Audiolinux Server configurations, Software, Hardware, and Listening Impressions

[Gavin1977]

18 hours ago, lmitche said:

Hi Gavin,

 

My motherboard criterion were Ryzen 8 core compatibility, an mATX or mini-ITX board, a well implemented and documented BIOS, the highest number of VRM phases possible, and lastly no cooling fan on the PCH.

 

You can refer to the excellent Tomshardware AMD motherboard spreadsheet, https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1wmsTYK9Z3-jUX5LGRoFnsZYZiW1pfiDZnKCjaXyzd1o/edit#gid=2112472504 .

 

To narrow things done from there, please use google to learn how the user and professional reviewers rated each board. Given the criterion and additional information above, please let us know which board you recommend.

 

Many thanks,

 

Larry

 

P.S. I am using the same power supply,  as well as the same memory sticks as the 6700k build.

Thanks Larry - this is a very useful chart and one I was not aware of.

 

I would highlight the following theory as the basis for my experiment, sourced from http://mail.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/21417/motherboard-vrm-power-guide/p1

 

Quote

• First off is transient response of the inductor. If we have a single phase and very high current requirements then we will have to expand the energy storage of our components. However increasing the energy storage of the inductor also reduces the transient response of the system. So using many inductors with lower per phase inductance will allow for faster transient response. 
• If you have a single phase the chances are that there is going to be a lot of heat there, so spreading the phases across a larger area and increasing their count can help reduce heat and increase efficiency. However it is important to note that switching losses do become greater with more parts. One must also think about the amount of current the copper in the PCB can transfer over a small area of space, a single phase as big as a normal phases in a multiphase VR can’t output 300A, but spread that over 6 phases and 6x the space and it is only 50A per the same space.
• The interleaving effect is by far one of the most beneficial effects of having more than 1 phase. Because of how the phases operate out of phase with each other the total ripple frequency can be multiplied by the total number of phases. This huge increase in ripple frequency decreases ripple amplitude and ripple current. This helps reduce both input and output bulk capacitors requirements. If you skip down a little bit then you will see how more true phases can decrease current.

 

The interleaving effect is important - so phase doubling is ok.

 

It was just out of interest that I tested this theory.  I had my old Gaming PC lying around, so I thought I would see how it sounded compared to my Intel NUC7i7DNHE.  The DNHE model is apparently the 'best' NUC for audio reproduction at present according to reports on this website. So I put the Euphony USB stick into my gaming PC and...

 

My gaming PC sounded signficantly better on all fronts!  

 

There was significantly more detail, it was tonally lush and had huge dynamics in the presentation.

 

This was not what I was expecting, as I had not optimised the PC for audio playback other than using Euphony.  Now, truth be told I was only using the stock power brick for the DNHE NUC, this should be expected to be relatively noisy with ripple likely in the 60mV or so range I would expect.  The switching mode power supply in my gaming PC is a Corsair SF450, ripple is measured at 25mV which is good, but not outstanding for a SMPS.  So the SF450 should probably sound a bit better than the NUC's stock power brick.  However, 25mV is nowhere close to a good linear power supply where ripple would be 1mV or less (and much, much lower if you go for a Paul Hynes Design).  So what's going on, and why do I hear such an improvement!?

 

After some research, I believe that Voltage Regulation on high-end gaming motherboards is part of the magic sauce.  It is probably the reason why some gaming PC's can sound far better than 'lower powered' computers/streamers/renderers etc...  This is potentially one reason why very expensive servers such as Antipodes CX/EX, Sound Galleries etc... sound so good, as the cheaper, smaller, lower powered servers just don't have a lot of money spent on voltage regulation on their motherboards. The Sound Galleries Server uses a gaming motherboard from Asus... which has a high phase count.

 

Another good article on Voltage Regulation is available here: https://www.maketecheasier.com/what-is-vrm/

 

The motherboard I experienced these improvements in sound quality on is a mini-ITX MSI Z97I Gaming AC which is a 6 phase digital power design - I believe it's a 'True' 6 Phase design, 'True' because it doesn't use a doubler and it also has exactly 6 high quality Super Ferrite Chokes (SFC) on the motherboard.

