AudioLinux and NUC Troubleshooting and Tuning

[mozes]

6 minutes ago, austinpop said:

@hifi25nl

 

Hi Piero,

 

Here is a new feature request for you to consider:

• auto-detect the DAC (ALSA device)
• auto-update the relevant conf file for Squeezelite, MPD, etc - for all enabled services
• implementation could be simple (boot-time only), or sophisticated (auto-sensing, plug & play)

One of the reasons AL is dead simple to use with Roon is that it does this automatically. For all other users, they have to learn how to edit conf files, and they have to do it every time they switch DACs.

+1

[austinpop]

4 minutes ago, hifi25nl said:

The simple solution would be to let choose the DAC when starting MPD, Squeezelite etc. 

I will think about this...

 

That would be a great step forward!

[Bricki]

Is anyone else having stability issues with their server after setting up a network bridge?...it may just be my issue... originally I had no issues with the network bridge for the first 5 days... but I have had to reboot my server 3 times in the last few days....it has frozen after hours of playing music off a micro SD card that is attached to a USB port on the same riser off the mother board as my USB to Ethernet adapter... perhaps this is related, I will have to spend some time setting up bridging on a different port and see if that makes any difference. 

 

Anyone else have a similar problem?

[lmitche]

2 hours ago, Bricki said:

Is anyone else having stability issues with their server after setting up a network bridge?...it may just be my issue... originally I had no issues with the network bridge for the first 5 days... but I have had to reboot my server 3 times in the last few days....it has frozen after hours of playing music off a micro SD card that is attached to a USB port on the same riser off the mother board as my USB to Ethernet adapter... perhaps this is related, I will have to spend some time setting up bridging on a different port and see if that makes any difference. 

 

Anyone else have a similar problem?

I saw a very unstable usb nic earlier this week. It wasn't bridged. Rebooting the router fixed it. I've seen this happen with a Cisco switch as well.

[Bricki]

1 hour ago, lmitche said:

I saw a very unstable usb nic earlier this week. It wasn't bridged. Rebooting the router fixed it. I've seen this happen with a Cisco switch as well.

Ok thanks 👍. I will definitely try that first

[Dutch]

On 1/27/2019 at 3:25 PM, mourip said:

 

You seem to be the first person here who has described pursuing this new option.

 

Do you hear any sound quality improvement?

 

Sorry for the late reply. While I do continue listening to music and do some tweaking I should not comment on SQ changes at this moment since both my Hynes SR7 PSU and P3 Power Plant have developped defects. I hope to repair these soon, waiting for parts right now.

[mourip]

Just now, Dutch said:

 

Sorry for the late reply. While I do continue listening to music and some tweaking I should not comment on SQ changes at this moment since both my Hynes SR7 PSU and P3 Power Plant have developped defects. I hope to repair these soon, waiting for parts right now.

Thanks. Others are reporting a perceptible improvement. I am going to give it a try today.

 

Hope you get your LPS issues sorted. I am seeing a nice SQ boost from my new HDPlex 200w LPS which replaced one of their older ones.

[auricgoldfinger]

5 hours ago, Dutch said:

 

Sorry for the late reply. While I do continue listening to music and do some tweaking I should not comment on SQ changes at this moment since both my Hynes SR7 PSU and P3 Power Plant have developped defects. I hope to repair these soon, waiting for parts right now.

 

What's going on with your SR7?

[Dutch]

17 minutes ago, auricgoldfinger said:

 

What's going on with your SR7?

 

It’s a SR7EHD MR4 and the 8A high power ouput regulator module is malfunctioning and needs replacement. I don’t know the cause or what’s wrong with it exactly. All I know is my i7  6700T music server connected to it started acting up end of last year and its output voltage had dropped to around 10.5V. Couldn’t get it back up to 12V using the potmeter (got to about 11.6) but it became more and more unstable. Today I got my old HDplex 12/19v (v1) PSU back into the system as the server either didn’t boot completely or rebooted after minutes. I’m now waiting for Hynes to send me a replacement module.

