Mpd Music servers

[xjeep]

What are your guys thoughts on an Mpd music server over the standard PC set up? Umm but more specifically and Mpd server integrated with MPoD software?

 

Im getting the impression its a better choice for sound quality... Any thoughts?

 

Thanks

 

Cam

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi Cam - i'm listening to one right now :~) I love the freedom of Linux, MPD, ALSA etc... MPoD works really good, but the newest update has ruined album art for me. I guess some people are having problems accessing album art from Amazon with this version and I fall into that category. I'm also using the Minion Firefox plugin for remote control. It requires no software installation on the server. Sonically I'm getting incredible sound.

 

[xjeep]

Ok so besides those software glitches, do you think all the hype ive heard about how clean the signal is are true? From my understanding its a purpose built music reproduction setup, and the motherboard and circuitry are only being used for this function, which from my knowledge should keep the signal as clean as possible....

 

Is the one your reviewing a kit you purchased, or is it one you built yourself? And if it is a kit, whos the maker. Ive only come across one kit so far... But found lots of information on the web about how it works. I mostly understand what they describe, but some of my technical knowledge is still not up to pair to understand everything...

 

Im seriously considering this as an option for myself...

 

Im still in the air as to what platform im going to settle with...

 

I love the OLIVE, But i love the computer as well if only for the fact i can use it for many other functions other than just music, etc...

 

Thanks

 

Cam

 

p.s. im happy to hear your enjoying the sound... sound promising... i look forward to hearing hopefully a review on it.

 

[The Computer Audiophile]

Hi Cam - I'm not sure of the hype you've heard, but I am very impressed so far. There is truth to using an operating system that doesn't do anything but play music and receiving better sound.

 

I'm actually working on two different music servers based on MPD right now. Neither of them are ready-made or turn-key systems. One of them has morphed into a fairly large project and I'll release details in due time. The other one I am working on is based on a PC Engines Alix motherboard that's powered over the Ethernet cable and runs on a small compact flash card. The processor is embedded on the board as is the memory. If you are going to undertake such a project yourself make sure you are well versed in Linux and many other operating systems and technical details. All this knowledge will come in handy because there are many roadblocks to producing great sound unfortunately.

 

[xjeep]

I cant wait to hear...

 

I am giving this serious serious thought... So much so that ive already got a MOBO and allot of other hardware picked out just incase i settle for this route... I know i will not be able to do it all, but where i lack my best friend can pick up... DUDE knows everything lol, works IBM, and loves a challenge and we both love building...

 

One reason i might stay away from this, the computer will have all other abilities basically disabled. so i could not use it for other tasks... Hmm but maybe not, makes me think, that maybe a switchable hybrid system could be set up... dual boot maybe?

 

[Andrew S.]

Cam

I run Ubuntu Studio on my torrent box - it's an old pc that I have rebuilt many times over the years - The old NSK 2400 case looks dreadful but it does the job. I have on fan turning at 600 rpm - that's it. The noisest thing is the HDD spinning up when it needs to access a track. NAS would be better.

 

Basically I have a 30GB SSD for the OS and dual TB drives for storage. I buffer into Ram and away we go. I also had an ALIX 2D2 as Chris does - I have since sold it on. The Alix is not plug and play. It was better sounding than my torrent box but you do need a NAS and it is also single purpose - which may or may not be a nuisance to you. It was to me - I use the one computer for audio & video.

 

I also have a MacBook Pro which sounds nice as well. Particularly with Amarra or PV.

 

I'd recommend starting with an Ubuntu package. Studio is nice. It's pretty bare bones.

Here is a guide to mpd: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MPD

 

There are a whole heap of clients - I tend to use Minion as well. Sometimes Sonata.

 

and here is a useful one for automatically mounting shares (partitions):

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AutomaticallyMountPartitions

 

You can also use symlinks

 

Good luck and happy hi fi.

 

[jma2]

Hi all,

 

I am new on this forum, but I do follow Computer Audiophile for a while now. Very interesting information, in particular for a newcomer in audio reproduction via a computer. In my case I have my collection partly stored (in FLAC) on my NAS and use a EEE900 running Kubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala netbook edition. I have the relevant NAS directory mounted on the EEE and use Amarok for playback through an HRT Music Streamer+ USB DAC.

 

Sound quality is good for now and as a tempoary solution, the Music streamer+ is doing better than expected, but I will upgrade the DAC somewhere in 2010. However before upgrading the DAC, I want to explore software variations on the EEE900 and the NAS.

 

The first thing I want to do is to try to find how much Amarok influences the sound. The Kubuntu system uses the phonon-xine media back-end and I found a few config files related to this (however I didn't analyse the settings in much detail yet). The immediate questions I have are the following:

 

0) Has anyone experience with phonon-xine with respect to configuring it for not touching (re sampling) the audio? What alternative woud you consider more appropriate?

 

1) Does Amarok after decoding the FLAC to (L)PCM perform re-sampling? How can I find out? How can I disable it (amarokrc?)?

 

2) In Amarok I can play with the volume slider with audible effect. How can i disable volume control in Amarok?

 

Note: Maybe Amarok cannot be configured such that it doesn't manipulate the decoded audio?

 

3) What is according to you the most elegant solution to have unmanipulated playback in a system like mine?

 

I've also been looking a little bit into UPNP (I have Twonky Media Server on my NAS), and unfortunately Foobar2000 doesn't exist on Linux, nor does it seems to work under Wine. And so far I couldn't find an alternative Linux based upnp player.

 

Looks like MPD gets a lot of praise and without having looked into MPD, it would appear that MPD running on my NAS in combination with a MPD client on my EEE would be a good alternative. However if I look at the MPD clients they seem to also have volume slider bars and thus do some processing to the native (L)PCM.

 

Any comments, guidance or feedback are very much appreciated.

 

Kind regards,

 

Jan

 

EEE900 (Kubuntu) -> Music Streamer+ -> LFD NCSE -> Esoteric MG-20

 

[ldolse]

The volume slide bars can be disabled with MPD. In a typical dedicated music server setup you bypass the mixer, volume, etc and have MPD send data directly to the sound card/USB DAC. The best setup in terms of audio quality would be to build a headless system that wasn't running X.

 

[jma2]

Hi Idolse. In the mean time (I found a bit of time) I installed MPD on my EEE and found the mpd.conf file very helpfull and understandable! There it is indeed easy to disable the mixer, volume control, etc. Seems to work fine. For now I use the Minion Firefox plugin as an MPD client.

 

No clue how much better a headless system would be (not sure if my ears would hear the difference).

 

Last month I also tried eAR OS (see http://www.earos.dk/), but didn't get the GUI right on my EEE (9" display) and gave up. Looks very nice though. Not sure how much support Acoustic Reality will further put in it.

 

jma2