 

Of course space on an ITX motherboard is limited, but there are some older gaming motherboards out there that do have more phases - for example the ASUS Z87I-Deluxe has a power riser to achieve 12 phases.  

 

ATX sized gaming motherboards can have 8, 12, 16, even 24 phases of power control.  What I have read is that a VRM with 24 phases of power is best.  Gigabyte produced one of these in a motherboard called the GA-P55-UD6 - but this is very rare and only supports older processors.  Motherboard manufacturers seem to have moved away from high phase counts for their latest designs, and have settled around 12-16 phases as perhaps they've found the sweet spot commercially.  But if you can find one of these older motherboards on the market then perhaps you have a very cost effective solution for producing a very high quality music server.

 

Why is 24 phase voltage regulation on a motherboard a good thing?  See Table 3 on this datasheet - 

https://www.renesas.com/eu/en/www/doc/datasheet/isl6617.pdf

 

With 24 interleaving phases the ripple is significantly reduced from that provided by the SMPS.

 

So, my present motherboard only has 6 phases of power regulation, I have now purchased a very rare MSI Z87 XPower XL-ATX motherboard which has a staggering 32 phase voltage regulation and also a stupidly high bulk output capacitance (which I believe will further improve the dynamics of the sound).  A ueful historical list of gaming motherboard VRMs can be found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20160914210453/http://sinhardware.com/images/vrmlist.png

 

So I think there might be merit is going for some of the older motherboards due to there very high phase count (we will see!)

 

The very best ATX SMPS for ripple are made by Super Flower, specifically the 550W version of their Leadex Gold PSU's - no other manufacturer comes close at present.  Leadex Gold SMPS measure under 5mV of ripple (they use LLC resonance conversion, which also pops us on the DIY audio forums as well).  My theory is that 5mV of ripple will then further smoothed out by 32 phases of voltage regulation and I believe it will provide exceptional performance.

 

This is a VERY cost effective solution as well - the largest expenditure is a gaming motherboard with a high phase count (some of these are £300-400 new), but an older model with a second hand processor could be had for £150 or so on eBay.

 

The 550w Leadex Gold PSU is only £60-70 which is amazing for only 5mV of ripple.  Forget about Pico PSU's... I used them in prior media centre builds and they don't offer the same level of audio performance as they're still influenced by the power brick used upstream.

 

This is just a different way of achieving the common goal of better sound reproduction.  I was not expecting my intel NUC to be relegated to the sidelines so quickly - I could buy a linear power supply for it, but if I'm achieving these levels of performance then I cannot see the value in spending hundreds on a bulky linear power supply.  Afterall, Chord Electronics, Benchmark and Hypex all use SMPS, so it can work given the right design approach. 

 

I hope this helps others.

 

p.s. 
The processor I am using is a 4790k - just because it's what I already had in my gaming PC.  It would be interesting for me to switch out this CPU for a lower powered variant - however (other than the 8MB L1 cache) I'm not sure it would make much difference(?  I need to do some more reading about this though) as I think the magic sauce is high phase count voltage regulation.  Underclocking the processor from stock is an option, but I have read elsewhere that some people find that some instruments are not rendered as well.
 

[Bricki]

With my fresh USB stick of the mini 140 image and all packages and menu updated with kernel to 5.2 I am struggling to get ramroot working with my endpoint. Besides installing another 4gb of RAM is there anything else I can do? I have deleted roonserver and freed up a little more space .... Can I delete hqplayer etc? All I need is roonbridge... What is the hqplayer file name? I tried yaourt -R hqplayer but it wasn't found?

[RDOK]

Hi Bricki,

 

I had the same some time ago.

Making sure the only running audio service is roonbridge I used 'clean system', item 14 in the main AL menu.

After that it fitted again on the 4GB memory in my NUC.

 

Still very pleased by the change from p_state to acpi by the way.

