Euphony OS w/Stylus player setup and issues thread

[RickyV]

5 hours ago, HeeBroG said:

Can someone help me setup CPU isolation for the NUC which has 4 cores.

Thanks in advance

 

2 hours ago, austinpop said:

Are you running with hyperthreading enabled or disabled? Either way, without entering any values, first just hit Apply next to the CPU isolation field in Expert Settings. In the resulting screen, cut and paste the output here. Based on that, I can suggest an isolation setting to try.

 

Sorry I was wondering the same thing for my nuc7i7dn... Since a few days I am able to switch turbo on, hyper threading was already on. This is my output 

 

 

I have also been playing with the CPU frequency but there seems to be only two settings and that is 1.9ghz and max, which is 3.8~4.2ghz. If I put 1900000 in the max freq field I get 1.9ghz. If I put 1900001 in I get max, 3.8~4.2ghz. Is this correct?

[austinpop]

3 hours ago, Holzohr said:

 

Hmm..  distributed mode? I have tried this (Stylus on the server and StylusEP on the NUC endpoint) but Stylus doesn't "see" the StylusEP. Stylus must support the Squeezebox protocol for this mode I guess? What does work is Stylus plus HQPlayer on the server and Networkaudio activated on the NUC. And it sounds to my ears better than standalone. I have the cheap NUC7CJYH only with the original ps. What will happen if I buy a NUC7i7DNBE (and a Keces P8)? I wonder.

 

Maybe I misunderstood. Hopefully Željko can clarify.

[austinpop]

1 hour ago, RickyV said:

 

 

Sorry I was wondering the same thing for my nuc7i7dn... Since a few days I am able to switch turbo on, hyper threading was already on. This is my output 

 

 

Please specify your use case. Are you running this as a StylusEP endpoint? Or is it a standalone server running Stylus? The process "stylus" runs both the music server and the overall web UI, so you see it running even in an endpoint machine. If a music server, then you want to give stylus some dedicated CPUs. If an endpoint, you can lump it with the default.

 

You could try and compare these (remember each physical core has 2 logical CPUs, i.e. HW threads):

• 0-3 gstp 4-7 < -- this may be good for endpoint (physical core 0-1 for default, core 2-3 for gstp, i.e. the player part of Stylus
• 0-1 stylus 2-3 gstp 4-7 < -- this may be good for standalone  (core 0 for default, core 1 for stylus, core 2-3 for gstp)

 

Beyond this, feel free to experiment.

 

Quote

I have also been playing with the CPU frequency but there seems to be only two settings and that is 1.9ghz and max, which is 3.8~4.2ghz. If I put 1900000 in the max freq field I get 1.9ghz. If I put 1900001 in I get max, 3.8~4.2ghz. Is this correct?

This relates to the issue in the NUC7i7 BIOS with the existing kernel. On the NUC7i7, the max CPU setting does not seem to "take" beyond the base frequency. Whenever Željko updates the kernel, this will then get fixed.

[RickyV]

30 minutes ago, austinpop said:

Please specify your use case. Are you running this as a StylusEP endpoint?

It’s standalone server at the moment running stylus.

In the near future there is gonna be an Euphony endpoint too. 

 

[austinpop]

4 hours ago, Holzohr said:

 

Hmm..  distributed mode? I have tried this (Stylus on the server and StylusEP on the NUC endpoint) but Stylus doesn't "see" the StylusEP. Stylus must support the Squeezebox protocol for this mode I guess? What does work is Stylus plus HQPlayer on the server and Networkaudio activated on the NUC. And it sounds to my ears better than standalone. I have the cheap NUC7CJYH only with the original ps. What will happen if I buy a NUC7i7DNBE (and a Keces P8)? I wonder.

 

If you run Stylus on your server machine, and StylusEP on your DAC-attached endpoint, you should just automagically see the DAC appear as a device in the Settings of your Stylus machine. If you don't, open a ticket. It should be working...

