AudioLinux and NUC Troubleshooting and Tuning

[austinpop]

Just now, look&listen said:

DMG = Disk iMG

 

Understood.

 

My point was that Rufus, for example, does not recognize DMG as a valid format, so if your intent is to move the image between MacOS and the rest of the universe, an extra conversion to IMG might be needed. If you stay on MacOS, then DMG is fine.

[look&listen]

15 minutes ago, austinpop said:

(mis)Understood.

 

My point was that Rufus, for example, does not recognize DMG as a valid format, so if your intent is to move the image between MacOS and the rest of the universe, an extra conversion to IMG might be needed

Assume wrong intent. Only note interesting container naming. Understood platform differences from you text.

+1 for using easier OS to do file/image/partition/&c. tasks

[amolan]

Hi Guys,

 

I just installed audiolinux as a Roonbridge and I can't see it in Roon Server, I was looking Audiolinux monitor / Audio Card Status and it's seems my card ( Audioquest Dragonfly ) has a Status = Stop, is it right ?  also my PC is a Atom N2800 board, Don't know it it's even supported.

 

Thanks,

 

Alexandre.

[wildsam]

I am running the lxt GUI version with jriver and it sounds great!

Does anyone know if it’s possible to run jriver server with the headless version? 

I see from the headless menu that there is options for the other players but not jriver. 

[greenleo]

1 hour ago, wildsam said:

I am running the lxt GUI version with jriver and it sounds great!

Does anyone know if it’s possible to run jriver server with the headless version? 

I see from the headless menu that there is options for the other players but not jriver. 

Hi,

 

Any idea if JRiver in lxqt may output to headless endpoint?

[wildsam]

I am running jriver on a windows server core and use the audiolinux nuc with jriver as a renderer endpoint.

jriver can run as a GUI or as a server process.

So yes, jriver running on lxqt can output to a headless endpoint via DLNA 

[greenleo]

3 hours ago, wildsam said:

I am running jriver on a windows server core and use the audiolinux nuc with jriver as a renderer endpoint.

jriver can run as a GUI or as a server process.

So yes, jriver running on lxqt can output to a headless endpoint via DLNA 

I'm thinking buying JRiver in Win10 as well.  Would you mind telling me how to configure your system?

 

Regards.

[Bricki]

I bought a $5 toslink to 3.5mm adapter and enabled the ALC233 digital device in roon... And tried to play a track... Nothing.... No sound...so I then spent the next 15mins trying to get the adapter back off my audioquest forest toslink cable and eventually had to mangle the adapter with a pair of pliers just get it off 

So I don't know if audioquests toslink connection is slightly different and requires the audioquest mini adapter...it didn't slide on at all and had to be forced on and was nearly impossible to get back off... So I don't know if the issue was my adapter I bought or if the Toslink on the NUC with AL simply doesn't work... Still not 100% conclusive?

[BigAlMc]

As mentioned on the Novel Way thread I have a popping sound when I power my DNBE with my LPS1.2

 

On Extreme mode it pops every 5 to 20 seconds and is too much. On standard mode it pops intermittently and is bearable but I'll switch things around as it's still annoying.

 

But this has me wondering on two fronts. I'd to set the DNBE to run on 1 core as well as disabling Extreme mode in order to use the LPS1.2. So if I am switching to using the SPS-500 which has a lot more power available any thoughts on the potential impact of:

 

A. Using Extreme vs Standard?

 

B. Using Extreme 2 vs Extreme?

 

C. Enabling all 4 Cores rather than just the 1?

 

I know there's still ongoing debate about the power sweetspot but is there any theoretical advantage on an endpoint to having all the cores running?

 

Finally, and perhaps one for Piero, but is there any advantage to running the same mode, say Extreme, on both the server and endpoint or are these completely independent?

 

Cheers,

Alan

[hifi25nl]

From standard to Extreme to Extreme2 the power demand will increase. This is because the CPU sleep state time will decrease.
If you don't have a very good cooling system and a powerful enough power supply the CPU will throttle down with negative impact on the sound.

If, in addition to this, you are also reducing the number of cores the situation will get even worse, especially if you have set realtime priority to extreme. CPU will struggle in satisfying the very high priority requests and this could result in dropouts.

