AudioLinux and NUC Troubleshooting and Tuning

[davide256]

Ok, I'm finally at the point where I can accept the NUC7PJYH as better than RPI3b+.  I can't say if any individual change made the difference, I more or less took all the recommendations (tried/untried) in this thread and used them. I also was not happy with the sound of the stock LPS 1.2 setup at 12V powering the NUC, had  better results with the options below.

 

latest AL headless  (0.6) in RAM/extreme mode

initrd=\intel-ucode.img initrd=\initramfs-linux-rt-bfq.img root=PARTUUID=166ad16d-098d-4453-ab07-7c5255b4d451 rw quiet intel_pstate=enable efi=runtime audit=0

Boot
secure boot disabled
Linux OS

Devices

USB Configuration - Portable Device Charging Mode - OFF

Chipset SATA Controller Configuration - SATA Port - UNCHECKED

Onboard Device Configuration - Audio - UNCHECKED

Onboard Device Configuration - HD-Audio DSP - DISABLED

Onboard Device Configuration - Digital Microphone - DISABLED

Onboard Device Configuration - WLAN - UNCHECKED

Onboard Device Configuration - Bluetooth - UNCHECKED

Legacy Device Configuration - Enhanced Consumer IR - UNCHECKED

Primary Power Settings - Enhanced Intel Speedstep Technology - UNCHECKED

 

Intel Virtualization options disabled

 

NUC powered by LPS1.2 at 12V using  HDplex 19v as energizer or by SPS-500 at 12V

 

With this setup I no longer experience mid range suck out and the high frequency graininess of RPI3b+ is eliminated

 

[davide256]

@hifi25nl   reeally don't want to upset a working system for an incremental update that may not be a relevant improvement.

 

Can you publish a revision log that tells  what changes have been made/driver support updated? This is pretty basic for any software, also helps

in troubleshooting update linked changes

 

 

[davide256]

9 hours ago, Bricki said:

On the NUC7CJYH bios does anyone know if the package power limit sliders are worth fiddling with? Or just leave them as is? 

They can help you where the PS has current limits.  I've not had any boot issues with LPS 1.2 since I set the limits to 10/12.

[davide256]

On 12/23/2018 at 6:13 AM, hifi25nl said:

New menu version 0.8! 

If you have installed audiolinux 0.7 or updated manually to the new menu you can update it from Update menu.

Now you can mount easier a local or network drive with a script .

Mount scripts are in a beta stage, please use with care.

For network mount you must install first nmap

pacman -S nmap

 

 

 

This isn't working for me.  I have a Lexar USB stack of SDXC memory cards. I can see the two "drives" sdb and sdc when I use the menu local mount option.

I enter sdb1, yes for a second drive, sdc1 for the second drive, exit, then enable Roonserver to run. Normally at this point with LXQT I find the attached music

drives in the media folder (linux1/linux2 or windows1/windows2 but I'm not seeing anything in any of the folders in this directory. What step am I missing?

Running extreme mode, boot to RAM on NUC7pjyh

[davide256]

28 minutes ago, rickca said:

I got my NUC7PJYH to boot with an LPS-1.2 set to 12V.  All I did was disable SpeedStep, SATA and onboard audio.

 

The interesting thing is it works with an LPS-1.2 if I use the two USB3 ports in the rear for my USB flash drive and the USB cable to my DAC.  If I use a rear USB3 port for the USB cable to my DAC, but a front USB3 port for the USB flash drive, the NUC will not boot with the LPS-1.2.

 

Actually, the USB cable goes to a Berkeley Alpha USB which uses bus power only for the dirty input side.

the yellow port allows more current for USB charging, disabling USB charging will likely eliminate the front/back difference

[davide256]

On 12/24/2018 at 6:45 PM, hifi25nl said:

Updated and fixed some problems in mount scripts. Now menu is version 081

 

Merry Christmas!

I can see that the script now creates folders for the mounts in media directory but doing a disk status from the menu still showed no mount point. I ended up manually

editing fstab to add the UUID statements with linux1 and linux2 mount points.

[davide256]

14 minutes ago, hifi25nl said:

You can check the just made mounts with the command

mount

Modifications to /etc/fstab will not be saved if you are in ram mode, even if you select save system. 

I suggest to boot in normal mode if you want to configure drive mount. 

I will add an explanation in the next version. 

you may also want to elaborate on ramroot remove vs ramroot disable. Menu doesn't properly recognize ramroot is not running if you use disable.

I did try a second time from clean boot, before any call to use ramroot, had same result.