[lmitche]

5 hours ago, Gavin1977 said:

Thanks Larry - this is a very useful chart and one I was not aware of.

 

I would highlight the following theory as the basis for my experiment, sourced from http://mail.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/21417/motherboard-vrm-power-guide/p1

 

 

The interleaving effect is important - so phase doubling is ok.

 

It was just out of interest that I tested this theory.  I had my old Gaming PC lying around, so I thought I would see how it sounded compared to my Intel NUC7i7DNHE.  The DNHE model is apparently the 'best' NUC for audio reproduction at present according to reports on this website. So I put the Euphony USB stick into my gaming PC and...

 

My gaming PC sounded signficantly better on all fronts!  

 

There was significantly more detail, it was tonally lush and had huge dynamics in the presentation.

 

This was not what I was expecting, as I had not optimised the PC for audio playback other than using Euphony.  Now, truth be told I was only using the stock power brick for the DNHE NUC, this should be expected to be relatively noisy with ripple likely in the 60mV or so range I would expect.  The switching mode power supply in my gaming PC is a Corsair SF450, ripple is measured at 25mV which is good, but not outstanding for a SMPS.  So the SF450 should probably sound a bit better than the NUC's stock power brick.  However, 25mV is nowhere close to a good linear power supply where ripple would be 1mV or less (and much, much lower if you go for a Paul Hynes Design).  So what's going on, and why do I hear such an improvement!?

 

After some research, I believe that Voltage Regulation on high-end gaming motherboards is part of the magic sauce.  It is probably the reason why some gaming PC's can sound far better than 'lower powered' computers/streamers/renderers etc...  This is potentially one reason why very expensive servers such as Antipodes CX/EX, Sound Galleries etc... sound so good, as the cheaper, smaller, lower powered servers just don't have a lot of money spent on voltage regulation on their motherboards. The Sound Galleries Server uses a gaming motherboard from Asus... which has a high phase count.

 

Another good article on Voltage Regulation is available here: https://www.maketecheasier.com/what-is-vrm/

 

The motherboard I experienced these improvements in sound quality on is a mini-ITX MSI Z97I Gaming AC which is a 6 phase digital power design - I believe it's a 'True' 6 Phase design, 'True' because it doesn't use a doubler and it also has exactly 6 high quality Super Ferrite Chokes (SFC) on the motherboard.

 

Of course space on an ITX motherboard is limited, but there are some older gaming motherboards out there that do have more phases - for example the ASUS Z87I-Deluxe has a power riser to achieve 12 phases.  

 

ATX sized gaming motherboards can have 8, 12, 16, even 24 phases of power control.  What I have read is that a VRM with 24 phases of power is best.  Gigabyte produced one of these in a motherboard called the GA-P55-UD6 - but this is very rare and only supports older processors.  Motherboard manufacturers seem to have moved away from high phase counts for their latest designs, and have settled around 12-16 phases as perhaps they've found the sweet spot commercially.  But if you can find one of these older motherboards on the market then perhaps you have a very cost effective solution for producing a very high quality music server.

 

Why is 24 phase voltage regulation on a motherboard a good thing?  See Table 3 on this datasheet - 

https://www.renesas.com/eu/en/www/doc/datasheet/isl6617.pdf

 

With 24 interleaving phases the ripple is significantly reduced from that provided by the SMPS.

 

So, my present motherboard only has 6 phases of power regulation, I have now purchased a very rare MSI Z87 XPower XL-ATX motherboard which has a staggering 32 phase voltage regulation and also a stupidly high bulk output capacitance (which I believe will further improve the dynamics of the sound).  A ueful historical list of gaming motherboard VRMs can be found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20160914210453/http://sinhardware.com/images/vrmlist.png

 

So I think there might be merit is going for some of the older motherboards due to there very high phase count (we will see!)

