.0 Surround output to Front and Rear speakers
  surround41:CARD=P20,DEV=0      - PS Audio USB Audio 2.0, USB Audio - 4.1 Surround output to Front, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
  surround50:CARD=P20,DEV=0      - PS Audio USB Audio 2.0, USB Audio - 5.0 Surround output to Front, Center and Rear speakers
  surround51:CARD=P20,DEV=0      - PS Audio USB Audio 2.0, USB Audio - 5.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Rear and Subwoofer speakers
  surround71:CARD=P20,DEV=0      - PS Audio USB Audio 2.0, USB Audio - 7.1 Surround output to Front, Center, Side, Rear and Woofer speakers
  iec958:CARD=P20,DEV=0          - PS Audio USB Audio 2.0, USB Audio - IEC958 (S/PDIF) Digital Audio Output

 

[root@audiolinux audiolinux]# cat /etc/conf.d/squeezelite
params="-n player-name -o hw:CARD=P20 -b 524288:524288 -a 16:4:: -D"

 

When I play from LMS web interface, it seems to play but there is no output.

On the squeezelite end, I see the following the error

 

Nov 23 09:52:12 audiolinux squeezelite[1434]: [09:52:12.160940] alsa_open:548 unable to set hw params: Invalid argument

 

What am I doing wrong ?

 

This is the setting the developer of C-3PO (marcoc1712) uses for non-DSD:

-n squeezelite-R2-o hw:CARD=J20 -x -m 00:e0:4c:68:ce:78 -r 44100-768000 -c aif,wav,pcm -b 1048576:1048576 -a 499:3::0 -f /var/log/squeezelite-R2/squeezelite-R2.log

 

I do not want to divert traffic on another site, but you guys having problems with LMS/Squeezelite are really better off posting your problems (you can post in English) on Italian NextHardware, in this thread.

You will find many developers and users of Squeezelite, HQPlayer... and myself! B|

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@Dev so you can play at least CD quality material with LMS/Squeezelite, right?  How does it sound compared to what you were previously running (and what were you previously running).

Pareto Audio AMD 7700 Server --> Berkeley Alpha USB --> Jeff Rowland Aeris --> Jeff Rowland 625 S2 --> Focal Utopia 3 Diablos with 2 x Focal Electra SW 1000 BE subs

 

i7-6700K/Windows 10  --> EVGA Nu Audio Card --> Focal CMS50's 

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2 hours ago, rickca said:

For those who have tried both, what makes a bigger difference to sound quality ... AL/NUC endpoint or AL server?  I'd expect the endpoint is more important, but I'm just speculating.

The streamer enables the ability to hear the SQ gains on the server side, so remove the bottleneck and invest in the streamer first.

Pareto Audio aka nuckleheadaudio

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Ok, I can figured it out. With the stock squeezelite I couldn't use the -D option as it was invalid option for that particular version. When I used the version from audiodigitale, I didn't pass the -D option and hence I wasn't able to play anything converted to DSD. Passing that option fixed it. Now I think I have got most of the things sorted out...time for comparo ?

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11 minutes ago, rickca said:

@Dev so you can play at least CD quality material with LMS/Squeezelite, right?  How does it sound compared to what you were previously running (and what were you previously running).

 

@rickca I haven't done listening test yet. Most of my time spent figuring and configuring things out. Thanks to @austinpop and Piero but now I think I have most of it sorted out.

 

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16 minutes ago, bibo01 said:

This is the setting the developer of C-3PO (marcoc1712) uses for non-DSD:


-n squeezelite-R2-o hw:CARD=J20 -x -m 00:e0:4c:68:ce:78 -r 44100-768000 -c aif,wav,pcm -b 1048576:1048576 -a 499:3::0 -f /var/log/squeezelite-R2/squeezelite-R2.log

 

I do not want to divert traffic on another site, but you guys having problems with LMS/Squeezelite are really better off posting your problems (you can post in English) on Italian NextHardware, in this thread.

You will find many developers and users of Squeezelite, HQPlayer... and myself! B|

 

@bibo01, thanks.

 

Quick question - will removing the C-3PO plugin disable upsampling/conversion of the original files ? I have few DSD256 content but my DAC supports only DSD128. How do I down-sample in this case ?

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42 minutes ago, Bricki said:

Does anyone know how to resolve an issue with my audiolinux nuc running roon bridge but not appearing in roon when I have my core on audiolinux as well? If I run my core on sonicorbitor then I can see it and it works fine but then I boot my sonicTransporter into audiolinux and I can't find my roon bridge NUC. 

 

I am using different usb sticks to boot from (for server and bridge).

 

Anyone else had this problem? 

 

See if you can ping the NUC from sonicorbitor...it looks to be network issue. Raat protocol is generally very stable - I never had issue with Roon server recognizing a bridge on the network.

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NUC8i7BEH update:

 

Earlier in the morning I set up HQP on the NUC to quickly test its performance. With xtr-mp filter and upsampling to dsd128, the cpu started throttling big time but it kept going without drop outs. Can't tell I could discernibly hear any difference when throttled. However, it looks like dsd256 could be a burst on this NUC. I will test this sometime later.

 

Secondly the fan is very irritating. My rack is 15ft away and I could hear it loud and clear.

 

Not sure how NUC8i7HVK would compare but it will be more noisy if you are planing to place it in the audio room. A Xeon E3 with passive cooling seems like a far better option as a server.

 

After google'ing around a bit similar performance was reported here:

https://www.notebookcheck.net/Intel-NUC-Kit-NUC8i7BEH-i7-8559U-Mini-PC-Review.360356.0.html

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9 minutes ago, Dev said:

 

See if you can ping the NUC from sonicorbitor...it looks to be network issue. Raat protocol is generally very stable - I never had issue with Roon server recognizing a bridge on the network.

OK thanks. Roon finds the nuc (roon bridge) no problem in sonicorbitor. It's just when I boot audiolinux instead of sonicorbitor that it has issues 

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