Shootout at the Linux Corral: AudioLinux vs Euphony

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2 hours ago, austinpop said:

I'd like to see them construct a Roon distributed bundle (without Stylus) that is priced more attractively.

 And on the same lines......... I think it comes bundled with HQPlayer embedded, which is about $247 ; I already have that, so I should be able to get one without it for less.

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I downloaded Euphony over the weekend and tried to compare Euphony+Stylus to AL+HQPe, which I have been using for almost a year. Bottom line, Euphony+Stylus sounded a bit harsher (worse) than AL+HQPe in comparison, or might just be very similar, but certainly not better.

 

Now, there were differences in setup; I run my AL on a two box solution, an i9-9900k server with a Gigabyte Z390 Aorus Pro motherboard powered by HDPlex ATX power supply and an i7 NUC running as NAA. All low voltage DC devices including NUC powered by two multi-rail Paul Hynes SR7's. In this scenario music files resided on a NAS.

 

Euphony+Stylus were running on the same server but as a single box solution, and the music was stored on an external USB drive. I could not get my NAS to connect to Stylus.

 

In the end, I am staying with AL+HQPe. I think most people who have reported improved SQ are coming from Roon, and from my own trials with Roon in the past, it could never compete with HQP(e). Euphony+Stylus might be better than Roon, but in my experimentation it certainly could not better AL+HQPe. YMMV.

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6 hours ago, flkin said:

Here's another data point AL vs E

 

Managed to boot my Pink Faun 2.16x streamer with the demo Euphony/Stylus USB dongle. it was pretty straightforward requiring only a minor BIOS change to point to the boot USB dongle.

 

Setting up was easy too, enter the IP address into my browser and Stylus launched immediately. Log into Tidal and I could play music in five minutes.

 

Settings were:

• Cache songs
• No volume control, no delay
• Buffer 100% before playing

 

Stylus playback from browser result :

• Not bad but not at the PF-AL level. Much smaller soundstage and less engaging. Less energy to the musi

RoonCore+StylusEP via Squeezebox result:

 

Slightly better soundstage but still smaller than AL soundstage

• Engagement level still not the same as with AL
• Sound less forward and generally not as real sounding
• Treble a touch harsher especially with loud female vocals

 

My AL settings are:

• Ramroot enabled
• Boot mode standard
• Priority extreme
• No cores isolated
• Kernel 4.19.37-rt19-1-rt-bfq
• Audiolinux 2.3.2

My findings - booting from USB demo dongle, Euphony/Stylus both for Stylus playback or StylusEP end point, isn't better than the optimised PF-AL in my PF 2.16x machine. Not by quite a bit

Thank you for confirming.