For people that think that a low power CPU and supply is beneficial to sound, I suggest to boot in standard mode, with standard priority. I would take also into consideration to disable manual priority assignment (the kernel is always realtime and priority will be given following the kernel rules) or... buy a more powerful supply and/or use a more powerful CPU.

 

For the question about server v/s endpoint, I would configure both of them to achieve similar CPU latency. Latency depends on the processor used, on boot mode (Standard or Extreme) and manual priority assignment. The next version of AudioLinux headless will have 3 realtime tests on menu. In previous versions you can type rttest on the command line.

[BigAlMc]

52 minutes ago, hifi25nl said:

From standard to Extreme to Extreme2 the power demand will increase. This is because the CPU sleep state time will decrease.
If you don't have a very good cooling system and a powerful enough power supply the CPU will throttle down with negative impact on the sound.

If, in addition to this, you are also reducing the number of cores the situation will get even worse, especially if you have set realtime priority to extreme. CPU will struggle in satisfying the very high priority requests and this could result in dropouts.

For people that think that a low power CPU and supply is beneficial to sound, I suggest to boot in standard mode, with standard priority. I would take also into consideration to disable manual priority assignment (the kernel is always realtime and priority will be given following the kernel rules) or... buy a more powerful supply and/or use a more powerful CPU.

 

For the question about server v/s endpoint, I would configure both of them to achieve similar CPU latency. Latency depends on the processor used, on boot mode (Standard or Extreme) and manual priority assignment. The next version of AudioLinux headless will have 3 realtime tests on menu. In previous versions you can type rttest on the command line.

 

Thanks Piero,

 

So given that latency is such a big factor here and taking account I want to move the i7DNBE endpoint onto the higher power output SPS-500 then it seems like re-enabling the other 3 cores and moving to Extreme boot mode is the way to try.

 

Do you mind elaborating on how to test realtime latency or is this covered on your site?

 

Cheers,

Alan

[hifi25nl]

The 3 realtime tests (as root. you can use more cycles than 10000 if you want)

 

1) cyclictest -q -l 10000 -m -Sp98 -i100 -d0

 

2) hackbench -l 10000 &>/dev/null && cyclictest -q -l 10000 -m -Sp98 -i100 -d0

 

3) hwlatdetect --duration=60 --threshold=15

 

The first 2 are executed if you type

rttest

 

[rickca]

40 minutes ago, hifi25nl said:

The 3 realtime tests

To get meaningful results, do we run these tests while playing music using our preferred software (LMS/Squeezelite, Roon, etc) or are they designed to be run standalone?

[hifi25nl]

I would try standalone. After you can run also when playing music, but this will load the system with a lot of realtime threads...

[austinpop]

4 hours ago, hifi25nl said:

The 3 realtime tests (as root. you can use more cycles than 10000 if you want)

 

1) cyclictest -q -l 10000 -m -Sp98 -i100 -d0

 

2) hackbench -l 10000 &>/dev/null && cyclictest -q -l 10000 -m -Sp98 -i100 -d0

 

3) hwlatdetect --duration=60 --threshold=15

 

The first 2 are executed if you type

rttest

 

 

What are we looking for in terms of desired results?

 

Low average latency? Low variance? Both?

[hifi25nl]

Both, the variance is the important parameter, but a variance of 3 ms is very different from one of 3us

[HeeBroG]

On 12/11/2018 at 7:56 PM, lmitche said:

Isn't the DNBE a bare bones card without a case? 

 

In high power mode this machine makes a great server, and in low power mode makes a great endpoint that can with some effort be powered by an lps1.2.

 

Anyway the best NUC sound quality I have heard comes from this machine, but it is expensive and the most difficult to configure.

 

Hi Larry,

 

Thanks for sharing your knowledge here.

 

As an endpoint, do you use the DNBE with 4GB RAM?

 

Is more/maximum RAM preferable for DNBE as a server?

 

Please excuse me if this is a silly question but with only a single LAN port on a NUC, how do you connect the server NUC to the router and the NUC endpoint?