[Chopin75]

3 hours ago, austinpop said:

 

If you run Stylus on your server machine, and StylusEP on your DAC-attached endpoint, you should just automagically see the DAC appear as a device in the Settings of your Stylus machine. If you don't, open a ticket. It should be working...

What is "automagically", really that magical? haha. 

Now, another dumb question, why would one bother to run and also how can one run Stylus EP while also already using Stylus at server machine?  Actually what exactly is Stylus Endpoint?  The stylus starts to play the music but then instead of going to DAC it is routed to another machine before going to the DAC ?

[HeeBroG]

11 hours ago, austinpop said:

 

With LMS on the Mini, you should be able to run StylusEP on the NUC instead of SqueezeLite, and I find StylusEP to sound better. It also presents as a Squeezebox, just like SqueezeLite.

 

I also seem to remember that Željko implemented a distributed mode in Stylus. If so, you can also try running Stylus on Euphony on you Mini, and then StylusEP on your NUC. This would be better sounding than LMS, in my experience.

 

See what works and what you think.

 

 

Are you running with hyperthreading enabled or disabled? Either way, without entering any values, first just hit Apply next to the CPU isolation field in Expert Settings. In the resulting screen, cut and paste the output here. Based on that, I can suggest an isolation setting to try.

 

Thanks Rajiv.

 

I am now trying StylusEP.

 

As for the Squeezelite buffers, the suggested settings are o longer "sticking".

I have 8Gb RAM and what used to be 79% usage is now 4%.

 

Here is the screen shot of the CPU isolation as well.

 

Cheers,

 

G

[HeeBroG]

12 hours ago, austinpop said:

I also seem to remember that Željko implemented a distributed mode in Stylus. If so, you can also try running Stylus on Euphony on you Mini, and then StylusEP on your NUC. This would be better sounding than LMS, in my experience.

 

 

I believe this scenario would ultimately require x2 Euponhy licences.

I'm not sure if I want to use the distributed method long term particularly if Zeljko doesn't think it is "necessary" given the underlying design principles of Euphony.

When my PH SR7 returns from repair I will be able to run Euphony Stylus on a standalone NUC/Macmini.

Has there been any trials to indicate the distributed mode is better?

 

G

 

[austinpop]

3 hours ago, Chopin75 said:

What is "automagically", really that magical? haha. 

Now, another dumb question, why would one bother to run and also how can one run Stylus EP while also already using Stylus at server machine?  Actually what exactly is Stylus Endpoint?  The stylus starts to play the music but then instead of going to DAC it is routed to another machine before going to the DAC ?

 

32 minutes ago, HeeBroG said:

 

I believe this scenario would ultimately require x2 Euponhy licences.

I'm not sure if I want to use the distributed method long term particularly if Zeljko doesn't think it is "necessary" given the underlying design principles of Euphony.

When my PH SR7 returns from repair I will be able to run Euphony Stylus on a standalone NUC/Macmini.

Has there been any trials to indicate the distributed mode is better?

 

G

 

 

Whether or not one runs a standalone or distributed (server+endpoint) topology is a matter of choice. There are pros and cons to doing so, and it's up to people to decide if that's what they want to do.

 

The point under discussion here is whether the software enables you to do either. Most music software does. Examples: Roon Core + Bridge, LMS + Squeezelite, HQPlayer + NAA.

Stylus was originally designed to be monolithic, and it was until recently only an option on a standalone machine. The repackaging of Stylus occurred in two steps. People like me  who liked the SQ of Stylus, but were addicted to the UX (user experience) of Roon, were asking Željko if there was a way to make Stylus as a Roon endpoint. This led him to repackage the player portion of Stylus - i.e. StylusEP - and make it accessible using the SlimProto protocol used by LMS and Squeezelite. Having done so, he took the next logical step of enabling remote endpoints on the server piece of Stylus.

