Audiolinux Server configurations, Software, Hardware, and Listening Impressions

[jcn3]

I've been playing around with AL on my NUCs for the last week.  It's been great fun learning a bit about Linux, digging into the BIOS, and of course listening.  

 

Before giving my impressions, a bit of background:

 

* My progression on CA started with a basic CAPS server.  Played around with adding a better USB and a decent R-Core 12V LPS off eBay.  Used JRiver is a single box configuration with music on my Synology NAS.

* Next step was to move to a "two box" approach -- putting Minimserver and BubbleUPNP on my NAS, using JRiver as a simple endpoint.

* Next, replaced the CAPS with a NUC6i5 and a fanless case, ultimately buying AO and Fidelizer (still using Minimserver on my NAS).

* Finally, added Roon and Dirac Live, installing ROCK on a NUC7i5 (with another LPS off eBay) to be the server.  That left the NUC6i5 as the endpoint running Win 10 / AO / Fidelizer / Dirac / Roonbridge.  This has sounded fabulous to me.  My signature shows the rest of my gear -- nice stuff, but clearly at the lower end of the high end.

 

In trying AL, I wanted to see what stripping everything down to the bare minimum would do.  First put AL on the NUC6i5 running Roonbridge.  Stripped down the BiOS as has been recommended, running in memory, Extremed mode, etc.

 

The difference between AL on the endpoint and the Win 10 setup was clear -- AL put sharp edges around everything, clearly delineating instruments in the soundstage (which I liked).  In some ways, the soundstage seemed deeper, too.  Unfortunately, I also lost some low end energy and, more importantly, lost the lushness and beauty of the Win 10 / AO / Fidelizer / Dirac setup -- strings particularly were sharp and edgy.

 

To get the full AL experience, I also got a fanless case for my NUC7i5, increase RAM to 16g, and set up AL as the Roon core, doing all of the optimizations I did on the endpoint.  The difference in doing this was much more subtle, mostly providing a bit more of the etched sound that AL on the endpoint started.

 

As much as I wanted to love AL, for now I've gone back to my Win 10 / AO / Fidelizer / Dirac configuration for the endpoint.  I've got the lushness and beauty back, and the great benefits of Dirac.  I'm keeping AL on the NUC7i5 as the server, allowing me to keep some of the clarity it provides.

 

I know we all hear differently, have different equipment, and of course different rooms.  I'm game to make more changes to make AL work, but I'm not sure where to start.

 

Would love thoughts, recommendations, opinions.  Thanks!

[jcn3]

2 hours ago, gsquared said:

I finally updated the latest version of AL and I am configuring the Optane stick to store my Roon DB.

 

Thank you Piero for the awesome work on updating and improving this and for the amazing customer support!

 

Newbie question: My old USB stick contains my Roon DB. While booted from the updated USB stick, I want to plug in my old USB stick and copy the Roon DB from the old one to the new one. What is the Linux command to do this?

 

Once I've copied the DB to the new USB stick, I will use the "Transfer Roon database to another drive" feature in AL to move it to the Optane memory.

 

i usually back up the db in roon, build/configure my new stick, and then restore the roon db within roon.  works perfectly.

[jcn3]

2 minutes ago, gsquared said:

That sounds like an easy way to do it. When you back up your db in Roon, where do store it? I’m wondering if I can store it on my music library on an external drive.

 

i back up my roon db in roon every night to a nas -- it's easy for me to retrieve as a result.  it is the same drive (different folder) as my music library.

 

you should have no trouble backing it up to an external drive -- just reference the same location you reference for your music library.

[jcn3]

32 minutes ago, JohanJ said:

Hi Piero,

from the update menu I updated the audiolinux menu, the kernel and all other packages.

Updating the audiolinux menu says I am allready up to date. After reboot the menu still shows version 118...

Anything  wrong?

 

i have the same issue -- have saved/rebooted a few times.

[jcn3]

1 hour ago, Gavin1977 said:

I don't have this option, yet I've just done a system update... any ideas?

 

 

Did you reboot?

[jcn3]

13 minutes ago, Gavin1977 said:

Yep - reboot and also updated menu, still not available.

 

running from ram and maybe didn't save system??

[jcn3]

52 minutes ago, hifi25nl said:

"When ramroot is enabled, during the initial phase of boot the amount of detected RAM on the computer along with the size the root filesystem to be copied is shown on the screen. If there is at least 500MB more RAM than the size of the filesystem, the user will be prompted to load the root filesystem to RAM."

 

i ran into an interesting problem when trying to upgrade to the 5.2 kernel.  after upgrading the kernel (via the menu) and rebooting, my nuc would not attach to the network.  when looking under network status, eno1 status was "configuring".

 

i then went back to start from scratch with a 1.4 install and left everything at the default settings.  tried again to upgrade the kernel and encountered the same problem.