[auricgoldfinger]

2 minutes ago, Dutch said:

 

It’s a SR7EHD MR4 and the 8A high power ouput regulator module is malfunctioning and needs replacement. I don’t know the cause or what’s wrong with it exactly. All I know is my i7  6700T music server connected to it started acting up end of last year and its output voltage had dropped to around 10.5V. Couldn’t get it back up to 12V using the potmeter (got to about 11.6) but it became more and more unstable. Today I got my old HDplex 12/19v (v1) PSU back into the system as the server either didn’t boot completely or rebooted after minutes. I’m now waiting for Hynes to send me a replacement module.

 

That's a real bummer.  I hope it doesn't take Paul too long to get you back in good working order.

[Dutch]

1 minute ago, auricgoldfinger said:

 

That's a real bummer.  I hope it doesn't take Paul too long to get you back in good working order.

 

Thanks, he offered to send me the replacement without charge even though it’s out of warranty so that’s absolutely great service. It is taking longer though than expected/indicated but that’s not uncommon with Paul.

[bobfa]

I started playing with processor core dedication today.  I ran the scripts while in RAMBOOT and they threw errors saying /etc folders were full.  So I rebooted into USB and the audio status menu does not display data properly it ends up blank.  So I broke something running that menu item while booted into RAM. 

 

To that end audio-Linux 1.0 with menu 100 is up on the website so I am going to reflash and start over.  Takes about 15 min to get up and running.  OH, and menu 101 appears to be up also.

 

I will see where the listening takes me after I get the USB rebuilt.

[rickca]

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.  

[ray-dude]

Very productive last several days.  I've been doing a lot of experiments with RF isolation (optical vs USB, etc), and playing with large buffers in SqueezeLite at the same time to try to understand things more.

 

As a reminder, I have a NUC7i7DNKE with 16GB running AudioLinux headless in ram, Roon Server (local and network mounted content), with Optane driver for Roon DB, stock network and SMPS, in a Akasa fanless case.

 

I bridge this to a NUC7CJYH with 8GB running AudioLinux headless in ram, both as Roon Bridge and SqueezeLite with different size buffers.  Stock ethernet cable to 7i7 and stock SMPS, in an Akasa fanless case.

 

I connect the end point via both USB and optical to a Chord Hugo mScaler, which then connects to my Chord DAVE which direct drives my Voxativ 9.87 speakers.

 

The new kit this weekend was the optical interface from the 7CJ to my HMS.

 

First, I dusted off a Kanex HDMI audio extractor (stock SMPS), activated on board audio in the BIOS, and setup both Roon and SL to use the HDMI output of the NUC for audio.  The optical toslink then went to one of the optical inputs on my HMS.  I had gotten this to work before, so no problems getting this going.

 

Second, I decided to dive in again and try to figure out how to get the on board toslink on the 7CJ working.  For those that haven't played with it, there is a 3.5mm audio jack on the back that also has digital toslink optical output.  To activate, I enabled HD Audio in the bios, but I wasn't getting any audio out (LED remained off).

 

With some pointers from Piero, I went into alsamixer, selected the PCH driver, and saw that S/PDIF was on (but it still wasn't working).  I discovered that by toggling the S/PDIF channels off (displays "MM") then toggling them back on (displays "00"), things started to work! (the "m" key toggles the channel state).  Once working, I connected the on board NUC toslink to the 2nd optical input on my HMS

 

With Roon, I could now create a playback zone group for USB, toslink from the NUC, and toslink from HDMI from the NUC and toggle between them on the HMS to do A/B/C testing.

 

Separately I have a Chromecast Audio on WiFi, with a toslink connection to the HMS, that I would occasionally swap in for comparisons.

 

The Chromecast Audio was surprisingly good for a $30 device.  For civilians, this may be the end point of choice (at least with the HMS...Rob Watts' does a great job dealing with jitter in his kit, but I'm not sure how it would perform with other DACs)  However, even when on battery, it was consistently a small notch down on SQ vs the other interfaces I was testing.

 

Between USB, direct TOS link, and toslink extracted from HDMI, I would still give the (very) slight edge to USB.  With USB disconnected (to not have that RF path), I would give a very slight edge to the NUC direct toslink output (vs HDMI).   It will take some extended listening tests to see if I prefer USB vs toslink direct from the NUC with USB disconnected.

 

The interesting thing was when I started to redo my listening tests of large buffer Squeezelite with the various output interfaces.