 

As regards licenses - yes, if you want to run a server+endpoint, then the server needs to run with the Euphony Server license, and the endpoint with the endpoint license (cheaper).

 

[austinpop]

1 hour ago, HeeBroG said:

 

Thanks Rajiv.

 

I am now trying StylusEP.

 

As for the Squeezelite buffers, the suggested settings are o longer "sticking".

I have 8Gb RAM and what used to be 79% usage is now 4%.

 

Squeezelite buffers are only used when you run Squeezelite, not with StylusEP. The latter manages its own memory, so that's why the memory utilization is much lower.

 

1 hour ago, HeeBroG said:

Here is the screen shot of the CPU isolation as well.

 

Cheers,

 

G

 

Since you're running a NUC7PJYH, which has the Pentium J5005 processor, that does not have hyperthreading, you're limited to 4 CPUs. You could try:

• 0 gstp 1-3 (CPU 0 for default, CPU 1-3 for StylusEP), or
• 0-1 gstp 2-3 (CPU 0-1 for default, CPU 2-3 for StylusEP)

Play with these and other allocations and see what you think.

[Holzohr]

7 hours ago, austinpop said:

 

If you run Stylus on your server machine, and StylusEP on your DAC-attached endpoint, you should just automagically see the DAC appear as a device in the Settings of your Stylus machine. If you don't, open a ticket. It should be working...

 

Ok, now it works! After a reboot of both machines. The DAC appears in the setting of the StylusEP machine (of course). The Stylus server machine gives the message out: no audio-output active but it works! Thanks for mentioning about this distributed mode. It sounds very promising.

[TheAttorney]

13 hours ago, RickyV said:

I have also been playing with the CPU frequency but there seems to be only two settings and that is 1.9ghz and max, which is 3.8~4.2ghz. If I put 1900000 in the max freq field I get 1.9ghz. If I put 1900001 in I get max, 3.8~4.2ghz. Is this correct?

 

Sort of correct. This is how the CPU Frequency function works with this particular CPU/motherboard. Remember that anything in Experts Settings is Beta/experimental that has been included at users request - it is not guaranteed to be perfect in all circumstances., although the support team will attempt to fix issues where possible and practical.

 

In this case, the CPU's base frequency is 1.9Ghz. And any setting at this frequency (or below) will respond correctly. But any setting above base frequency seems to revert to whatever the BIOS settings are, i..e go to full turbo mode in this case. Other CPU/motherboards may behave differently.

 

As I reported a while back, I found this feature a very handy way of going into and out of a pseudo standby mode: I just change the first digit to effectively engage turbo mode (which sounds better) and go into standby mode when I stop listening for the day (which considerably reduces power consumption and temperature). 

[flkin]

I've been reading this entire thread but can't quite recall if anyone is playing Roon and Stylus EP on separate cores of the same CPU? 

 

Is this possible? On AudioLinux, RoonServer and RoonBridge can't be run together in the same server on different cores as far as I know.

[HeeBroG]

5 hours ago, austinpop said:

 

 

The point under discussion here is whether the software enables you to do either. Most music software does. Examples: Roon Core + Bridge, LMS + Squeezelite, HQPlayer + NAA.

Stylus was originally designed to be monolithic, and it was until recently only an option on a standalone machine. The repackaging of Stylus occurred in two steps. People like me  who liked the SQ of Stylus, but were addicted to the UX (user experience) of Roon, were asking Željko if there was a way to make Stylus as a Roon endpoint. This led him to repackage the player portion of Stylus - i.e. StylusEP - and make it accessible using the SlimProto protocol used by LMS and Squeezelite. Having done so, he took the next logical step of enabling remote endpoints on the server piece of Stylus.

 

 

 

Hi Rajiv,

 

Do I recall correctly reading that you use the distributed setup when "grazing" but Stylus monolithic when listening seriously?

This implies Stylus is better in monolithic setup; at least in your system?

