Euphony OS w/Stylus player setup and issues thread

[TheAttorney]

13 hours ago, Nenon said:

In my system Euphony sounds better when loaded from my Optane card compared to loading from a USB Drive. But the trial version does not let you install the image on your SSD or Optane card. I think this is a bad decision on Euphony’s side, because you cannot test the full potential of Euphony.

 

 

It's not unusual for a trial version of any app not to have the full set of features enabled, and in this case I don't think it matters much because...

 

It's early days in my Optane vs USB stick comparisons, but one thing I can say right now is that any improvements with Optane are tiny compared to getting a top quality power supply, and small compared to, say, getting good quality cabling in your system. Therefore you can get a sufficiently good idea of what Euphony is capable of, even if booting from USB. Yes, Optane boot may be better still, but so are dozens of other tweaks that can be made to yor NUC.

 

BTW, once booting from Optane, I ran a simple test: With Euphony caching (and 100% buffer) enabled,  I loaded a few albums from my USB stick into the Euphony play queue, then started playing. Then removed the USB stick from the NUC. I heard no difference in SQ whether or not the USB stick was in place. Which means that a USB stick is a perfectly viable long term solution to store your music files, as long as your collection is small enough to fit (and with 4 x USB slots in a typical NUC, that means 2TB is easily achievable, and even 4TB at a much higher price).

 

My bottom line is that USB drives can be improved upon, but for the purpose of evaluation, there are much more important considerations.

 

[Nenon]

2 hours ago, TheAttorney said:

 

It's not unusual for a trial version of any app not to have the full set of features enabled, and in this case I don't think it matters much because...

 

It's early days in my Optane vs USB stick comparisons, but one thing I can say right now is that any improvements with Optane are tiny compared to getting a top quality power supply, and small compared to, say, getting good quality cabling in your system. Therefore you can get a sufficiently good idea of what Euphony is capable of, even if booting from USB. Yes, Optane boot may be better still, but so are dozens of other tweaks that can be made to yor NUC.

  

BTW, once booting from Optane, I ran a simple test: With Euphony caching (and 100% buffer) enabled,  I loaded a few albums from my USB stick into the Euphony play queue, then started playing. Then removed the USB stick from the NUC. I heard no difference in SQ whether or not the USB stick was in place. Which means that a USB stick is a perfectly viable long term solution to store your music files, as long as your collection is small enough to fit (and with 4 x USB slots in a typical NUC, that means 2TB is easily achievable, and even 4TB at a much higher price).

  

My bottom line is that USB drives can be improved upon, but for the purpose of evaluation, there are much more important considerations.

  

 

 

I just wanted to show people how to transfer their TRIAL installation to an Optane drive. The main reason in my case was not sound quality. A friend of mine has a 3TB music collection, which Euphony running from a USB drive could not handle. Euphony was going offline every few minutes, the database was constantly locked. etc. I did it for him to speed up the OS to OS storage access and decided to share with the community here. 

 

As for the sound quality advantage, it seems like your comment is targeted towards NUCs. Mine is not. I have tried Euphony from a USB drive and from Optane on several different motherboards. The results vary from motherboard to motherboard. There were motherboards on which I could not hear any audible difference and there are also motherboards, where you clearly hear it from the first note. I think it's quite wrong to assume that it makes very little difference on all computers... that is not my experience at least. 

 

Not to digress too much, but this is similar to the JCAT network card. If the network is only used for management (i.e. you are not streaming music over the network), the JCAT NIC still makes a difference on some motherboards, while I have tried motherboards where I could not find any audible difference in comparison to using the onboard NIC. Similarly, you can test this by unplugging the network cable while playing - you can hear improvement on some motherboards and not on others. Just saying - things are not as black or white as it may look. In other words YMMV. 

[Nenon]

4 hours ago, sukyung said:

I have a question.
> When using the euphony stylus
> Is only usb output possible?
> I have a pink faun spdif bridge
> I want to use it.

 

You should be able to use your PinkFaun bridge card as an output, but can you try it and confirm? I am considering getting an I2S bridge card with ultra OCXO clock to try and would really like to know what your results with the SPDIF card are. 

Under --> Settings --> Music Service you will see something like this: "Sound card options: (1 card)". In this case there is 1 card you can use for playback. If it says 0 cards that means Euphony does not recognize your card. 

 

[TheAttorney]

48 minutes ago, Nenon said:

....... you can hear improvement on some motherboards and not on others. Just saying - things are not as black or white as it may look. In other words YMMV. 