 

On all three output interfaces, with large buffers, Squeezelite had consistently better sound quality than with the default buffers.  The default buffers consistently sounded (roughly) the same as Roon Bridge (this is a more difficult A/B comparison with the switching time).  

 

The reason this was interesting for me is that the 7CJ actually has three different HW paths for the various output channels: USB, HDMI, and Audio CODEC (see block diagram below).  When we were doing our large buffer experiments with USB, it was unclear whether the difference was something RF related, something related to the protocol being used (USB audio) or something else.

 

Now, hearing a difference on 3 different output modalities (USB, HDMI, Audio CODEC), 2 different protocols (USB Audio, S/PDIF), and one physical interface that can transmit electrical noise (USB) and 2 that cannot (optical), it seems the difference is upstream at the ALSA driver/OS level, or some HW abstraction that is shared between the various HW outputs.  This is very surprising to me, and makes the mystery of what's going on a bit deeper.

 

In the meantime, fantastic to have a native toslink option from the 7CJ (that one has been vexing me for a while).

 

 

 

 

 

[austinpop]

12 minutes ago, ray-dude said:

Very productive last several days.  I've been doing a lot of experiments with RF isolation (optical vs USB, etc), and playing with large buffers in SqueezeLite at the same time to try to understand things more.

 

As a reminder, I have a NUC7i7DNKE with 16GB running AudioLinux headless in ram, Roon Server (local and network mounted content), with Optane driver for Roon DB, stock network and SMPS, in a Akasa fanless case.

 

I bridge this to a NUC7CJYH with 8GB running AudioLinux headless in ram, both as Roon Bridge and SqueezeLite with different size buffers.  Stock ethernet cable to 7i7 and stock SMPS, in an Akasa fanless case.

 

I connect the end point via both USB and optical to a Chord Hugo mScaler, which then connects to my Chord DAVE which direct drives my Voxativ 9.87 speakers.

 

The new kit this weekend was the optical interface from the 7CJ to my HMS.

 

First, I dusted off a Kanex HDMI audio extractor (stock SMPS), activated on board audio in the BIOS, and setup both Roon and SL to use the HDMI output of the NUC for audio.  The optical toslink then went to one of the optical inputs on my HMS.  I had gotten this to work before, so no problems getting this going.

 

Second, I decided to dive in again and try to figure out how to get the on board toslink on the 7CJ working.  For those that haven't played with it, there is a 3.5mm audio jack on the back that also has digital toslink optical output.  To activate, I enabled HD Audio in the bios, but I wasn't getting any audio out (LED remained off).

 

With some pointers from Piero, I went into alsamixer, selected the PCH driver, and saw that S/PDIF was on (but it still wasn't working).  I discovered that by toggling the S/PDIF channels off (displays "MM") then toggling them back on (displays "00"), things started to work! (the "m" key toggles the channel state).  Once working, I connected the on board NUC toslink to the 2nd optical input on my HMS

 

With Roon, I could now create a playback zone group for USB, toslink from the NUC, and toslink from HDMI from the NUC and toggle between them on the HMS to do A/B/C testing.

 

Separately I have a Chromecast Audio on WiFi, with a toslink connection to the HMS, that I would occasionally swap in for comparisons.

 

The Chromecast Audio was surprisingly good for a $30 device.  For civilians, this may be the end point of choice (at least with the HMS...Rob Watts' does a great job dealing with jitter in his kit, but I'm not sure how it would perform with other DACs)  However, even when on battery, it was consistently a small notch down on SQ vs the other interfaces I was testing.

 

Between USB, direct TOS link, and toslink extracted from HDMI, I would still give the (very) slight edge to USB.  With USB disconnected (to not have that RF path), I would give a very slight edge to the NUC direct toslink output (vs HDMI).   It will take some extended listening tests to see if I prefer USB vs toslink direct from the NUC with USB disconnected.

 

The interesting thing was when I started to redo my listening tests of large buffer Squeezelite with the various output interfaces.

 

On all three output interfaces, with large buffers, Squeezelite had consistently better sound quality than with the default buffers.  The default buffers consistently sounded (roughly) the same as Roon Bridge (this is a more difficult A/B comparison with the switching time).  

