GentooPlayer

[Gavin1977]

Just tried Gentooplayer following @bobfa recommendation in his Allo USBSignature review.  As a long time user of Euphony I’m very impressed.  Listening so far shows that the sonic signature is similar to Euphony, but the music has greater relief (reduced background processes, and lower noise floor perhaps?) vocals are also lovely and seem to have more presence and resolution.

 

Testing was done on DNHE NUC, Paul Hynes SR7, Etherregen.  Both copies of software where run from USB.  I used the headless UEFI version of gentoo, the version with the xfce GUI also worked fine too.

 

I really disliked Audiolinux, mainly because I found it to be an absolute pain to set up as I had to constantly hunt out issues and find workarounds.  I had a similar experience with Gentoo Player to start with, as I tried setting it up using terminal only (following what I understood from using Audio Linux).  Wasn’t great. However, use the web interface and it’s an absolute dream!  So easy and everything works spot on.  So make sure you use the web interface, gentooplayer is then highly recommended.

 

I also thought that the audio benefits of Audiolinux were only moderate, not the case with GentooPlayer.  It’s in the same league as Euphony, My experience so far is that it’s probably the better sounding too...and it’s free!

 

Anyhow that some short feedback on my experience.

 

Question... is Shairport included for airplay playback emulation?  I couldn’t find it in the web interface.

 

Thanks

[Gavin1977]

51 minutes ago, Sebastian T. said:

Sadly, I have a Chord Qutest DAC. I couldn't find a way to make it play correctly. On the 4.19 kernels I get pops and clicks and on the 4.14 the music plays soooo slow. It stutters like crazy. I really wish I could use gentooplayer, but I feel lost.  

I used Chord Hugo 2, worked fine for me.  I am using ethernet connection though.

[Gavin1977]

If there an easy way to install the GentooPlayer image file direct from USB to on an internal m2 SSD?  

I was just wondering if it's possible to avoid the need to create a bootable linux USB from which you then install the image fine on the internal SSD.  Something like a bootable version of etcher?

[Gavin1977]

On 3/6/2020 at 5:26 AM, antonellocaroli said:

with which software? switching from flac to dsf? or resample pcm>dsd?

 

 

 

no, unfortunately not.

 

boot the pc with a live linux (any) put on usbstick, it could also be gentooplayer-xfce put on usbstick with etcher...

 

download the image

 

open a terminal and become root (in gentoo to become root just give the command "su" and then type the password)

 

then take over

 

xzcat /path-to-file/file.img.xz > /dev/sdX && sync

or

xz --decompress /path/to/file.img.xz | dd of=/dev/sdX

sdX is the disk where to install

example sda, sdb, sdc, etc.

 

 

Be careful to choose the right disc... the disc is overwritten...

 

 

 

Alternative that worked for me.  Use WintoUSB to create bootable Windows 10 USB stick.  Launch this, download gentooplayer, remove local disk write protection using CMD (e.g. if Win 10 already installed), use Etcher in unsafe mode so that internal disks are visible and write the gentoo player image to SSD.  Worked great.

[Gavin1977]

Playback via Networkaudiod using Gentoo player as a renderer only works great - but running HQPlayer Server on my MacBook Pro meant I could only undertake basic upsampling...

 

I therefore swapped to using 'HQPlayer embeded' as available within Gentoo Player installed on my NUC (as it's got a much faster CPU).  Enabled Bubble uPNP (accessed via http://192.168.1.8:58050, as opposed to Port 8088 for Gentoo Player config on my system) and you can set HQPlayer up as an Open Home Renderer.  I can therefore play everything using Linn Kazoo (other apps available), including passing Tidal (or Qubuz) through for upsampling via HQ player.

 

I am using Sinc-M (Million tap) filter and 'LNS15' noise shaper as these are apparently a good proxy for what the Chord M-Scaler does.

 

There is a fair wait/buffer between files (and my NUC runs hot!), but absolutely no stutter during playback - sounds great and will spend some time comparing against upnp direct (no upsampling) via MPD/UpMpdCli at some point.