 

I completely agree, and I wasn't claiming my experience with my particular 7i7DN-based NUC is in any way black and white, just my particular experience with the h/w that I had described in recent posts. I'm a firm advocate of YMMV 🙂

 

Also, my USB comments were based on a 256 GB stick. If your friend had issues with much greater capacities, then that is something that requires further investigation for anyone who is thinking of going down that track. I suspect this will also vary with different motherboards etc. But for those who have smaller music collections, I still think a USB stick can't be beaten for KISS & DTS - you don't ever have to open up the server, or worry about M.2/PCIE slots, or NAS networking issues etc. 

[Nenon]

Just installed the new version of Euphony. It has some bug fixes. Some have been bothering me a lot recently, so I am glad to see them fixed. There is also a 'Stress CPU (to "break-in" your CPU, power cables/supply)' option under Expert Settings. Interesting... 

[Chopin75]

I am in euphony V3 trial but it appears the HQplayer for upsampling has very low volume. Has anyone noted this issue?

 

is there expert setting onV3 trial too? 

[AnotherSpin]

45 minutes ago, Chopin75 said:

I am in euphony V3 trial but it appears the HQplayer for upsampling has very low volume. Has anyone noted this issue?

 

is there expert setting onV3 trial too? 

 

I use Euphony trial as a NAA with HQPlayer desktop. Nothing special in volume level in comparison with Miska's NAA or Audiolinux.

[Nenon]

46 minutes ago, Chopin75 said:

I am in euphony V3 trial but it appears the HQplayer for upsampling has very low volume. Has anyone noted this issue?

 

is there expert setting onV3 trial too? 

 

I don't use HQplayer, but the trial version runs with volume control enabled by default. If you haven't disabled the volume control, please take a look at that setting. In my (non-Hqplayer) system, it is under Settings --> Music service --> Sound card options --> Stylus settings --> Volume control. 

[Chopin75]

5 hours ago, Nenon said:

 

I don't use HQplayer, but the trial version runs with volume control enabled by default. If you haven't disabled the volume control, please take a look at that setting. In my (non-Hqplayer) system, it is under Settings --> Music service --> Sound card options --> Stylus settings --> Volume control. 

I switched to "none" on the volume control but did not work. The V2 has no issue though, 

[Nenon]

Open a support ticket with Euphony - https://euphony-audio.com/hesk/ 

[RickyV]

Another new update from Euphony? I am now at 20190705.

[austinpop]

Has anyone tried the CPU isolation feature on the latest 0705 version? On Željko's request, I gave it a whirl and heard zero difference. My config:

• i7-8700T with Turbo and HT ON
  • 6 physical cores
  • 12 hardware threads (logical CPUs to the kernel)
• Running Roon Core (all processes have RoonServer in the path)
• Running StylusEP (process name is gstp)

I tried 4 variants:

• 0-11 (default, no isolation)
• 0-3 gstp 4-7 RoonServer 8-11 (2 physical cores each to gstp, RoonServer, and everything else)
• 0-3 gstp 4-5 RoonServer 6-11 (1 physical cores to gstp, 3 physical cores to RoonServer, and 2 to everything else)
• 0-1 gstp 2-3 RoonServer 4-11 (1 physical cores to gstp, 4 physical cores to RoonServer, and 1 to everything else)
• 0-1 gstp 2-9 RoonServer 10-11 (4 physical cores to gstp, 1 physical cores to RoonServer, and 1 to everything else)

I could have tried others, but ran out of time and interest.

 

Perhaps core isolation is less effective with powerful CPUs running around 99% idle, which is the case with my config. I would be very interested to know if others have heard a benefit, and if so, please describe your isolation settings, and the system details. 

[TheAttorney]

On 7/8/2019 at 5:18 PM, austinpop said:

Has anyone tried the CPU isolation feature on the latest 0705 version?

 

Where did you get the instructions for changing this feature in Euphony? I haven't seen any.

 

Does core isolation in effect switch off hyperthreading? I'd like to give that a try, but it's much easier for me to change this in Euphony than in BIOS.

 

I don't see the point of the other new feature - CPU burn-in. It drives the cores to 100% usage, at 3 levls of aggressiveness, but IMO the CPU already heats up more than enough in turbo mode. This enhancement request probably came in from another forum. I wonder what the rationale was?

[Holzohr]

I have a i7-8700 with activated turbo boost and hyperthreading. I use the HQPlayer. The last pic shows the cpu cores 4-7 with DSD512 upsampling activated.

 

 

 

[austinpop]

7 hours ago, TheAttorney said:

 

Where did you get the instructions for changing this feature in Euphony? I haven't seen any.

 

I was given these by Željko, and I think that is the MO for these advanced flags.