 

finally, just did a clean 1.4 install and didn't upgrade the kernel.

 

thoughts?

[jcn3]

19 minutes ago, AnotherSpin said:

 

I had an issue similar to this, after kernel upgrade no network connectivity. After I went through upgrading menu, packages, kernel, - everything started working. 

 

i only updated the stuff that i use -- updated the menu, updated the kernel, updated roon.  didn't update any of the others -- wonder if that would matter?

[jcn3]

2 hours ago, cat6man said:

hi

 

a couple of questions:

 

1.  how does AL update HQPlayerEmbedded?  i don't think(?) i saw a menu item for getting the latest version.

2.  anyone using the latest kernel?  any impact/feedback on sound quality?

 

hqplayer is updated under the item that's something like "update other packages" -- it is the third item in the update menu:

 

http://www.audio-linux.com/images/menu4.jpg

[jcn3]

1 hour ago, George Hincapie said:

Can AL be administered via a GUI or is it CL?

 

if you know linux, you can administer under CL.  AL does have menu options for most things.

[jcn3]

2 hours ago, cat6man said:

 

that is not what my menu looks like..........my item 3 says "System update"

i have menu 126 and i'm ssh'ing into my AL machine remotely

 

Yep. I was out of town so grabbed that off of the AL site. "System update" should do it.

[jcn3]

@hifi25nl -- i'm running into an issue with v2.  i use AL with roon server on a nuc 8i5.  the issue is that roon server crashes. it was happening initially when i was trying to restore the roon database, but got around that by not changing any default settings within AL (couldn't import the databse with the "red" profile OR if i updated roon).  by not changing any of the default settings, i was able to restore the database, but roon now crashes after a few seconds of playing a song.

 

i did update the system in this order:

* update AL menu and then rebooted

* update system and then rebooted

* update kernel and then rebooted

 

thoughts?  unfortunately, AL v2 isn't usable for me at this point.

[jcn3]

25 minutes ago, lmitche said:

Which version of the menu are you running?

 

Menu 2.1 is likely to fix this issue.

 

Larry

 

first thing i did was update the menu, the system, and the kernel -- so unfortunately menu 2.1 didn't help.

[jcn3]

28 minutes ago, hifi25nl said:

Please

Check memory:

free --giga

Check hard disk space:

df -H 

After check periodically the status of roonserver:

systemctl status roonserver

Be sure that roonserver is the ONLY service enabled:

-> Go to Audio menu, stop all services and re-enable roonserver

 

It could also be the "Roon linux bug" (not yet fully resolved by Roon). Typically is solved restarting  Roon after boot.

 

For further questions contact me at support address. 

 

 

 

 

i boot from a 32g usb drive.  nuc has 16g of ram.  here's the memory:

 

 

roon is pretty hosed right now, here's the output from "show audio services".  i get the same after stopping all audio services and restarting roon server.

 

 

here's the output from systemctl status roonserver right after i stopped audio services, restarted roon server, and then played a song (which crashed after 5 sec):

 

 

 

[jcn3]

35 minutes ago, hifi25nl said:

Did you check free hard disk space with df -H?

 

Check also

systemctl status rtapp.timer

It should be disabled

 

You should check also:

networkctl

Systemd network does not like unconfigured interfaces. If possible, if you have more than one network card, disable it in BIOS and disable WiFi

 

Is the output of 

ls -l /var/roon

like this one?
drwxr-xr-x 4 root root 4096 13 ago 16.55 RAATServer
drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 4096 13 ago 16.55 RoonBridge
drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 4096 13 ago 16.32 RoonGoer
drwxr-xr-x 7 root root 4096  2 nov 16.16 RoonServer

 

Note: in general it is recommended to rebuild database from scratch with new installation.

 

I don't have other reports of Roon malfunctioning until now and in my 2 systems Roon is working fine.

 

EDIT: if you have enabled ramroot before, be sure that roon "ramroot service" is disabled

systemctl status roonserver2

 

 

not running ramroot -- i always do that last when things are sorted out.  it's not reasonable to rebuild the roon database from scratch -- all of the items added to your library from tidal or qobuz will be gone -- not clear why a restore would create a problem.

 

here's df -H

 

here's systemctl status rtapp.timer

 

here's networkctl

 

here's ls -l /var/roon (i'm not running roonbridge)

 

 

[jcn3]

Ok, thanks so much. Will get on that.

[jcn3]

52 minutes ago, jkelly said:

I have the strangest problem with my two NUC audiolinux 2 system. (Latest version).

The two NUCS seem to fight over the same IP address - and my FIOS router won't provide

individual IP's for each NUC.  If the "master" is only powered up it ill get the IP and if the NAA

NUC is only powered up it will get the same IP - but if both are powered up the 'master" seems to

grab the IP - and I can't get an IP for the NAA NUC.

