Shootout at the Linux Corral: AudioLinux vs Euphony

[Dev]

@bobfa or anyone know if Euphony can support wifi connection ? Can I initially connect through Ethernet and then configure wifi network ?

[Dev]

On 3/23/2019 at 1:44 PM, ted_b said:

I want to take off on Larry’s comments on the other thread; that is, that it is possible that the sound of Euphony (@ $299) is matched or even surpassed by the currently-much-more-tweakable AudioLinux various parameters.

 

Which thread and what AL parameters are those ?

[Dev]

49 minutes ago, LTG2010 said:

There is no root access not sure once you've bought the software. No Wi-Fi setup in the configuration menu maybe it's work in progress.

 

I haven't bought anything yet. I would like to try it first as its quiet expensive to start with. The problem is I can't do apples to apples comparison with AL and without wifi. I have found wifi setup to be far superior in my setup than the ethernet on AL. I shot a mail yesterday to Euphony asking about it but no reply yet. 

[Dev]

23 hours ago, Dev said:

@bobfa or anyone know if Euphony can support wifi connection ? Can I initially connect through Ethernet and then configure wifi network ?

 

20 hours ago, Dev said:

 

I haven't bought anything yet. I would like to try it first as its quiet expensive to start with. The problem is I can't do apples to apples comparison with AL and without wifi. I have found wifi setup to be far superior in my setup than the ethernet on AL. I shot a mail yesterday to Euphony asking about it but no reply yet. 

9 hours ago, beautiful music said:

Let us know if you get a reply from customer service.

 

I got a one liner response.

 

"Sorry, we do not and don't plan to support wifi connections."

 

No further explanation given.

 

I tied to run the trial version. Here is what I found

 

1. the voucher code wouldn't work. It stops all the services after a short time. So if you are using Roon and have not register the trail, it would stop the server after a couple of minutes and then you would have to restart it.

2. Looks like when using the Stylus app I can't point the library to the external USB drive though the drives are seen and mounted. Not sure if its the limitation of the Trial or not. I have again asked by email.

3. The license is tied to h/w fingerprint. So if you are using a server/streamer model, and need to run Euphony on both, then you need two license. Quiet expensive in my opinion.

4. The inability to look inside a Linux system and drop to a shell will be frustrating for those Linux geeks who likes to peek inside and tweak things. 

5. I haven't yet critically compared the SQ with AL, though from what I can tell using Euphony for couple of minutes with Roon, they are both close.

 

[Dev]

6 hours ago, beautiful music said:

I faced same thing on your point no.2 and I will try to ask them if this limited to paid license.

 

I got it working after I got the trial activated. Note the trial is also associated with h/w fingerprint, so the code is unique to your h/w and they activate through their server. When I ran from the USB, I saw the external drive already auto-mounted - all you had to do is to add the partition to the library and Stylus will start building it. However, yesterday I loaded Euphony into Optane and for some reason the same external drive wasn't auto-mounted. So I had to explicitly mount it and then add to the library (the "..." on the side). Easy steps...  

[Dev]

56 minutes ago, LTG2010 said:

If you want to level the playing field a bit you can disable alsa mixer in audiolinux as this degrades sound quality, (its already disabled in euphony) See audiolinux server configurations thread page 13, especially if comparing Roon on both systems.

If you want to compare the stylus player, then you can use ''mpd select dac and playback from memory'' in audiolinux.

 

@LTG2010 If you are running in Roonserver/Roonbridge combo, do you need to disable the alsa mixer on server as well ? Shouldn't disabling in the streamer be sufficient ?

[Dev]

Roon UI is what is preventing me from using Stylus as well, though Stylus sounds better than Roon.

 

So far I have ditched the 2-pc setup and settled on a single NUC running AL and Roon + Squeezelite + Wifi combo. I am experimenting with the latest Euphony update but unable to get Roon + StylusEP working. Oddly, Roon + Squeezelite works flawlessly and Wifi as well.

[Dev]

All you can do at this point to get the best of both worlds is to use Roon as the UI/Library mangement and Squeezelite/StylusEP/HQP as the playback. A bit expensive solution but works 🙂

[Dev]

Did anyone try Roon + StylusEP on a single PC with the latest update ?

[Dev]

11 minutes ago, bobfa said:

It does not work.  My USB Device  is disabled.  Took logs and screenshots and sent them off for review. 

 

 

If you are using StylusEP (which was my original question), then the USB device will be disabled in Roon since only one application will need exclusive access to it. In this case, you need to enable Squeezebox support and then select StylusEP from audio device.

[Dev]

I am just able to make it work (along w/ debugging with Željko). In the Roon's StylusEP audio device, make sure that the "Use FLAC Compression" flag is checked.