 

Really amazing work - I can't tell you how much better my experience is with GentooPlayer compared to using Audiolinux (high level of understanding still needed though).

[Gavin1977]

2 hours ago, antonellocaroli said:

@Gavin1977 @Branko

 

It seems to work...

 

 

 

in play

 

 

 

Excellent add it to the Web interface 🙂

[Gavin1977]

Feedback regarding Tidal via uPNP to:

• HQPlayer Embedded (32/768kHz, Sinc-M Million tap filter and 'LNS15') compared to
• MPD/UpMpdCli (no upsampling)

Linn Kazoo as the control software, Hugo 2 as the output DAC.  Hugo attached directly to the NUC via USB cable. Ncore monoblocks and Kef R3 speakers.

 

...both sound much the same to me.  Perhaps slightly more detail and space to HQPlayer, but lower noise floor to MPD/UpMpdCli.  Not much in it really.  Both sound great, but if I was to choose I would probably go with MPD/UpMpdCli because of the percieved lower noise floor.  Noise floor would probably be better if I ran HQPlayer on a separate machine, so that would offer some explanation.  Also, Hugo 2 is a very good DAC anyway, so perhaps less benefit from upscaling / audiability in my system.

 

An enjoyable experiment.

[Gavin1977]

Hi - using web interface I now get the following error when executing any script

 

Calling the script...

 

Internal Server Error

 

I have restarted the NUC and checked network connect - any ideas?  Playback still works fine.

 

[Gavin1977]

1 hour ago, Gavin1977 said:

Hi - using web interface I now get the following error when executing any script

 

Calling the script...

 

Internal Server Error

 

I have restarted the NUC and checked network connect - any ideas?  Playback still works fine.

 

Issue resolved - Gentoo Player on my NUC was not the issue, it was my the laptop upon which I was trying to access the web interface - rebooted this and no problems now.

[Gavin1977]

Any ambitions to configure gentooplayer as a bonjour service, so for example gentooplayer.local can be used to access the wbesite interface rather than IP?

 

Is there an option in the web interface that will tell Gentoo Player to permanently launch to Ram Disk upon boot?

[Gavin1977]

17 hours ago, rockymystic said:

I am about to install Gentoo in my laptop, just curious what is the best recommended setup in terms of players and clients etc, it does have option for roon ,hqplayer,lms and many others... need to understand under what configuration it outperforms euphony and others.

 

Regards,

Rakesh.

I made no adjustments from the standard install other than enabling RAM boot - sounds great to me without further tweaks.

 

I have only compared upnp on Gentoo Player vs Euphony, and found Gentoo Player superior (and free).

 

You should notice an uptick in sound quality, but a laptop will be a noisy source (the screen built into laptops is apparently a large source of noise).  Pick up a cheap NUC like I have, or a Rasberry Pi and run it headless for best effect.  My limited experience is that the more powerful processors in NUC's give a more dynamic sound if that is to your liking (your mileage may vary).

[Gavin1977]

On my NUC with Gentoo Player there is no setting in my UEFI BIOS to control the functionality of the physical power button.  This means my only way of doing a controlled shutdown is from Gentoo’s web interface (other than hard shut down).

 

Is there anyway to code Gentoo so that a single press of the physical power button on the NUC will trigger the shutdown sequence?

 

Not a problem for Raspberry Pi as they use so little can just leave it running, but a NUC I would rather switch off when not in use.  Would be convenient if the web interface didn’t need to be accessed.

 

Thanks & great work with the SACD feature.

[Gavin1977]

Hi @antonellocaroli

 

Could you tell us a little more about how / if Gentoo Player scales over CPU cores?

 

I am interested in how it scales with increased core count and how you would approach assigning the different processes / players in Gentoo Player to their own cores.

As I’m sure you’re aware the very high end servers can have dual Xeon or Epyc processors with very high core count to distribute the workload.  Interested in what you think and what an appropriate processor for Gentoo Player is in your opinion.

 

Thanks once again.

