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AudioLinux and NUC Troubleshooting and Tuning

rickca

By rickca
in Music Servers

austinpop
Message added by austinpop

Summary of useful findings and recommendations

 

This section will be a living repository of useful info from this thread. It's very similar to a wiki and will be maintained by a small group of thread moderators.

 

Before you get started please refer to the Audio-Linux website to ensure you have the latest info and the proper versions of the OS. Audio-Linux.com  

 

**** Updated for AL 1.30 menu 118 or later.

 

  "First Run" setup for headless.  

 

Setup your NUC with a keyboard, mouse, and monitor to the NUC BIOS settings.  From the menu note the IP address of the machine to SSH into.  From a MAC the macOS terminal program supports SSH:

324537708_ScreenShot2019-01-28at3_02_19PM.thumb.png.739dc7f9cdb05e04da806c7c66877332.png

 

Then it is simpler to cut and paste into the terminal session. After entering the password for the audiolinuxuser you will be presented with the AL headless menu:

 

1518375894_ScreenShot2019-01-28at3_04_18PM.thumb.png.a7b2867a163f8f014e56e52ff69f94b4.png

 

Option 8 takes you to the command line for the following basic setup.  You will need to be the Root user for this setup and the su command first:

 

su

 

Fix the time zone:  (this is my timezone - look in directory /usr/share/zoneinfo)

 

timedatectl set-timezone America/Chicago
 

Setup and Start NTP daemon (to keep the system time in sync)

 

*** the config file is now properly filled in.

 

Now Start the daemon

 

timedatectl set-ntp true

 

 

NOTE: Sometimes the system takes a little while to get synced up.
 

Set hostname  (this provides a unique name for the machine on your network.  Replace <NAME> with your chosen name)

 

hostnamectl set-hostname <NAME> 
 

Once the above items are set up your machine is ready to be configured for say a Roon bridge/endpoint. That is done using the AL menu.  To return to the menu do the following commands.

 

exit

menu

 

----------------------------------

 

For most of us, the following basic settings are key.

From the configuration menu:

6. START and enable Roonbridge

15. SET Realtime Priority to extreme

16. ENABLE ramroot (reboot after)

 

Return to the main menu and reboot the NUC using 

 

11 Reboot

 

------------------

Roon Server setup is a bit more complex and we will cover it completely a bit later.  The key is where you are booting from and where the Roon database is stored.  In general; say a 32gb OPTANE "SSD".

 

  • You have to partition the SSD into a boot drive and a storage drive.  
  • The transfer the USB stick install to the boot partition.  
  • Reboot from the boot partition.  
  • Do the basic setup. Timezone and name
  • Transfer the Roon Database to the storage drive
  • Start the Roon Server
  • .....

 

----------------- 

The machine will reboot and from the display attached to the NUC you can watch it boot up and load into RAM.  Once the AudioLinux menu is showing the endpoint should be available in Roon.    This completes the basic startup sequence.  The system is ready to start testing.    

 

 

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rickca

rickca

Posted
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Posted
9 hours ago, ray-dude said:

If you want to create an .img file, you need to have a remote file server mounted.

I don't think a dd is going to give me what I want.  The original .img file we download from Piero's site is something like 6 GB for headless.  If I dd from a 64GB source USB flash drive, a dd is going to result in a 64GB file, isn't it?  So the question is how does Piero create the .img file he distributes?

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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rickca

rickca

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Posted
2 minutes ago, hifi25nl said:

You can make a reduced size image only if you have not expanded the partition to cover all unallocated space.

I never did anything to expand the partition on the USB flash drive.  I just used Etcher to put the downloaded .img onto a USB flash drive.  Maybe I just don't understand what dd does.  I thought it did a sector by sector copy of the entire USB stick rather than just copying the allocated space.  I know when I tried to dd from one USB stick to another USB stick it copied the entire thing even though I never expanded the partition on the source drive.

 

So I guess I have some misconception.

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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rickca

rickca

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Posted
5 minutes ago, hifi25nl said:

In this case is easy. The following line can be applied only if partition has not been expanded and only for headless:

OK the key is that count parameter.  After putting the .img onto the flash drive with Etcher, I have done some some updates like option 3 on the AL update menu (Update all other packages).  Does that operation automatically expand the partition if more space is required, or do you have to do something explicit to expand a partition?

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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rickca

rickca

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Posted
1 hour ago, lmitche said:

So dd starts the count at cylinder one of course!

The first cylinder is at offset 0.  So we want offset 0 through offset 5989 which is a total of 5990 cylinders.  I think we're saying the same thing.

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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rickca

rickca

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Posted

@ray-dude there are tons of Linux primers out there.  Is there one you recommend to more fully understand what is going on under the covers of the menu items?  I don't want a reference 'bible' kind of book, but rather one that highlights the commands and procedures we are likely to use with AL without getting too sophisticated.  I have a good background in programming (started with 370 assembler and principles of operation).  I even taught undergrad Computer Science at a university.  But that was lightyears ago.

