Allo Sparky USBridge

[hertzberg]

14 minutes ago, Lobbster said:

I haven't seen any reports of success yet. Has anyone successfully upgraded to 6.0 and everything works as before?

 

I think my heat seals can survive 1 more breakdown, but the eMMC goes. Removing the eMMC is easy, re-seating is way too much fussy for my fingers or patience. You can get a 16GB Samsung Pro or Sandisk Ultra for <$15. Something tells me this isn't the last flash. While I have it apart I'm also going to file out the MicroUSB port on the case and remove the jumper. Hopefully all goes back together and no fuss next update.

 

Can I ask you to share some photos of the process? Would be much appreciated ☺

[Lobbster]

1 minute ago, Facel said:

Hi Lobbster

 

I successfully update to V6.1 then to V6.1 + allo GUI and both version where perfecltly running with my Teac Dac UD 501.

 

I also installed raspotify and JRiver on the Sparky ... JRiver is running but I have not been able to crrectly set the parametres for Spotify

DLNA renderer and Airplay are both running without any issue

 

I am not aLinux expert but I have some basic s in computing

I simply regret that the allo/Dietpi  support is not very present for helping us (My Jriver installation and raspotify has been done without their help)

 

regards

 

Ok, thanks for that report. Gives me something to do this weekend.

 

I was using JRiver with GMRenderer without issues. Also have LMC working with Squeezelite and Spotify. I tried to get Tidal working through JRiver and probably came close, but Roon trumps all and I've finally gotten used to being without a directory tree.

 

Roon/Tidal rocks! But I have to say, I prefer Spotify's playlists.

[tboooe]

@allo.com are new orders of the USBridge shipping with v6.1?  I am planning to buy a unit but want to wait until it is shipped with v6.1

[Facel]

I do not use LMC,

I use Jriver + Jremote and spotify, that is why I installed Jriver on the USBridge (to have the Gapless playing function) and I am trying to run Spotify connect (or Librespot/Raspotify) on the Sparky.

I tryed Roon but the audio quality on my system was not so good as JRiver

 

[Lobbster]

6 minutes ago, hertzberg said:

 

Can I ask you to share some photos of the process? Would be much appreciated ☺

I'll see what I can do. The video for the new case is pretty good. Just the eMMC card is a royal pain to re-seat for my fingers without taking the boards apart.

[JohnSwenson]

8 hours ago, rickca said:

@JohnSwenson didn't you say exactly the opposite when I asked why the microRendu was designed to use an SD card?  Maybe I misinterpreted your comment?

The microRendu is using an iMX--6 which uses very different hardware resources for on board flash and SD card. The SD card uses its own very low power subsystem and the on board flash controller is part of a MUCH larger memory control subsystem. By using the SD card I can completely power down the other subsystem (literally its power pins are not connected to anything), this significantly cuts down on the power supply noise in the processor chip and board.

 

The SD card is only used for booting up the system, there are no other "disk" operations, especially no audio data ever gets written to the SD card, so its performance does not affect the operation of the system. The only thing it impacts is boot time.

 

The units ship with a very high quality SD card which has proven to be extremely reliable.

 

I have no idea how any of this relates to the hardware under discussion here.

 

John S.

[Chiller]

37 minutes ago, Lobbster said:

Ok, thanks for that report. Gives me something to do this weekend.

 

I was using JRiver with GMRenderer without issues. Also have LMC working with Squeezelite and Spotify. I tried to get Tidal working through JRiver and probably came close, but Roon trumps all and I've finally gotten used to being without a directory tree.

 

Roon/Tidal rocks! But I have to say, I prefer Spotify's playlists.

I prefer spotify playlists as well - did you know you can easily import them into Tidal (and therefore Roon) - chesck out Soundiiz.

Hope this helps.... Cheers!

[Lobbster]

1 hour ago, Facel said:

I tryed Roon but the audio quality on my system was not so good as JRiver

Interesting observation. I'll play around and compare. At times I've noticed big differences between my rips and the same track on Tidal. Most of my listening is at pretty moderate levels and not as noticeable.

[piripiri82]

On 01/02/2018 at 5:43 PM, piripiri82 said:

I've done a fresh install of diet pi to version 6.1 with web GUI v.5 by flashing the EMMC card. All seems to be working aside from the fact that there is no sound coming through the speakers and the ALSA output stream information box is empty. I have a Chord Mojo attached to the USB output of the USBridge and have set the shairport settings to 32 bit to match the DAC.

Edit:

I just checked to see if my DAC was detected by the sparky/USBridge using the USB-devices command but to no avail. I then tried it in another USB port and it was detected and there is sound output. Is there a command to activate the USBridge again or have I miss-aligned the GPIO headers? 