[Dev]

@bobfa Can you post Roon settings screen dump ? I am not able to understand where you are stuck.

 

This is what I did:

 

1. Select Roon + StylusEP in Euphony

2. Enable Squeezebox Roon -> Settings -> Enable Squeezebox support

3. Select StylusEP as Roon's audio device Roon -> Settings -> Audio (StylusEP is listed in the end) and make sure Flac compression is checked.

 

[Dev]

I tried Euphony earlier a month back or so but moved to AL setup primarily due to lack of Wifi. Ever since then and after lot of experimentation I have moved to single i7 NUC setup running AL in ramroot with Roon + Squeezelite combo on Wifi. This setup has sounded very good in my system and exceeds that of 2 NUC solution with server and streamer combo. Upon request to Željko, he promised to have it supported in his next release and he kept it. My trial has also expired in between but Željko was graciously kind enough to extend it some more just this time. Moreover the StylusEP which replaces Squeezelite has been enthralling and I had to try the new release.

 

Well, the latest Euphony update has been fantastic in my system. From limited listening that I had done so far, the SQ of Roon + StylusEP is a big step forward - a bit more holographic sound, more air around vocals and instruments, slightly more depth. I had to redo my speaker positioning a bit to take more advantage of it. I am also on Wifi which is not in the critical audio signal path. As a single box solution, it's simplicity is what makes it more interesting and appealing to me.

 

Still more comparisons to do - Wired vs wifi, Stylus vs StylusEP, etc but so far I am very impressed.

 

Will report back as I do more listening.

[Dev]

12 hours ago, lateboomer said:

 

Where do you store the music library? Is it external usb hdd connected to the i7 NUC? What type of hdd and is it powered from external PS and not from usb bus?

 

yes, I am using external USB 3.0 w/ 4Tb WD Red 3.5" drive powered by lps connected to the NUC i7.

[Dev]

2 hours ago, lateboomer said:

Is 3.5" drive a desktop hdd and also spinning type? Is it not more noisy than a ssd drive?

 

Not sure I understand. To my knowledge, all 3.5" drives are desktop and spinning type. I need something close to 4tb to hold my music library and SSD's that large are still quiet expensive. I have a 2tb one which I will compare at some point to see if they make difference.

However, if I connect one output of Uptone JS-2 to the external USB drive and another output to the NUC i7, I can clearly hear the spinning noise when I put my ear close to the speaker. To get past it, I use a separate lps just for the external drive. I am wondering if the hdplex 200w with isolated rails will solve this or not - if it does, I can replace two lps with one.    

[Dev]

Though I haven't critically compared Stylus to StylusEP with the new release but from earlier recollection Stylus indeed sounds very good. The only reason I keep going back to Roon is just because of their UI/Library management and I think many like us are spoiled by it. Some of the features that I use extensively are queue management, library backups, sorting functions - most played, recently added, etc. If Sylus could make headway into these features, that would be awesome and would make the transition super easy for me. The Stylus web interface is not that bad, well, not certainly at par with Roon but definitely very usable.

 

However for folks who interested in using Roon + StylusEP, there are still few quirks that you need to be aware of - apart for Roon limiting the sampling rate to 192K/dsd64 and DoP only, sometimes you will find Roon doesn't move to the next track in the queue. The current track is stuck indefinitely at the end with couple of seconds remaining. All you need to do is to hit next in Roon to play the next track. Its not a deal breaker though. As per Željko this seems also a Roon bug and as usual Roon is 

adamant into fixing any of it or even officially support Squeezlite implementation.

 

All these even makes a stronger case for Stylus to improve upon the UI aspect while still keeping the audio quality at the highest bar. Nothing like it if Željko can pull this over !

 

 

[Dev]

2 hours ago, bobfa said:

Make sure the the volume control setting in stylus is set to hardware.  

And if it does not sound like you want then we have another data point.  

 

In my case the VC is set to "none". The h/w or s/w VC cuts the volume quiet dramatically (maybe more that half). If the DAC doesn't have any VC, I would assume that it should be set to none in Euphony.

[Dev]

3 hours ago, luisma said:

As it have been said before all systems are different, although I am very conservative and I see changes to my system very pragmatically I discovered in my system the sound of stylus player alone no upsampling, no roon, no HQPE, just pure bare flac through my denafrips dac sounds better to my ears than AL, custom Ubuntu, Miskas image NAA and such 

I know, it doesn't make sense, I need to replace my ears next or jump out of this crazy train

 

 

I agree. I am using the same DAC and Stylus sounds exceptionally good compared to all other s/w (and OS) I have tried earlier. I just pass native resolution and turn on the OS mode. The good part is with Dual AES/EBU support with the new DSP board, a M-Scaler can take things further without having to build high power server for up-sampling purpose.