 

The reason this was interesting for me is that the 7CJ actually has three different HW paths for the various output channels: USB, HDMI, and Audio CODEC (see block diagram below).  When we were doing our large buffer experiments with USB, it was unclear whether the difference was something RF related, something related to the protocol being used (USB audio) or something else.

 

Now, hearing a difference on 3 different output modalities (USB, HDMI, Audio CODEC), 2 different protocols (USB Audio, S/PDIF), and one physical interface that can transmit electrical noise (USB) and 2 that cannot (optical), it seems the difference is upstream at the ALSA driver/OS level, or some HW abstraction that is shared between the various HW outputs.  This is very surprising to me, and makes the mystery of what's going on a bit deeper.

 

In the meantime, fantastic to have a native toslink option from the 7CJ (that one has been vexing me for a while).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks Ray, that's a very useful set of findings.

[bobfa]

6 hours ago, bobfa said:

I started playing with processor core dedication today.  I ran the scripts while in RAMBOOT and they threw errors saying /etc folders were full.  So I rebooted into USB and the audio status menu does not display data properly it ends up blank.  So I broke something running that menu item while booted into RAM. 

 

To that end audio-Linux 1.0 with menu 100 is up on the website so I am going to reflash and start over.  Takes about 15 min to get up and running.  OH, and menu 101 appears to be up also.

 

I will see where the listening takes me after I get the USB rebuilt.

I just build a new USB stick and play.  Of course, I break stuff all the time.  OH well

[ray-dude]

I can't edit my last post any more, but the following will save updates to alsamixer:

 

alsactl store

 

[greenleo]

3 hours ago, ray-dude said:

I can't edit my last post any more, but the following will save updates to alsamixer:

 

alsactl store

 

Ray,

 

What optical cable are you using from the toslink of the 7C to the HMS?

[ray-dude]

I had a couple of these cables:

 

Toslink to Mini Toslink Cable (6 FT - 2 Pack), Fosmon Digital Optical Audio Male to Male S/PDIF Fiber Optic Cord for Apple MacBook Pro, Mac Pro/Mini, iMac, Chromecast Audio, More https://www.amazon.com/dp/B06XDGMB1B/

[Jud]

What I am sure is dead simple, but I don't know the answer:  Can't get Ethernet (not Wi-Fi, just plain old wired Ethernet) started on my little ASUS VivoMini with AudioLinux installed.  Can someone tell me what to do?

 

Thanks.

[austinpop]

19 minutes ago, Jud said:

What I am sure is dead simple, but I don't know the answer:  Can't get Ethernet (not Wi-Fi, just plain old wired Ethernet) started on my little ASUS VivoMini with AudioLinux installed.  Can someone tell me what to do?

 

Thanks.

 

Hmm, that usually just works.

1. Are you booting off a USB stick?
2. Is this Audiolinux headless?
3. Did you modify or otherwise alter anything on the install?
4. Do you have a monitor attached where you can run a command? If so, run networkctl and post output.

 

[elpampeano]

25 minutes ago, Jud said:

What I am sure is dead simple, but I don't know the answer:  Can't get Ethernet (not Wi-Fi, just plain old wired Ethernet) started on my little ASUS VivoMini with AudioLinux installed.  Can someone tell me what to do?

 

Thanks.

Seems another id_unique (i have the same issue when upgrade to 3.0.0) Well, i cannot fix it by erase the command...a have to reistall from my ssd to the pen drive and get a new unique_id. i need to lear how to erase....

[Jud]

25 minutes ago, austinpop said:

 

Hmm, that usually just works.

1. Are you booting off a USB stick?

 

Yes.

25 minutes ago, austinpop said:

1. Is this Audiolinux headless?

 

Yes.

25 minutes ago, austinpop said:

1. Did you modify or otherwise alter anything on the install?

 

Installed and enabled MPD and upmpdcli. Modified the MPD configuration file (not in /etc but in the /home directory) to work with my DAC. After I initially had problems, went into the network configuration file and changed “en*” to the full name of the Ethernet interface, as described on AL home page and linked page.

 

25 minutes ago, austinpop said:

1. Do you have a monitor attached where you can run a command? If so, run networkctl and post output.

 

Have done various commands and both before and after modifying network configuration file, always get the information the Ethernet interface is “configuring,” never “configured.”

[rickca]

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

[austinpop]

@Jud

 

I'll PM you.