 

[davide256]

4 hours ago, BigAlMc said:

 

Thanks Piero,

 

Just to clarify.

 

I need to edit the sshd_config file using Nano or whatever to permit root login.

 

And then I can use WINSCP but change the user to root?

 

Same password or audiolinux0 ?

 

Cheers,

Alan

the first time you use WINSCP it walks you through login. Is it possible you logged in the first time without using root login? I have had no issues editing configuration

files. I just did a search also for this file, I only see a compressed file by that name, possibly because I have no HD/SSD in an endpoint device?

[davide256]

wanted to play with LMS since some were reporting it can be made to sound better than Roon with buffer settings. I can get Squeezelite to work but when I use the menu in 083 version to install R2 version and enable, I can see "audiolinux@squeezelite" enabled with "Show Audio Services" but its not running as an audio service or application.

Is there a step I missed with R2 that's different from Squeezelite enablement?

[davide256]

5 hours ago, User471 said:

For those of you using NUCs, from a hardware perspective why do you think they are capable of outperforming bespoke kit like SoTM and Sonore?

 

It seems counterintuitive to me that a general purpose board like the NUC, once power supply issues are addressed, is there or thereabouts in SQ terms with kit very specifically designed to do one job well

 

I don't have an NUC personally, but I don't doubt for one moment those who claim wonderful things from them. I'm just intrigued as to why it might be so

 

Boggles me too but I see these unique factors

 

1) AL itself running in RAM along with the endpoint player software

2) the ability to eliminate all attached media drives at the endpoint , even the USB boot drive after load to RAM... this floored me

    when removing the USB drive after boot sounded better

 

 and apparently as off the shelf product, Intel NUC has better performing hardware integration than other NUC like products, with or without added hi-tech USB hardware.

 

 

[davide256]

4 hours ago, User471 said:

 

My endpoint (not a NUC but a mini-ITX based fanless box I put together myself with x2 Teddy Pardo PSUs, one to he mobo, one to the SoTM USB card) still has an M2 card in it from the days before I ran AL

 

I take my USB out and run RAM-Extreme, but should the M2 come out too?

NUC with RAM only is the desired config for streaming endpoint.  Even if  not used, a connected drive is  still electrically active, and the CPU is interacting with it.

[davide256]

On 1/24/2019 at 12:49 PM, User471 said:

An AL question if I may?

 

Currently my Roonserver runs Debian 9/Webmin and has a mirrored software RAID 1 (4TB) with all my toonz with the OS on an SSD

 

If I move to running Roonserver on AL I'm guessing I lose the RAID array, so am I correct that even if I setup such an array from CLI in AL (assuming my ArchLinux skills are up to snuff) I'll lose all the data and have to start from scratch??

 isn't raid setup in PC BIOS? Or did that change with UEFI?

 

Never mind, I see that you did it in software vs BIOS

[davide256]

4 hours ago, User471 said:

 

I briefly tried LXQT AL as a server this weekend and the good news is that the RAID array was seen and mounted correctly automagically under /run if I remember correctly 

 

Due to the amount of time it was taking rebuilding my Ronn DB from 4TB of music I bailed but might try again with headless AL to free resources and see if it works

 

I use AL as an endpoint and it's excellent. What are the theoretical advantages of using AL at the server end though? 

The empirical result for me was  that it made a bigger difference using AL for Roon server vs PC/Win10/Fidelizer Pro than switching from microRendu to NUC/AL endpoint.

 

[davide256]

6 minutes ago, User471 said:

 

Worth the time and effort then

 

I will report back my impressions

 

One thing occurs, using AL in Roonserver mode booted off a USB (maybe even as ramroot) where is the Roon DB stored?

Thats why you need extra RAM beyond just whats required to run AL... the DB  gets stored in RAM.  You also have to remember to do a RAM save before rebooting/shutting down AL,

else your Roon  changes/history wont be saved and if a Roon software update is pending you should not boot to RAM so that all the changes are made to the source USB drive onetime vs having to update the RAM image every time. So more complex to manage but well worth it.

[davide256]

3 hours ago, bobfa said:

 

@hifi25nl 

 

 

Posted January 9

Audiolinux has already a ramsave periodic option.

You can start/enable it (as root) with the commands

 

systemctl start ramsave.timer

systemctl enable ramsave.timer

 

The default is every 30 min. You can change it editing the /etc/systemd/system/ramsave.timer

•  

the only wrinkle being that if you are running AL endpoint with the USB drive removed after boot, there won't be a media drive to save to. What happens if the drive isn't there, i.e. can you just insert it later for unattended save?