[Gavin1977]

10 hours ago, antonellocaroli said:

I think that the assignment of the cores makes sense only with low workloads, so indicated on the pc that acts as "player",

I see it quite useless (and probably even harmful) on PCs with powerful processors that have to do "server-audio" work and where you may have to do upsample pushed...

Thanks.  So you are suggesting that many cores are good, but the CPU/Operating system should allow processes to be distributed across the cores automatically as required?

 

How many CPU cores can/is Gentoo Player able to utilise?  Does it scale with the number of players enabled?

[Gavin1977]

I have had the ‘Tidal is temporarily unavailable’ error when logging into Tidal via Kazoo last few times. Same problem on Kazoo on both MacBook Pro and iPhone (latest iOS update).  Anyone else had this issue?

 

Tidal works fine with the same credentials in its native app.

 

Updated to Gentoo 2.13 but no luck.

 

Thanks

[Gavin1977]

4 hours ago, antonellocaroli said:

@Gavin1977 @Exocer

 

I've never been able to login in tidal by Linn Kazoo...I've never understood how it works...

 

I usually use mcconnect without bubbleupnp

Quite interesting - Tidal always worked flawlessly for me Kazoo -> Gentoo Player until recently. Tidal worked natively with Linn Kazoo using Gentoo player, no BubbleuPNP required...

 

I can run Bubble uPNP on my NAS, but would prefer to use it on GentooPlayer itself... I have it enabled but cannot access it via http://gentooplayer-64:58050/ or IP:58050

 

I'm using RAMDisk Mode 2.

 

Any ideas?

[Gavin1977]

11 minutes ago, stefano_mbp said:

I think you should use Ramdisk Mode 7

Mode 7?  I've just run GPupdate.

 

 

[Gavin1977]

9 minutes ago, stefano_mbp said:

@Gavin1977 .... I’m on rpi4 ...

Mines x64  NUC So that might explain it

[Gavin1977]

On 5/17/2020 at 5:07 PM, antonellocaroli said:

i have fix

 

gp-update

ramdisk reset

 

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

 

I managed to login in tidal with the linn app (not lin kazoo)

 

I've just run this, didn't fix direct login to Tidal via the MPD + UPMPCLI route - same error occurred as others have shown.  However this did fix BubbleuPNP for me, so enabled it, logged into that and set it up.  Works perfect.

 

If anything OpenHome is preferable to me anyway, I find it more reliable, so glad its now working natively on Gentoo for me.

 

RAMDISK Mode 2 operating fine.

 

Thanks all.

[Gavin1977]

Can't see if anyone has asked this, but is Gentoo Player ok to run dual boot e.g. use clover bootloader, GP on one partition, Windows on another partition of the same drive?

 

Thanks

[Gavin1977]

1 hour ago, antonellocaroli said:

it's possible, but you have to work at it...
but now a 64gb ssd is very cheap.

so I recommend a dedicated disk...

I'll give it a go - my trouble is that I only have one M2 slot.

[Gavin1977]

"New Copy install function' - sounds good... can more details be provided?

 

Gentoo Player working great on my new x86 server by the way.

[Gavin1977]

3 hours ago, antonellocaroli said:

https://github.com/gentooplayer/gentooplayer.github.io/wiki/Install-GP

https://github.com/gentooplayer/gentooplayer.github.io/wiki/Install-Current-GP

Amazing!  Great work.

[Gavin1977]

Interesting post from Austinpop:

 

What is Gentoo Players behaviour with regards to prefetching files / data?  Thanks

[Gavin1977]

20 hours ago, antonellocaroli said:

you can use a ramdiskmusic for local files,

If you use squeezelite, you can increase the buffers...

if it was possible to have whole tracks, from streaming services like tidal and qobuz, it would also be possible to save files without paying qobuz...it would be enough to copy files from the cache to the disk...and it would not even be legal. That sounds like a lot of words.....

I think the behaviour was of interest because it minimises network activity, thereby providing potential for further improved sound quality regardless of if ramdisk is used or now...  in otherwords the 'Buffer Queue to RAM' in Euphony for example is additional to running OS in RAM by how I understand it.