 

The very best ATX SMPS for ripple are made by Super Flower, specifically the 550W version of their Leadex Gold PSU's - no other manufacturer comes close at present.  Leadex Gold SMPS measure under 5mV of ripple (they use LLC resonance conversion, which also pops us on the DIY audio forums as well).  My theory is that 5mV of ripple will then further smoothed out by 32 phases of voltage regulation and I believe it will provide exceptional performance.

 

This is a VERY cost effective solution as well - the largest expenditure is a gaming motherboard with a high phase count (some of these are £300-400 new), but an older model with a second hand processor could be had for £150 or so on eBay.

 

The 550w Leadex Gold PSU is only £60-70 which is amazing for only 5mV of ripple.  Forget about Pico PSU's... I used them in prior media centre builds and they don't offer the same level of audio performance as they're still influenced by the power brick used upstream.

 

This is just a different way of achieving the common goal of better sound reproduction.  I was not expecting my intel NUC to be relegated to the sidelines so quickly - I could buy a linear power supply for it, but if I'm achieving these levels of performance then I cannot see the value in spending hundreds on a bulky linear power supply.  Afterall, Chord Electronics, Benchmark and Hypex all use SMPS, so it can work given the right design approach. 

 

I hope this helps others.

 

p.s. 
The processor I am using is a 4790k - just because it's what I already had in my gaming PC.  It would be interesting for me to switch out this CPU for a lower powered variant - however (other than the 8MB L1 cache) I'm not sure it would make much difference(?  I need to do some more reading about this though) as I think the magic sauce is high phase count voltage regulation.  Underclocking the processor from stock is an option, but I have read elsewhere that some people find that some instruments are not rendered as well.
 

Hi Gavin,

 

Your theory that more VRM phases may be contribute to better sound quality may be true, but if you are using SMPS power supplies, like the stock Intel NUC supply or any ATX SMPS supply, you are working from a poor foundation.  A good low ripple high transient linear power supply will have a much greater impact on SQ.

 

The NUC you referenced, a NUC7i7DNHE, is used here daily as a Roon endpoint. It is powered by a Paul Hynes SR4. It sounds wonderful and enables enhancements to the server to pass straight through to the rest of the chain. I keep a stock Intel SMPS on hand, and the difference is night and day. Likewise a NUC I7 running from an Uptone LPS1.2 at 12 volts makes beautiful music at a reasonable price and is easily obtainable. Just lower the NUCs P1 value to 10 amps and you should be good to go.

 

Likewise the big Super Flower low ripple ATX SMPS cannot hold a candle to the Hdplex linear power supply with it's 12 and 19 volts rails powering the CPU and Hdplex DC to DC ATX supply in the server.  The difference in noise floor is instantly noticeable.

 

The new Taiko Audio extreme machine uses a two processor Xeon motherboard with 7+1 VRM phases. It also has a killer low ripple, high transient linear power supply.

 

Your write-up is excellent, however an image comes to mind of a proud owner extolling the virtue of the shock absorbers in his new car while he has tires filled with 10 lbs of air pressure.

 

Many thanks for the VRM facts, as they have inspired an experiment to be conducted later today.

 

Stay tuned,

 

Larry

 

P.S. BTW, the NUC referenced above runs at 400 mhz. Instruments are rendered in their full glory.

[Bricki]

29 minutes ago, RDOK said:

Hi Bricki,

 

I had the same some time ago.

Making sure the only running audio service is roonbridge I used 'clean system', item 14 in the main AL menu.

After that it fitted again on the 4GB memory in my NUC.

 

Still very pleased by the change from p_state to acpi by the way.

Ok thanks for that... Yeah I have already tried the clean system option in the menu and I still have the issue with ramroot... The clean system option did reduce the root file system size down to the 3240MB in the photo above

[luisma]

5 hours ago, Gavin1977 said:

Thanks Larry - this is a very useful chart and one I was not aware of.

 

I would highlight the following theory as the basis for my experiment, sourced from http://mail.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/21417/motherboard-vrm-power-guide/p1

 

 

The interleaving effect is important - so phase doubling is ok.

