AudioLinux and NUC Troubleshooting and Tuning

[Monge]

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.

After 3 hours continiuos play the CPU core temperature was 49-50C.

 

 

[bobfa]

There have been some menu changes in AL about CPU isolation.  You might want to check out the menu updates

[Monge]

46 minutes ago, bobfa said:

There have been some menu changes in AL about CPU isolation.  You might want to check out the menu updates

Thanks :😀

I’ll take a look at it.

The performancee improvement with the CPU at 2697.... or/and with the isolated cpus for Audio was very clear to my ears more 3D and more bass extention.

If I only had a JS-2 powersupply for my NUC.

Thanks to Piero for the development of isolateded CPU for Audio In AL.

Great work

Cheers Monge

 

[rickca]

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?

[HeeBroG]

Hi All,

 

AFAIK, NUCs have one ethernet port.

If "bridging" a NUC endpoint to a server with a USB-Ethernet adapter; does one have to configure the NUC/AL specifically or is the connection automatic?

[Monge]

11 hours ago, rickca said:

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?

Yeah I mean 2.697 GHz and no I did not turn OFF the SpeedStep in BIOS as I wanted to play with the Governor settings.

When you isolate CPU core for Audio you get 3 questions and the second is if you want to isolate CPU core for IRQ to USB  Y or N and I choose Y.

 

[Oscarhuge]

On 2/23/2019 at 1:03 AM, Monge said:

Yeah I mean 2.697 GHz and no I did not turn OFF the SpeedStep in BIOS as I wanted to play with the Governor settings.

When you isolate CPU core for Audio you get 3 questions and the second is if you want to isolate CPU core for IRQ to USB  Y or N and I choose Y.

 

I tried on my headphone setup Nuc7i7dnbe (Roon end point running Squeezelite) and speaker setup Nuc7pyjh(Roon end point running Roon bridge), improvements are pretty obvious to my ear. 

[austinpop]

On 2/22/2019 at 8:03 AM, Monge said:

Yeah I mean 2.697 GHz and no I did not turn OFF the SpeedStep in BIOS as I wanted to play with the Governor settings.

When you isolate CPU core for Audio you get 3 questions and the second is if you want to isolate CPU core for IRQ to USB  Y or N and I choose Y.

 

 

Did you get this resolved? I haven't (yet) played around with isolating cores yet, but I know someone who also found that as soon as they turned on isolated cores, the system would not respect the governor settings. Of course, this was back on an earlier version of AL.

[austinpop]

Also, the ability to set custom frequencies, even without isolated cores, seems to be very system and motherboard dependent. I don't know if this is tied to the BIOS implementation. I would try this in a disciplined manner:

1. First, without isolated cores, with Turbo/SpeedStep turned ON in the BIOS, try custom frequencies
   1. with Turbo OFF, can you set any frequency from base frequency to lower?
   2. with Turbo ON, can you set any frequency between base frequency to peak?
2. Experiment, and find a frequency that sounds best to you. For many, this is the base frequency. But if you have a really clean PSU, perhaps this will be a frequency HIGHER than base, but LOWER than peak.
3. Confirm your frequency settings are being honored by monitoring frequency status
4. Now, turn on isolated cores, reboot etc, then set custom frequency as you found in step 2
5. Now check frequency status. Is the governor setting being honored?

[Monge]

2 hours ago, austinpop said:

Also, the ability to set custom frequencies, even without isolated cores, seems to be very system and motherboard dependent. I don't know if this is tied to the BIOS implementation. I would try this in a disciplined manner:

1. First, without isolated cores, with Turbo/SpeedStep turned ON in the BIOS, try custom frequencies
   1. with Turbo OFF, can you set any frequency from base frequency to lower?
   2. with Turbo ON, can you set any frequency between base frequency to peak?
2. Experiment, and find a frequency that sounds best to you. For many, this is the base frequency. But if you have a really clean PSU, perhaps this will be a frequency HIGHER than base, but LOWER than peak.
3. Confirm your frequency settings are being honored by monitoring frequency status
4. Now, turn on isolated cores, reboot etc, then set custom frequency as you found in step 2
5. Now check frequency status. Is the governor setting being honored?