 

G

[Holzohr]

1 hour ago, flkin said:

I've been reading this entire thread but can't quite recall if anyone is playing Roon and Stylus EP on separate cores of the same CPU? 

 

Is this possible? On AudioLinux, RoonServer and RoonBridge can't be run together in the same server on different cores as far as I know.

 

Rajiv has posted something about it here: 

 

[HeeBroG]

Hi All,

 

I have a few WAV files in my library.

Euphony seems to have trouble playing them and skips to the next "playable" track.

Has anybody else had this issue?

[austinpop]

5 hours ago, HeeBroG said:

 

Hi Rajiv,

 

Do I recall correctly reading that you use the distributed setup when "grazing" but Stylus monolithic when listening seriously?

This implies Stylus is better in monolithic setup; at least in your system?

 

G

 

I'm not sure to what you're referring when you say "distributed" vs. "monolithic" setup.

 

Let me clarify. My current music server HW is standalone, i.e. I use a single DAC-attached machine. So my point about grazing had only to do with software. When I'm grazing, I use "Roon+StylusEP," running on the one machine. For serious listening, I switch over to Stylus, which also runs on one machine.

 

If by distributed you're referring to Stylus on the server and StylusEP on the endpoint, I don't use that mode obviously, since that requires 2 machines. Stated differently, on a single server, there is no such thing as "Stylus+StylusEP."

 

Is that what you're asking, or did I misunderstand your question?

[austinpop]

6 hours ago, flkin said:

I've been reading this entire thread but can't quite recall if anyone is playing Roon and Stylus EP on separate cores of the same CPU? 

 

Is this possible? On AudioLinux, RoonServer and RoonBridge can't be run together in the same server on different cores as far as I know.

 

Sure. Here is an example. This is on a 6 physical core/12 logical core machine, with HT enabled:

• 0-3 RoonServer 4-7 gstp 8-11 
• This allocates:
  • logical cores 0 to 3 (physical cores 0-1) to default (i.e. everything else)
  • logical cores 4-7 to Roon (strictly: all proccesses whose name contains (see below for an example) the string "RoonServer" in the fully qualified path)
    • 2103 /opt/RoonServer/RoonMono/bin/RoonServer : 4-7
    • 2114 /opt/RoonServer/RoonMono/bin/RoonAppliance : 4-7
    • 2115 /opt/RoonServer/Server/processreaper : 4-7
    • 2188 /opt/RoonServer/RoonMono/bin/RAATServer : 4-7
  • logical cores 8-11 to StylusEP (strictly: all proccesses whose executables match the string "gstp" in the fully qualified path)

I always ensure I allocate all the HW threads in a core to the same workload, to avoid L1/L2 cache contamination

[RickyV]

19 hours ago, austinpop said:

0-1 stylus 2-3 gstp 4-7

 

Thanks Rajiv, I copied the above in the core isolation field and it works, I got this in the output screen.

 

i will play around some more this evening. Funny thing is that the temperature of physical core 0 and 1 are about 10 degrees cooler than the other two.

 

If you don’t mind me asking, could you explain the logic behind 0-1 stylus 2-3 gstp 4-7. What is gstp for instance? What does logic core 4-7 do? And you wrote (core 0 for default, core 1 for stylus, core 2-3 for gstp), so why core 2 and 3 for gstp while core 0 is for default - and only core 1 for stylus? I would say 0-1 are for stylus. I am trying to understand.

 

 

[austinpop]

2 minutes ago, RickyV said:

 

Thanks Rajiv, I copied the above in the core isolation field and it works, I got this in the output screen.

 

i will play around some more this evening. Funny thing is that the temperature of physical core 0 and 1 are about 10 degrees cooler than the other two.

 

If you don’t mind me asking, could you explain the logic behind 0-1 stylus 2-3 gstp 4-7. What is gstp for instance? What does logic core 4-7 do? And you wrote (core 0 for default, core 1 for stylus, core 2-3 for gstp), so why core 2 and 3 for gstp while core 0 is for default - and only core 1 for stylus? I would say 0-1 are for stylus. I am trying to understand.