 

It was just out of interest that I tested this theory.  I had my old Gaming PC lying around, so I thought I would see how it sounded compared to my Intel NUC7i7DNHE.  The DNHE model is apparently the 'best' NUC for audio reproduction at present according to reports on this website. So I put the Euphony USB stick into my gaming PC and...

 

My gaming PC sounded signficantly better on all fronts!  

 

There was significantly more detail, it was tonally lush and had huge dynamics in the presentation.

 

This was not what I was expecting, as I had not optimised the PC for audio playback other than using Euphony.  Now, truth be told I was only using the stock power brick for the DNHE NUC, this should be expected to be relatively noisy with ripple likely in the 60mV or so range I would expect.  The switching mode power supply in my gaming PC is a Corsair SF450, ripple is measured at 25mV which is good, but not outstanding for a SMPS.  So the SF450 should probably sound a bit better than the NUC's stock power brick.  However, 25mV is nowhere close to a good linear power supply where ripple would be 1mV or less (and much, much lower if you go for a Paul Hynes Design).  So what's going on, and why do I hear such an improvement!?

 

After some research, I believe that Voltage Regulation on high-end gaming motherboards is part of the magic sauce.  It is probably the reason why some gaming PC's can sound far better than 'lower powered' computers/streamers/renderers etc...  This is potentially one reason why very expensive servers such as Antipodes CX/EX, Sound Galleries etc... sound so good, as the cheaper, smaller, lower powered servers just don't have a lot of money spent on voltage regulation on their motherboards. The Sound Galleries Server uses a gaming motherboard from Asus... which has a high phase count.

 

Another good article on Voltage Regulation is available here: https://www.maketecheasier.com/what-is-vrm/

 

The motherboard I experienced these improvements in sound quality on is a mini-ITX MSI Z97I Gaming AC which is a 6 phase digital power design - I believe it's a 'True' 6 Phase design, 'True' because it doesn't use a doubler and it also has exactly 6 high quality Super Ferrite Chokes (SFC) on the motherboard.

 

Of course space on an ITX motherboard is limited, but there are some older gaming motherboards out there that do have more phases - for example the ASUS Z87I-Deluxe has a power riser to achieve 12 phases.  

 

ATX sized gaming motherboards can have 8, 12, 16, even 24 phases of power control.  What I have read is that a VRM with 24 phases of power is best.  Gigabyte produced one of these in a motherboard called the GA-P55-UD6 - but this is very rare and only supports older processors.  Motherboard manufacturers seem to have moved away from high phase counts for their latest designs, and have settled around 12-16 phases as perhaps they've found the sweet spot commercially.  But if you can find one of these older motherboards on the market then perhaps you have a very cost effective solution for producing a very high quality music server.

 

Why is 24 phase voltage regulation on a motherboard a good thing?  See Table 3 on this datasheet - 

https://www.renesas.com/eu/en/www/doc/datasheet/isl6617.pdf

 

With 24 interleaving phases the ripple is significantly reduced from that provided by the SMPS.

 

So, my present motherboard only has 6 phases of power regulation, I have now purchased a very rare MSI Z87 XPower XL-ATX motherboard which has a staggering 32 phase voltage regulation and also a stupidly high bulk output capacitance (which I believe will further improve the dynamics of the sound).  A ueful historical list of gaming motherboard VRMs can be found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20160914210453/http://sinhardware.com/images/vrmlist.png

 

So I think there might be merit is going for some of the older motherboards due to there very high phase count (we will see!)

 

The very best ATX SMPS for ripple are made by Super Flower, specifically the 550W version of their Leadex Gold PSU's - no other manufacturer comes close at present.  Leadex Gold SMPS measure under 5mV of ripple (they use LLC resonance conversion, which also pops us on the DIY audio forums as well).  My theory is that 5mV of ripple will then further smoothed out by 32 phases of voltage regulation and I believe it will provide exceptional performance.

 

This is a VERY cost effective solution as well - the largest expenditure is a gaming motherboard with a high phase count (some of these are £300-400 new), but an older model with a second hand processor could be had for £150 or so on eBay.

