AudioLinux and NUC Troubleshooting and Tuning

[hifi25nl]

@glitchesbrew

 

I will leave other to discuss these topics.

I want only to say that your realtime test result is very good! No need to change priorities.

 

[hifi25nl]

You have a max variance of 7 microseconds and an average of only 2

[hifi25nl]

2 hours ago, Aberrant-Decoder said:

hi,whenever i assign a cpu to roon appliance, does that include the roon server,or is there a way to assign  cpu specifically to roonserver.  my setup is 1 pc as roon server,seezelie player out by usb to my dac.

thanks

The names of Roon processes are

/opt/RoonServer/RoonMono/bin/RoonServer
/opt/RoonServer/RoonMono/bin/RoonAppliance
/opt/RoonServer/Server/processreaper
/opt/RoonServer/RoonMono/bin/RAATServer

My choice some time ago was to choose RoonAppliance for priority and core assignment but this can change on future menu releases.

For core assignment maybe all process above will be transferred to the selected core.

For priority the choice is more difficult but it seems from a post at RoonLabs that "RoonServer.exe is very very lightweight, and all it does is watchdog RoonAppliance.exe"

I guess is the same on linux.

[hifi25nl]

You should go to to UPDATE menu to install new version. I have uploaded packages yesterday morning.
Note that roonserver is version 1.8 and roonbridge 1.7.
There is not a correspondence between roonserver and roonbridge version. For example when roonserver was 1.8, roonbridge was version 1.0

[hifi25nl]

Be sure that you are on menu 260

 

To check version

yay -Q roonserver

yay -Q roonbridge

First is 1.8, second is 1.7

 

To see errors, install it from console

yay -Sy roonserver

For roonbridge

yay -Sy roonbridge

 

If you see errors about some file that already exists in filesystem, before updating Roon, delete the application directory

sudo rm -rf /opt/RoonServer

sudo rm -rf /opt/RoonBridge

and after install Roon with the commands reported above.

 

This problem can happen if you tried to update from a control point in smartphone or another PC

You should update roon ONLY from Update menu

[hifi25nl]

If you have another linux system the content for example of the headless version should be

 

[audiolinux@archlinux ~]$ sudo fdisk -l
[sudo] password for root:  
Disk /dev/sde: 28.64 GiB, 30752636928 bytes, 60063744 sectors
Disk model: Ultra USB 3.0    
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: gpt
Disk identifier: 524A1828-2002-4187-B469-3E7A2DE53ED0

Device       Start      End  Sectors  Size Type
/dev/sde1     2048  1001471   999424  488M EFI System
/dev/sde2  1001472 27813887 26812416 12.8G Linux filesystem

 

If you have the same output as above, I need to see the error messages at the first stages of boot on a screen, if possible.

 

[hifi25nl]

1 hour ago, luisma said:

I'll send you the fdisk output from the other system, there is no boot at all, just that the device is not bootable, I am using UEFI of course, and it worked initially even after enabling ramroot but just suddenly went into that, I just build another system but would like to troubleshoot the failing one

 

I would check first http://www.audio-linux.com/html/boot.html

 

Note that the last ramroot version is 2.0.1-2

It should be updated by updating menu, exit from menu, restart it but you can update with

yay -Sy ramroot --noconfirm

The last menu will also set initramfs compression to gzip. See

IMPORTANT: since the new mkinitcpio package will use a new compression format, installations with linux-rt-lts kernel will not boot  if you make a system update.
If you are using instead the last linux-rt or linux-rt-bfq-dev kernels the system should boot normally.

Please be sure that in the file /etc/mkinitcpio.conf you have

COMPRESSION="gzip"

not

#COMPRESSION="gzip"

 

 

30 minutes ago, luisma said:

Piero for prioritizing the enp1s0 adapter before the file to be edited was rtirq.conf adding the adapter on the RTIRQ_NAME_LIST, is this still the case?

or should the rtnet.conf file be used adding INTERFACE="enp1s0"

 

RTIRQ_NON_THREADED has "rtc snd" this basically instructs these processes to use all cores but not threads or does it limit the rtc and snd apps to be single core?