 

Regards,

 

Geoff

 

 

[mourip]

Anyone here tried booting Audiolinux from an SD card with 7 series NUC?

[wildsam]

22 hours ago, greenleo said:

I'm thinking buying JRiver in Win10 as well.  Would you mind telling me how to configure your system?

 

Regards.

Install jriver 64bit and then follow this guide to setup DLNA sharing on your network.

https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Media_Server

once setup, I use JRemote app on a tablet to control playback and switch between zones. Very slick, great sound and trouble free.

cheers 

[BigAlMc]

5 hours ago, HeeBroG said:

 

Hi Larry,

 

Thanks for sharing your knowledge here.

 

As an endpoint, do you use the DNBE with 4GB RAM?

 

Is more/maximum RAM preferable for DNBE as a server?

 

Please excuse me if this is a silly question but with only a single LAN port on a NUC, how do you connect the server NUC to the router and the NUC endpoint?

 

Regards,

 

Geoff

 

 

 

Hi Geoff,

 

I'm not Larry obviously but will attempt to answer your 2nd and 3rd questions.

 

Whilst 4gb RAM is sufficient for running an AL endpoint more is probably better for a server. How much you need is probably software dependent. For example I'm running a Roon server and the Roon DB can be really large so I went for 32gb. That said one stick is faulty and I'm sending it back for replacement and it's running just fine on 16gb.

 

For the question about NUCs having one LAN port. People are using a network switch. So the server and endpoint both connect to the switch and the switch connects to the router.

 

Cheers,

Alan

[HeeBroG]

@BigAlMc

Thanks Alan.

 

I must confess to be a real "nube" when it comes to computing/networking.

 

So with the switch connected to the Modem with a LAN cable, the Endpoint NUC and Sever NUC both connected to the server via a LAN cable; the switch can pass information from an iPad to the Serve NUC for playback control and yet music information from Server NUC to Endpoint NUC without any special settings?

 

You see, I have been using a Macmini as a server with a Thunderbolt to LAN converter as my second LAN port to connect to an sMS-200.

I just got my NUC7PYJH and plan to overhaul my system due to these exciting findings by getting a NUC7i7DNBE for server duties.

 

On another note, with AL on a NUC endpoint and a NUC server can one use the embedded Squeezelite/Logitech MS to play music or is Roon required?

 

I might be confusing things but it seems some here are saying Squeezelite sounds better but the advantage of Roon is the user interface and library management .

 

Regards,

 

Geoff

[BigAlMc]

Hi Geoff,

 

Yes, the switch connects to the router to get internet access and then shares that internet access with both the Server and Endpoint which are both connected to it. This allows them all to talk to each other.

 

I've only been using Roon so will leave the Squeezelite question for someone else but pretty sure you can use squeezelite on its own in AL and don't need Roon to use it.

 

Cheers,

Alan

[greenleo]

i7DNBE powered by LPS-1.2

Thank you very much (in alphabetical order) Alan (@BigAIMc), Larry (@lmitche) and Rajiv (@austinpop) for your helps.  After lots of tries and heroic  measures, eventually I may boot the NUC7i7DNBE using the LPS-1.2 

 

For the readers, only 1 core was being used, and it does not always work in the sense that after pressing the power button sometimes the power light not on, sometimes went off after sometime, sometimes it hanged during boot.  So the best strategy is to leave the NUC on once it's on, No kidding.

 

Chassis: Asaka Plato X7D

 

My UEFI setting.

USB: I count the USB being used and disable the rest.

SATA: disable everything.

PCI: nothing

Performance:

CPU: use only 1 core

Memory: underclock to 16 in my case

Please see the images attached.

 

Final thoughts:

1. I'm using a 2.1 to 2.5 adapter for the NUC.  A better DC cable may provide better results.

2. If the cores may be underclocked, all the cores migth be used?

 

I'll post an SQ impression of this config in the other thread later.

[rickca]

4 minutes ago, greenleo said:

only 1 core was being used

What's the point of buying a quad core and using only 1 core?

[greenleo]

14 minutes ago, rickca said:

What's the point of buying a quad core and using only 1 core?

It seems the SQ when powered by the LPS-1.2 > using 4 cores and the SMPS.