 

The 550w Leadex Gold PSU is only £60-70 which is amazing for only 5mV of ripple.  Forget about Pico PSU's... I used them in prior media centre builds and they don't offer the same level of audio performance as they're still influenced by the power brick used upstream.

 

This is just a different way of achieving the common goal of better sound reproduction.  I was not expecting my intel NUC to be relegated to the sidelines so quickly - I could buy a linear power supply for it, but if I'm achieving these levels of performance then I cannot see the value in spending hundreds on a bulky linear power supply.  Afterall, Chord Electronics, Benchmark and Hypex all use SMPS, so it can work given the right design approach. 

 

I hope this helps others.

 

p.s. 
The processor I am using is a 4790k - just because it's what I already had in my gaming PC.  It would be interesting for me to switch out this CPU for a lower powered variant - however (other than the 8MB L1 cache) I'm not sure it would make much difference(?  I need to do some more reading about this though) as I think the magic sauce is high phase count voltage regulation.  Underclocking the processor from stock is an option, but I have read elsewhere that some people find that some instruments are not rendered as well.
 

Bookmarked, great post Gavin

[hifi25nl]

"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."

[hifi25nl]

...and 500 MB is an absolute minimum. You need at least 8GB RAM

[LTG2010]

2 hours ago, Bricki said:

I tried yaourt -R hqplayer but it wasn't found?

Try:

yaourt -R hqplayer-embedded  hqplayer-network-audio-daemon

 

Maybe disable ramroot and re-enable again

[Bricki]

21 minutes ago, LTG2010 said:

Try:

yaourt -R hqplayer-embedded  hqplayer-network-audio-daemon

 

Maybe disable ramroot and re-enable again

Thanks heaps for that 😁...it was just enough to get me over the line👍

 

[Gavin1977]

1 hour ago, lmitche said:

Hi Gavin,

 

Your theory that more VRM phases may be contribute to better sound quality may be true, but if you are using SMPS power supplies, like the stock Intel NUC supply or any ATX SMPS supply, you are working from a poor foundation.  A good low ripple high transient linear power supply will have a much greater impact on SQ.

 

The NUC you referenced, a NUC7i7DNHE, is used here daily as a Roon endpoint. It is powered by a Paul Hynes SR4. It sounds wonderful and enables enhancements to the server to pass straight through to the rest of the chain. I keep a stock Intel SMPS on hand, and the difference is night and day. Likewise a NUC I7 running from an Uptone LPS1.2 at 12 volts makes beautiful music at a reasonable price and is easily obtainable. Just lower the NUCs P1 value to 10 amps and you should be good to go.

 

Likewise the big Super Flower low ripple ATX SMPS cannot hold a candle to the Hdplex linear power supply with it's 12 and 19 volts rails powering the CPU and Hdplex DC to DC ATX supply in the server.  The difference in noise floor is instantly noticeable.

 

The new Taiko Audio extreme machine uses a two processor Xeon motherboard with 7+1 VRM phases. It also has a killer low ripple, high transient linear power supply.

 

Your write-up is excellent, however an image comes to mind of a proud owner extolling the virtue of the shock absorbers in his new car while he has tires filled with 10 lbs of air pressure.

 

Many thanks for the VRM facts, as they have inspired an experiment to be conducted later today.

 

Stay tuned,

 

Larry

 

P.S. BTW, the NUC referenced above runs at 400 mhz. Instruments are rendered in their full glory.

Excellent feedback - I look forward to your experiment.  Using motherboards with extreme VRM (i.e. 24 phases or more) 'should' result in 1-2mV ripple to the CPU if you use a PSU with <5 mv ripple.  So I would be interested in the audiable differences compared to a linear power supply... as this would be almost comparable as most of which are just under 1mV ripple.  I'm interested in the law of deminishing returns.

[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?

[hifi25nl]

I suggest a full system update (with the option in the update menu) before upgrading the kernel. Here network working fine...

[AnotherSpin]

17 minutes ago, jcn3 said:

 

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?