... I will investigate in the meantime...

Right! This is interesting!! I got the USBridge to recognise and work with my Audioquest Dragonfly! The Chord Mojo still does not work! ... At least I haven't busted the GPIO headers when I put the case back together!!

... That's something at least! 

[stareIO]

HI — my first post here. Received my eagerly-awaited USBridge yesterday and put it in my system. Obviously, it’s still “burning in” but so far it’s (mostly) smooth sailing. And that is also how I would describe the sound: smooth. Just very refined, “classy.” Maybe not as big of an “a ha” moment as I was hoping for. Wondering if there are any obvious optimizations I might have overlooked. Here’s my system:

 

Apple Airport Extreme --> Mac Pro running Roon Server --> Allo USBridge --> Chord Mojo --> Schiit SYS (passive volume) --> JBL LSR305s (or Senn. HD650 straight out of Mojo)

 

The USBridge/Sparky are powered by the wall wart it came with (J28 jumper in place). The Mac Pro’s ethernet is bridged, one from the router and the other (cat6) to the USBridge. My cables aren’t premium (but not junk either). Smooth, easy set up, worked right out of the box, no issues (mine came with v159).

 

One thing I haven’t figured out is how to tell the USB3-to-ethernet dongle to wake up. Any ideas? I tried Dan’s suggestion from earlier up in this thread without success. Thanks all for any help! My sound has gone from tired to wired in the last few months of browsing this forum!

[piripiri82]

Hi @StareIO

In my experience, to get the best performance out of the USBridge you need to remove the J28 jumper. Power the USBridge with the supplied power supply. The next step is to get 1 (or ideally 2) better quality power supplies: iFi iPower 5v would be a great place to start. I initially powered the USBridge with the iPower and the Sparky with the supplied adapter, which was a step-up from just 1 adapter. Getting 2 better quality power supplies boosts the performance further. If you think it's smooth now you'll be in for a shock!

I can't comment on your network situation as I have no experience of it as I'm running my USBridge with a wireless dongle. Better quality cables should yield better results though.

[piripiri82]

1 hour ago, piripiri82 said:

Right! This is interesting!! I got the USBridge to recognise and work with my Audioquest Dragonfly! The Chord Mojo still does not work! ... At least I haven't busted the GPIO headers when I put the case back together!!

... That's something at least! 

@allo
@danielknight

[stareIO]

31 minutes ago, piripiri82 said:

Hi @StareIO

In my experience, to get the best performance out of the USBridge you need to remove the J28 jumper. Power the USBridge with the supplied power supply. The next step is to get 1 (or ideally 2) better quality power supplies: iFi iPower 5v would be a great place to start. I initially powered the USBridge with the iPower and the Sparky with the supplied adapter, which was a step-up from just 1 adapter. Getting 2 better quality power supplies boosts the performance further. If you think it's smooth now you'll be in for a shock!

I can't comment on your network situation as I have no experience of it as I'm running my USBridge with a wireless dongle. Better quality cables should yield better results though.

Thanks @piripiri82 I will try a single ifi to start with and see what that does. So far I like what I hear a lot and feel it can only get even better.

[gareth.davies]

Is anyone else's USBridge running really hot?  Even when not being used.  Have a new one in the aluminium case.  The one I have in the plastic case doesn't suffer from this.

[piripiri82]

3 hours ago, gareth.davies said:

Is anyone else's USBridge running really hot?  Even when not being used.  Have a new one in the aluminium case.  The one I have in the plastic case doesn't suffer from this.

If anything I would say the USBridge in the Aluminium case is running cooler although it feels hotter to touch as the whole case acts as a heatsink. I didn't note down how hot my Sparky was running before changing the case but I'm fairly sue 57 degrees C rings a bell. It's now running at 42 degrees C... I think it may even sound better as a result but that's probably just wishful thinking!

If you check the web GUI it gives a you a temperature readout. What does it say? 

[piripiri82]

Hello! rahul_kc was in touch regarding my Mojo not being seen by the USBridge. It has now been sorted!

 

This is what I was advised to do:

 

SSH into diet pi and check the uEnv.txt file

 

The command = nano /DietPi/uEnv.txt

 

Check the end of the second line of the text file. I had to scroll along manually to do this. You are looking for “aotg.aotg1_speed value”. The speed value needs to be set to 0 for 32 bit USB 2.0 DACs like my Mojo. If you’re using a dragonfly or other USB 1.1 DACs it should be set to 1. The last line should look like this… $d/systemd aotg.urb_fix=1 aotg.aotg1_speed=0

 

Exit and save the file then reboot the system. You should then be back in business! 
 