 

 

 

Please see my post #493 just above yours, where I gave some more detail.

 

It helps to get some terminology straight. On the HW side, a processor chip comprises:

1. Cores: From Intel's website: "Cores is a hardware term that describes the number of independent central processing units in a single computing component (die or chip)." The i7-8650U chip in the NUC7i7DNBE, for example, has 4 cores.
2. HW Threads (hyperthreading): each core can have one or more HW threads, which are independent execution units, but they share some resources on the core, like L1 and L2 caches. The i7-8650U has 2 HW threads/core, or a total of 8 HW threads.

On the OS side, it sees logical CPUs, as presented to it by the BIOS. When you set your BIOS to Hyperthreading (HT) ON, it presents 8 HW threads to the OS, which sees 8 logical CPUs. With HT OFF, it only sees 4.

 

So since you booted with HT ON, Euphony OS sees logical CPUs 0-7, which correspond to physical cores 0-3.

 

I hope this, along with the previous post, help with your understanding?

[ASRMichael]

Hi

 

Can someone advise what I need to copy and paste into the "Core Isolation field" for Roon Server and HP Player please? or an example would be good?

 

4 cores, no HT

 

Thanks in advance

[Holzohr]

54 minutes ago, ASRMichael said:

Hi

 

Can someone advise what I need to copy and paste into the "Core Isolation field" for Roon Server and HP Player please? or an example would be good?

 

Thanks in advance

 

Please have a look here (first pic): 

 

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/55916-euphony-os-wstylus-player-setup-and-issues-thread/page/16/?tab=comments#comment-971780

 

 

It is a cpu with 6 physical cores. HT is activated.

[AnotherSpin]

On 8/17/2019 at 12:10 AM, austinpop said:

For folks who are using Euphony OS, you may be interested in this. Željko now has an experimental build where he has implemented ramroot support, which can be enabled/disabled from the Expert Settings area of the UI.

 

I've been trying it out for a couple of days, and my results so far have been promising. Just like in AL, enabling ramroot (loading the root partition into a RAM disk, and then booting from it) results in a definite uptick in sound quality.

 

Željko wants to get a few more proof points before releasing it, and asked me to convey this call for testers. If you're interested in testing it out, and reporting your results here in this thread, please reach out to him by opening a support ticket in the Euphony system.

 

DEV image was updated today. Do not know what Željko changed, but it seem to give another uptick in SQ! Happy to test a new stage of a great product!!

[HeeBroG]

10 hours ago, austinpop said:

 

I'm not sure to what you're referring when you say "distributed" vs. "monolithic" setup.

 

Let me clarify. My current music server HW is standalone, i.e. I use a single DAC-attached machine. So my point about grazing had only to do with software. When I'm grazing, I use "Roon+StylusEP," running on the one machine. For serious listening, I switch over to Stylus, which also runs on one machine.

 

If by distributed you're referring to Stylus on the server and StylusEP on the endpoint, I don't use that mode obviously, since that requires 2 machines. Stated differently, on a single server, there is no such thing as "Stylus+StylusEP."

 

Is that what you're asking, or did I misunderstand your question?

 

Thanks or clarifying.

 

G

[HeeBroG]

At the moment I run AL on my Macmini server and Euphony on my NUC7PJYH.

 

I tried Stylus EP but found long pauses between tracks and new tracks take 10-20sec to load depending on file size.

I noticed that memory usage was only 4% and it is not adjustable.

 

Things run more smoothly using Stylus Squeezlite and the buffers are adjustable and it so happens that 79% of 8Gb is used with my settings.

 

From this I surmised that Stylus EP doesn't use the RAM in my NUC and is more reliant on AL/Macmini to preload files which I am not sure I can adjust.

 

Could be wrong.

 

In any case in my system there is not much difference in performance.

 

G