Hi austinpop,

I haven’t had time to play more with CPU governor settings and isolated CPU cores, for Audio, but I have ordered 2 more 16 GB USB sticks to try out newest AL headlees version.

Thank you very much for your guide. 

But one thing I noticed is, that with higher CPU frequency the bass extention was improoved ( not surpricing).

But I had to change my BOTW P&P Eco course I experienced glitched In the playback

So I had to change to the Brick SMPS for the NUC7PJYH. I need to find the sweet spot.

Cheers Monge

 

[drjimwillie]

 How do I load the driver for my Holo spring DAC?

 

I have seen a lot of examples showing how to install the software but I have not seen examples of how to work with it. 

 How is the experience different between the headless and the lxqt?  

 With the lxqt  you can attach a monitor to the actual computer and with the headless you have to remote into the computer, but you’re still doing the same tasks. I assume the Lxqt has a few more menus or scripts? 

 Can somebody show us some graphics of  A day in the life of a headless user, please?

 

 

 

[bobfa]

41 minutes ago, drjimwillie said:

 How do I load the driver for my Holo spring DAC?

 

I have seen a lot of examples showing how to install the software but I have not seen examples of how to work with it. 

 How is the experience different between the headless and the lxqt?  

 With the lxqt  you can attach a monitor to the actual computer and with the headless you have to remote into the computer, but you’re still doing the same tasks. I assume the Lxqt has a few more menus or scripts? 

 Can somebody show us some graphics of  A day in the life of a headless user, please?

 

 

 

“That Depends”

 

Well not really.  Headless does not mean you cannot have a head, you can.  My AL devices all have display ability.  You most likely need a display, keyboard and mouse for BIOS settings.  When I built my NUC endpoint and Xeon server I have the display hardware setup.  When AL headless boots up it will present you with the AL menu as you have seen in these various threads here.  Once you have it running you can grab the IP address of the device and SSH into it from just about anything to get you to that menu!  And of course command line as needed.

 

On Roon you should not need a driver for a DAC.  I do not know yours to be sure. With my NUC endpoint there is no display desired so I SSH into it as needed.  I have found very little for anything more over time.   Take a look at my NUC build thread starter to see if that helps!

 

 

 

Bob

[mourip]

9 hours ago, drjimwillie said:

 How do I load the driver for my Holo spring DAC?

 

I have seen a lot of examples showing how to install the software but I have not seen examples of how to work with it. 

 How is the experience different between the headless and the lxqt?  

 With the lxqt  you can attach a monitor to the actual computer and with the headless you have to remote into the computer, but you’re still doing the same tasks. I assume the Lxqt has a few more menus or scripts? 

 Can somebody show us some graphics of  A day in the life of a headless user, please?

 

@bobfa is correct but I can add a few comments based upon my own experience with the headless version.

 

The main benefit of the "headless" version is it's ability to run in ramroot(ramdisk) and without the overhead that comes from the GUI interface. You can of course disconnect the monitor from either but the headless version is a very minimalist distribution and I assume sounds the best. It is also a bit harder to work with as it requires a commandline interface which makes it a bit like "DOS from Hell." Once configured it will give you stellar audio and seems to be rock solid. The Lxqt, which I have not used, will give you the more familiar user friendly, plug and pray, GUI interface.

 

The Audiolinux website has a list of directly supported DACs which includes your "Holo Audio Spring R2R DAC Engineered Electronics Stereo Playback Interface". So for your endpoint it looks like you should be good to go. Even with the headless version you should not need to install any drivers. I use a Mutec 3+ USB. It is on the list and was automagically recognized.

 

Give it a try. For $49 it is a very cheap thrill by audiophool standards. Reading through this thread and the maze that is the Audiolinux website will give you enough instruction to be successful.

[HeeBroG]

I have my NUC7PJYH running SqueezeLite and LMS on the same NUC running Al Headless.