[stareIO]

18 hours ago, stareIO said:

Thanks @piripiri82 I will try a single ifi to start with and see what that does. So far I like what I hear a lot and feel it can only get even better.

OK, I was clearly doing it wrong -- just removed J28 and powered each board separately (USBridge with the supplied ww and Sparky w/ USB from a power strip), now I'm hearing a distinct improvement over my previous setup (which was using a laptop on battery power as endpoint with mojo also using its battery). Immediately noticed substantially greater depth, layering, dynamics, etc. I'll see what the ifi adds early next week...

[gareth.davies]

Thanks @piripiri82. GUI says 46 degrees, so I guess all is fine.  Surprisingly hot to touch though.  I assumed if it was idle that there was no reason for it to get hot. Thanks again.

[tkr001]

To those having trouble with raspotify and the Allo USBridge try this:

 

1. Install raspotify using the dietpi software menu.

2. SSH into your sparky and issue the command aplay -l

3 Note the name of your Dac in the output of aplay -l

4 edit the config file by the command nano /etc/default/raspotify 

5 in this file I recommend changing the name from raspotify to something more meaningful, changing the speed from 160 to 320 and adding a line as follows

OPTIONS=“—device plughw:dacname”

substitute dacname with the name you noted in step 3

Save your changes and exit nano.

6. Issue the command systemctl restart raspotify 

 

That should get you going.

[latenz]

1 hour ago, tkr001 said:

To those having trouble with raspotify and the Allo USBridge try this:

 

1. Install raspotify using the dietpi software menu.

2. SSH into your sparky and issue the command aplay -l

3 Note the name of your Dac in the output of aplay -l

4 edit the config file by the command nano /etc/default/raspotify 

5 in this file I recommend changing the name from raspotify to something more meaningful, changing the speed from 160 to 320 and adding a line as follows

OPTIONS=“—device plughw:dacname”

substitute dacname with the name you noted in step 3

Save your changes and exit nano.

6. Issue the command systemctl restart raspotify 

 

That should get you going.

nice try....

 

after I did what you recommended the usbridge is gone!!! only the sparky subparts are available....

before

root@DietPi:~# aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: atm7059link [atm7059_link], device 0: ATC2603C PCM atc2603c-dai-0 []
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: atm7059link [atm7059_link], device 1: HDMI PCM atm7059-hdmi-dai-1 []
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: atm7059link [atm7059_link], device 2: SPDIF PCM atm7059-spdif-dai-2 []
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: Amanero [Combo384 Amanero], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

 

after raspotify installation

 

root@DietPi:~# aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: atm7059link [atm7059_link], device 0: ATC2603C PCM atc2603c-dai-0 []
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: atm7059link [atm7059_link], device 1: HDMI PCM atm7059-hdmi-dai-1 []
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: atm7059link [atm7059_link], device 2: SPDIF PCM atm7059-spdif-dai-2 []
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
 

 

 

it would be great to repair it in ssh mode, so I don´t have to flash it again...thanks

 

 

 

[ambre]

On 1-2-2018 at 4:14 PM, Daniel Knight said:

Hi All,

 

DietPi v6.0 + Allo GUI v5 images have been updated:
http://dietpi.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=2317&p=8869#p8869

Changelog:

https://github.com/Fourdee/DietPi/pull/1426#issue-292214926

Dear Daniel / Fourdee,

 

Is the latest version up and running well?  I read several postings that there are stil problems? 

 

And better to wait before refreshing latest image?

 

Please update us all.

 

[jtwrace]

Where is the latest download I need to install on the emm?

[MichaT]

21 hours ago, piripiri82 said:

Hello! rahul_kc was in touch regarding my Mojo not being seen by the USBridge. It has now been sorted!

 

This is what I was advised to do:

 

SSH into diet pi and check the uEnv.txt file

 

The command = nano /DietPi/uEnv.txt

 

Check the end of the second line of the text file. I had to scroll along manually to do this. You are looking for “aotg.aotg1_speed value”. The speed value needs to be set to 0 for 32 bit USB 2.0 DACs like my Mojo. If you’re using a dragonfly or other USB 1.1 DACs it should be set to 1. The last line should look like this… $d/systemd aotg.urb_fix=1 aotg.aotg1_speed=0

 

Exit and save the file then reboot the system. You should then be back in business! 
 

That was the solution! Everything works fine! Thanks for sharing the solution here.
Michael

[jtwrace]

I downloaded v6.1 and the GUI doesn't work anymore, is this correct?  Can't login with my static IP but it shows up in Roon.  

[latenz]

56 minutes ago, MichaT said:

That was the solution! Everything works fine! Thanks for sharing the solution here.
Michael

was also good for me to get the lks004 back

 

thanks