Now there is the option 1 "REALTIME MANUAL ASSIGNMENT configuration" in Expert menu where you can set priority without manually edit the files that are

/etc/rtirq.conf

/etc/rtnet.conf

/etc/rtapp/rtapp.conf

 

Note that RTIRQ_NON_THREADED should have the same values as RTIRQ_NAME_LIST and that rtc should be removed (suggestion by rtirq developer - rtapp will not work correctly with rtc included) and snd should be removed also if you are using a USB DAC;

 

A little guide:

 

The logic of prioritization lies in this rule:
Priority must increase from upstream to downstream

Let's take for example a computer with the DAC connected directly. The audio stream goes this way:
audio application (rtapp) -> output (USB or other, rtirq)
In an APPLICATION / OUTPUT / NETWORK scheme, i.e. RTAPP / RTIRQ / RTNET, some possible values are these:
90/95 / -
85/90 / -
80/85 / -
Where it is noted that rtnet, ie the network priority is not defined. It would be absurd in this case to give Internet traffic a high priority.
I note that the operating system will perform the operation with the highest priority first. This is an important constraint. If it fails to do so within a reasonable time, the system will begin to produce errors or go into total lockdown.
Because of this it is not necessarily true that higher values are better. It depends on the processor power, motherboard latency etc.

Now let's take a system with the server sending the signal over Ethernet to a second computer to which the DAC is connected. On the first computer configured as a Bridge, an Ethernet output is connected to the router, while the second is connected directly to the Ethernet socket of the second computer. The second computer is obviously NOT configured in Bridge mode.
In this case it would not make sense to prioritize the USB output on the server, so on the server the configuration could be:
SERVER CONFIGURATION
90 / - / 95
85 / - / 90
80 / - / 85
-> These values are somewhat arbitrary. If you are having problems, it is recommended that you disable rtnet.
On the second computer (endpoint) instead:
ENDPOINT CONFIGURATION
90/95/85
85/90/80
80/85/75
As you can see the network has the lowest value since the stream is now ETHERNET -> APPLICATION -> IRQ / DAC
-> These values are somewhat arbitrary. If you are having problems, it is recommended that you disable rtnet.

If, on the other hand, both computers are connected to the router, you must disable rtnet, since in this case the Internet traffic would also pass through the endpoint. This is precisely the reason for using the Bridge on the first computer, which serves to prevent internet traffic from traveling on the same cable used by the signal.
 

[hifi25nl]

You should check the content of mkinitcpio.conf as suggested in the post and be sure that you have the right value before updating system kernel or enabling ramroot.

This problem is not a bug but a decision from archlinux to change default compression to zst. 

...But linux-rt-lts 5.4.x cannot support this.

No problem with kernel 5.10 5.11

 

 

 

 

[hifi25nl]

You can read this:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/LVM

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/LVM#Snapshots

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Create_root_filesystem_snapshots_with_LVM

 

Personally for backup I am using rsync to a separate drive.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/rsync

General Backup wiki:

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/System_backup
 

 

[hifi25nl]

You should go to console and type

aplay -l

and see if DAC is recognized.

 

Please be aware that the DAC must be on before starting Audiolinux.

[hifi25nl]

Probably the remote drive/NAS is using an older version of samba
Did you try 1.0 for example?

[hifi25nl]

15/10/2021 New Audiolinux lxqt version 5.2.0
14/10/2021 New Audiolinux headless version 3.2.0
11/10/202: New Raspberry Pi4 version 2.2.0

[hifi25nl]

The last release of Audiolinux was tested with the hqplayer version available at that moment.

A full system update should fix this problem.

I think I will release new versions in the next days.

 

In the meantime this week I have made a lot of updates to available kernels and menus,

Kernels RT, AMD RT, RT BFQ have been updated to 5.17.x with the new AMD scaling governor. Today I will release a new menu supporting amd_pstate

 

For example:

 

Added new Audio extra menu and moved some options from Expert and Audio menu in Web Interface 1
(in the next menu also Web Interface 2 will be updated)
Some improvements in the Diretta installation script (Audio extra menu)
Added new kernel XANMOD RT to kernel update script. Now available kernels are:
1) Audiolinux RT is the standard last realtime kernel (default)
2) Audiolinux AMD RT is a realtime kernel optimized for zen 3 AMD processors with graysky patch
3) Audiolinux RT BFQ is a realtime kernel with Budget Fair Queueing patch
4) Audiolinux RT LTS is the standard stable Long Term Support realtime kernel
5) Audiolinux XANMOD RT is Long Term Support realtime kernel with Xanmod patches
Kernels 2, 3, 5 have also alsa base sampling frequencies extended up to 1536 kHz, alsa aloop patch enabling up to 1536 kHz PCM sampling rate, NUMA disabled for better performance, tickrate set to 1000, support for some extra DAC

 

 

[hifi25nl]

For ARC I have only enabled UPnP on the router. Nothing to do on Audiolinux side.

[hifi25nl]

Some news...:

 

 

[hifi25nl]

Audiolinux V3 is supporting only CPU from haswell on or AMD zen.

Older CPU cannot support x86_64_v3 and consequently will not  boot.

 

Probably Audiolinux classic would work fine.