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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rickca

rickca

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Posted
4 minutes ago, Monge said:

No I did not. Thanks I’ll try that.

Absolutely necessary.  Until you do that and connect your DAC, systemctl status squeezelite will show you that squeezelite is inactive.  I learned this from Rajiv!

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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rickca

rickca

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Posted

@bobfa you should probably specify what audio software you plan to run on your NUC.

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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rickca

rickca

Posted
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Posted
2 minutes ago, ray-dude said:

By convention, most Unix apps have a -h (help) flag (for example "squeezelite -h"), and/or a man (manual) page (for example, "man dd").

Yeah I just find I lose the forest for the trees when navigating amongst man pages, and I've forgotten sed/awk and regular expressions.  No problem, I'll probaby get one of the O'Reilly series I used to have.  I never expected to need (or want) them again!

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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  • 3 weeks later...
rickca

rickca

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Posted
On 12/28/2018 at 1:37 PM, rickca said:

I made a copy of my USB stick on a hard drive of my Windows 10 machine by using ImageUSB.  It has an option that says 'Create image from USB drive'.  It actually creates a .bin file that is the size of your USB flash drive.  You can then use ImageUSB to create a new USB flash drive ... that's how it's supposed to work, I haven't tested my backup procedure yet!

I tested this backup procedure today and it works perfectly.  Although it copies the entire USB flash drive (not just allocated space) it is actually quite fast.  On my i7-6700K a 64GB USB 3.0 stick took less than 10 minutes to 'create image from USB drive' and again less than 10 minutes to 'write image to USB drive'.  You can probably cut the time in half by using a 32GB USB flash drive.  Note I got these results with a USB 3.0 Sandisk Extreme.  

 

Given the reliability of USB sticks I always make a backup after any significant changes that I want to preserve going forward.  You never know when your USB stick is going to fail or get corrupted.  Yet another reason to put your Roon database on an Optane SSD.

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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rickca

rickca

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38 minutes ago, Advieira said:

 

7i7DNBE works in Plato X7? Or only in Plato X7D?

Plato X7 is compatible with NUC7i5BNH / NUC7i5BNK / NUC7i3BNH / NUC7i3BNK.

 

Plato X7D is compatible with 

NUC7i7DNBE / NUC7i7DNKE / NUC7i7DNHE
NUC7i5DNBE / NUC7i5DNKE / NUC7i5DNHE
NUC7i3DNBE / NUC7i3DNKE / NUC7i3DNHE

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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rickca

rickca

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Posted

After you do ramroot remove, are subsequent updates written to the USB flash drive or do you need to reboot first?

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 weeks later...
rickca

rickca

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Posted
6 minutes ago, bobfa said:

OH, and menu 101 appears to be up also.

Piero's website says

Audiolinux headless version 1.0 with some fixes and menu 100. In the next menu release an extra option for configuring DAC in MPD and Squeezelite

 

I am so far behind but it sounds great and I don't want to break anything.  

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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rickca

rickca

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Posted
6 minutes ago, Jud said:

went into the network configuration file and changed “en*” to the full name of the Ethernet interface

and then did you do this?

 

Delete (as root) /etc/systemd/network/eth.network with
rm /etc/systemd/network/eth.network
and reboot

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 weeks later...
rickca

rickca

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Posted
9 hours ago, Monge said:

I have had a strange experiment with my NUC7PJYH running SqueezeLite and LMS running on the same NUC running Al headlees 0.99. I Set CPU governor custom 1500000 both min. and max and turbo off. 

Then I set Isolated CPU cores to half, USB=Y and Extreme 2 and rebooted and enabled the SqueezeLite and LMS serviced and hit play In Ipeng app and wow I had newer heard my Music Sound that good. 

I had to change my BOTW P&P Eco to the brick SMPS.

Then I began analyzing and found out that the CPU frequency was 2697..... on all 4 cores and turbo =on.

I don't understand this.  You set CPU governor min=max=1500000 and yet your CPU frequency was 2697?  I assume you mean 2.697 GHz because the burst frequency of the J5005 is 2.8 GHz.

 

Also, there's no such thing as turbo boost on the J5005.  Do you turn off SpeedStep in the BIOS?

 

Can you please explain what USB=Y does?

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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  • 4 weeks later...
rickca

rickca

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Posted

Has anyone updated AL to the latest kernel (headless version 1.1 with menu version 105)?  Any issues or noticeable change in sound quality?

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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  • 3 months later...
rickca

rickca

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Posted
2 hours ago, hifi25nl said:

You can remove the applications that you will not use. For example Roon, if you use only HQPlayer

yaourt -S roonserver roonbridge

Maybe you meant to say yaourt -R to remove apps you don't need?

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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  • 4 months later...
rickca

rickca

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Posted
34 minutes ago, dctom said:

Anyone tried the new AL 4.0 ?

 

Bit confused by the license  - is it a one off payment or a subscription. 

Audiolinux lxqt 1 year support with image $59

Audiolinux lxqt unlimited time support $ 119

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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