After much frustration I have managed to run it in Extreme2 and Ramboot mode as suggested.

I understand in Ramboot mode one can remove the USB boot drive for further improvement.

I tried this but LMS freezes and I lose my connection and ability to play via Squeezelite.

I would appreciate some advice please.

[Monge]

1 hour ago, HeeBroG said:

I have my NUC7PJYH running SqueezeLite and LMS on the same NUC running Al Headless.

After much frustration I have managed to run it in Extreme2 and Ramboot mode as suggested.

I understand in Ramboot mode one can remove the USB boot drive for further improvement.

I tried this but LMS freezes and I lose my connection and ability to play via Squeezelite.

I would appreciate some advice please.

You were able to play music before pulling the USB stick?

Did you uncheck Onboard Audio In the BIOS?

You should check the ramroot status In Status menu and show running services In configuration menu.

Also when enabling ramroot you should reboot.

Do you get any error message In your control App?

[Monge]

@HeeBroG You should se this In 

 

RAMROOT STATUS

ramroot status enabled

root filesystem loaded to RAM

 

Remember to save if in ramroot mode when making a change.

Did you change the SqueezeLite.conf?

[Monge]

I normally configure AL as I wan’t, make sure it works without ramroot enabled.

The last thing I do is to enable ramboot and reboot.

[HeeBroG]

Thanks for responding Monge.

Yes; I have done all of the above.

When I pull out the USB AL boot drive LMS hangs.

I check the running services and LMS and Squeezlite show to be still running.

Ramroot status and RAM mode enabled with Status check.

 

I have to disable all running services and re-emable them for it to start working again after reinserting the USB boot drive.

I have 4GB of RAM on the NUC running headless.

 

Geoff

[tapatrick]

3 hours ago, HeeBroG said:

...When I pull out the USB AL boot drive LMS hangs....

I'm running Roon on my NUC AL server and it also hangs when I pull out the USB stick.

I leave it in as I have an auto save on the roon database every hour because I add a lot of tracks to playlists in a listening session...

[bobfa]

3 minutes ago, tapatrick said:

I'm running Roon on my NUC AL server and it also hangs when I pull out the USB stick.

I leave it in as I have an auto save on the roon database every hour because I add a lot of tracks to playlists in a listening session...

Did you move the Roon database off of the USB stick into optane memory or something?

[tapatrick]

1 hour ago, bobfa said:

Did you move the Roon database off of the USB stick into optane memory or something?

No I have database on the USB stick - no other drives attached....

[bobfa]

1 hour ago, tapatrick said:

No I have database on the USB stick - no other drives attached....

Tapatrick

 

I am thinking you may have a couple of problems here.  

 

1.   Trying to run Roon Server out of only 4GB of RAM. 

2.   I have not seen others run  Roon Server off of a USB stick and them loading into RAM.  

 

When I built my server I boot off of an Optane SSD and then load into RAM.  During setup, I moved the Roon Database to a separate partition on the Optane.  The music is on an external drive.

 

 

[ray-dude]

I ran Roon Server off a USB stick, but I had 16GB ram.  My Roon DB is ~5GB, so very RAM hungry.  

 

I ended up adding a 32GB Optane.  I boot off of it (vs USB) to RAM, but keep my Roon DB and some local music files on the Optane.  

 

 

[austinpop]

This seems to be a very common use case - to install AL on an Optane NVMe M.2 SSD, along with a separate partition on the Optane to store the Roon DB. Didn't @hifi25nl Piero supply utilities to do this from the menu? Has anyone tried it?

 

I don't yet have a server that boots from Optane, so I'm curious if anyone has tried this on the latest version of AL, and how seamlessly this works? Is there more needed?

[ray-dude]

FYI, my server and my end point both boot from the Optane to RAM, with no issues at all.

 

I still need to ramsave, except for the Roon DB that I run off the Optane for my server.   The only trick for me was to add the /var/roon/* directory to the exclude list in the ramsave script (I mount the data partition on my Optane to /var/roon)