 

I must be doing something wrong.  Is must be a way to have them co-exist?

 

Jeff

 

Assign ip addresses to each device in AL - it's a menu option.

[jcn3]

@hifi25nl -- i did a fresh install of 2.8 but was unable to install hqplayer embedded.  i know that hqplayer was recently updated -- could that have been the problem?

[jcn3]

On 1/25/2021 at 2:46 PM, hifi25nl said:

Please update to menu 259.

After you can install hqplayer 4.21.0

Including @Miska

 

After a fresh install of Audiolinux 2.8 and upgrading the menu to 259, I installed Roon Server and HQPlayer embedded (4.21) on a NUC8i7 machine.  I have a separate Win10 computer running NAA.

 

* I was able to start Roon and HQPe

* I was able to access Roon via the app and configured the HQPe zone.

* I was able to access HQPe via the web page, but was only able to access the Configuration and the Restore thru Log tabs (i.e. not Main, Input, Library, etc.)

* HQPe is able to see the NAA

 

When I play something in Roon to another zone, everything works fine. When I try to play something to the HQPe zone, I get an error message saying "Playback failed because Roon couldn't connect to HQPlayer"

 

I've been using previous versions of AL and HQPe for months, so am familiar with the configuration and been using it successfully.

 

I don't think this is a Roon problem -- I think it has something to do with HQPe and/or AL.  Any thoughts?

 

SCREEN SHOTS

 

Roon and HQPlayer running . .  .

 

Settings in HQPlayer Embedded . . . 

 

Roon playing to another zone . . . 

 

Roon not communicating with HQPe . . . .

 

 

[jcn3]

On 1/27/2021 at 4:35 PM, hifi25nl said:

New menu 260:

Added the option 4 HQPLAYER copy default configuration to AUDIO menu
Archlinux package for HQPlayer embedded is now based on signalyst buster package
If you want a package with rocm libraries for AMD GPU acceleration, please contact support, but be aware that  a lot of libraries must be installed

For people who have already installed the package with rocm libraries is possible to clean the system this way:
 

yay -R llvm-amdgpu rocm-cmake rocminfo rocclr rocm-device-libs comgr hip-rocclr hsa-rocr hsakmt-roct rocfft hqplayer-embedded --noconfirm

yay -Scc --noconfirm

(if you are receiving some error about package missing, delete it from the list)
and reinstall hqplayer-embedded (before you must update to menu version 260)

 

I'm not clear on Option 4.  Is this something that must be done?

[jcn3]

@hifi25nl -- just curious . . . how do i interpret the below?  what does the installed: 1.8.795-100 mean?

 

[jcn3]

13 minutes ago, hifi25nl said:

You have an old version of Audiolinux.

You cannot update until you fix the problem or reinstall the last version. This is because of the pacman package manager update upstream.

 

1) I would edit as root ( you can use the File Editor ROOT in System menu) the file /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist and put # in front of worldwide server, take out # in front of the servers of your country. Italian ones are working nice... :) 
2) sudo rm -f /var/lib/pacman/sync/*
3) sudo pacman -Syy
 

 

 

 

thank you -- but i don't understand why i'm on an old version.  love to know what i was doing wrong.  from the install/update menu, i did the following

 

* updated menu and rebooted (did that process twice to get to 306)

* updated the kernel (lts version) and rebooted

* updated system and rebooted

 

i can certainly download and flash the latest version, but didn't think that was necessary.

 

thanks!

[jcn3]

23 minutes ago, hifi25nl said:

I fear that your system update did not succeed because of the error above.

System update is made with this command:

 

yay -Syu --noconfirm --removemake 

 

but if you cannot download pacman archive...

You can test another time the problem typing that command.

 

ok!  thanks again!  fixed the pacman issue and ran the system update again and it seemed to all go smoothly.  rebooted and ran the system update again and noticed that one of the messages did show audiolinux as up to date.  the installed: 1.8.795-100 is still there -- is that okay? (the error messages are gone) (also note that when i go into roon it does show me as running 1.8.831)

 

also, how do you know what version of audiolinux you're running?

 

[jcn3]

@hifi25nl -- thanks for your patience with this.  something is out of sync.  would love your thoughts.  here's the situation:

 

splash screen shows audiolinux 3.0.0

 

 

on the audio menu, it shows roonserver as 1.8.795

 

 

in roon, it shows running 1.8.831 (latest)

 

 

if you run the two commands you recommended to clean up the cache and update roonserver, you get these errors at the end:

 

 

 

 

[jcn3]

@hifi25nl -- good to know to not update in roon.  for this issue . . . stopped roonserver and ran those commands as shown.  still got the same errors . . . 

 

maybe time for fresh install? 😲