 

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

[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?

[hifi25nl]

Yes

[AnotherSpin]

2 hours ago, jcn3 said:

 

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?

 

That's exactly what I said - before packages were updated, connectivity failed. Hope it helps.

[bodiebill]

@hifi25nl

hi Piero, my audio PC has a 10GB Intel X520-D1 fiber network card. This card appears to work well with some Linux distro's, but not with all. Before I buy a license: will it work with Audiolinux?

[hifi25nl]

Menu update 124 with new options in expert menu:

9 "ENABLE/DISABLE realtime manual assignment"

(this will disable manual priority assignment standard or extreme but not general priority as managed by realtime kernel)

10 "Change ucode to AMD/Intel" --> Ryzen users should activate AMD option!

WiFi script hotfix now will remove previous attempts configuration (wpa_supplicant).

Roon database transfer script will move the full directory /var/roon not only the database (otherwise in ram mode you should save playlists each time etc.)

 

[lmitche]

VRM update - There are extensive AMD bios options used to tune VRM behavior on the ASUS B450-I motherboard. It would take months to try all the settings. Nevertheless a nice SQ gain was found by disabling VRM spread spectrum and changing the VRM frequency to 500khz. This change was from "auto" settings which means that the prior values are not clear.

 

While the SQ change was a nice bump, it wasn't as large a lift as upgrading to an LPS supply from the ATX supply.

 

 

[flkin]

On 8/13/2019 at 10:47 PM, hifi25nl said:

Menu update 124 with new options in expert menu:

9 "ENABLE/DISABLE realtime manual assignment"

(this will disable manual priority assignment standard or extreme but not general priority as managed by realtime kernel)

10 "Change ucode to AMD/Intel" --> Ryzen users should activate AMD option!

WiFi script hotfix now will remove previous attempts configuration (wpa_supplicant).

Roon database transfer script will move the full directory /var/roon not only the database (otherwise in ram mode you should save playlists each time etc.)

 

 

Dont understand 9. How do we use this?

 

“Roon database transfer script will move the full directory /var/roon not only the database (otherwise in ram mode you should save playlists each time etc.)” so do we still need to save system when changes are made in while in Ramroot?

 

[hifi25nl]

About "realtime manual assignment" you should select it to disable, and click on it another time to enable (a sort of toggle switch)

You should not disable it in general, this my suggestion. In some systems (very few cases) with low power CPU you could have a more relaxed sound disabling it.

 

About Roon directory transfer, if you are in ram mode, the new type of transfer should save all configuration changes automatically, since the new is on a partition that is not loaded to RAM.

 

[Ricardo007]

On 8/11/2019 at 2:11 PM, lmitche said:

AnotherSpin,

 

Isolated cores dedicates one or more cores to an application process, like Roonserver, preventing OS background tasks and interrupt processing from happening on the isolated cores. This means the application is "pinned" to that set of processor(s) and there is reduced context switching overhead overtime. This results in improved sound quality.

@imitche

Can u do this with euphony ? 

[lmitche]

22 minutes ago, Ricardo007 said:

@imitche

Can u do this with euphony ? 

Yes, there are controls for CPU isolation in Euphony. However, as Euphony is a closed system so it is a bit tough to know the flexibility of those controls.

 

AL is wide open, so anything in Archlinux is easily in hand. This allows me to build configurations beyond the scope of the Euphony (and AL) menus.

[Patatorz]

On 8/13/2019 at 5:47 PM, hifi25nl said:

Menu update 124 with new options in expert menu:

9 "ENABLE/DISABLE realtime manual assignment"

(this will disable manual priority assignment standard or extreme but not general priority as managed by realtime kernel)

10 "Change ucode to AMD/Intel" --> Ryzen users should activate AMD option!

WiFi script hotfix now will remove previous attempts configuration (wpa_supplicant).

Roon database transfer script will move the full directory /var/roon not only the database (otherwise in ram mode you should save playlists each time etc.)

 

Hello, by default « ucode » is associated to intel ?