 

7 hours ago, TheAttorney said:

Does core isolation in effect switch off hyperthreading? I'd like to give that a try, but it's much easier for me to change this in Euphony than in BIOS.

 

No it does not. If you see @Holzohr's example above, he has an i7-8700 with 6 physical cores, i.e. 12 logical cpu's with HT on. The isolation feature just allows you to allocate logical cpu's to processes. I think AL's features on this are more detailed. The advantage here is these parameters take instantly and don't require a reboot.

 

7 hours ago, TheAttorney said:

I don't see the point of the other new feature - CPU burn-in. It drives the cores to 100% usage, at 3 levls of aggressiveness, but IMO the CPU already heats up more than enough in turbo mode. This enhancement request probably came in from another forum. I wonder what the rationale was?

 

Presumably someone asked for this. Seems silly to me.

[davide256]

decided to go back and give Euphony a try again since its "improved", supposedly works as an endpoint only. I have it working as the default 1 box Euphony server

but cannot find it as a Roon server or Roon endpoint. Whats odd is that the server IP address does not show when you use IP Address Scanner in any configuration, although you can connect via web http to euphony.local. Any thoughts on how to fix what going awry in network settings?

[Holzohr]

On 6/9/2019 at 4:57 PM, bobfa said:

I have still been playing music with the custom hardware that I have assembled. I have really enjoyed learning and testing all the different hardware and software.  I am still fine tuning my system.  I have started looking at USB cards.  I have started with the Matrix Audio card:

 

I have only had the card in my system for 24 hours but it really does make an interesting set of differences.  I will let it settle in some more before I try to A/B and report.

 

 

 

Hi Bob,

 

I have the same card in use and already wanted to write about that much earlier..

Some food for thought: Euphony and Audiolinux give realtime priority for usb by default. That means priority for the irqs of the mainboard usb ports. When you use such a USB 3.0 PCIe card there is a different irq in use. It is easy to find out about that with Audiolinux. The Matrix card is using irq16 on my system. No matter if with my Gigabyte H110N mainboard before or now with a ASRock Z390M-ITX/ac.

It's no special thing to change the rtirq.conf on Audiolinux. On Euphony I found a way with help of booting an Ubuntu Live USB drive and then mounting the both Euphony partitions to replace usb by i801_smb (browsing into /etc folder and opening a terminal window there: sudo nano rtirc.conf). Of course, a more convenient way is to ask Željko to change the both rtirq.conf files. I already had a conversation with him about this and he offered to make this changes via remote control.
The not so nice thing is you must repeat these changes after each new version of Euphony. The installation of a new version overwrites the rtirq.conf files. But well it keeps the braincells awake.

I *think* giving more rt priority to the irq16 really brings *something*. At least the good feeling that you don't waste rt priority for usb ports that are not in use. 🙂

Mario

 

 

 

 

The Matrix card is using the irq16

 

 

 

 

Audiolinux rt priority by default (with my former Gigabyte board)

 

 

 

Euphony rtirq.conf by default

 

 

 

from the top.log with the settings by default

 

 

 

 

the changed rtirq.conf

 

 

 

from top.log with the new rt pirority

 

[davide256]

20 hours ago, davide256 said:

decided to go back and give Euphony a try again since its "improved", supposedly works as an endpoint only. I have it working as the default 1 box Euphony server

but cannot find it as a Roon server or Roon endpoint. Whats odd is that the server IP address does not show when you use IP Address Scanner in any configuration, although you can connect via web http to euphony.local. Any thoughts on how to fix what going awry in network settings?

have partially figured this out. Connecting NUC direct to router allows me to see it as Euphony Roon server, looks like Cisco catalyst switch is stepping on something.

[Chopin75]

3 hours ago, Holzohr said:

 

Hi Bob,

 

I have the same card in use and already wanted to write about that much earlier..

Some food for thought: Euphony and Audiolinux give realtime priority for usb by default. That means priority for the irqs of the mainboard usb ports. When you use such a USB 3.0 PCIe card there is a different irq in use. It is easy to find out about that with Audiolinux. The Matrix card is using irq16 on my system. No matter if with my Gigabyte H110N mainboard before or now with a ASRock Z390M-ITX/ac.

It's no special thing to change the rtirq.conf on Audiolinux. On Euphony I found a way with help of booting an Ubuntu Live USB drive and then mounting the both Euphony partitions to replace usb by i801_smb (browsing into /etc folder and opening a terminal window there: sudo nano rtirc.conf). Of course, a more convenient way is to ask Željko to change the both rtirq.conf files. I already had a conversation with him about this and he offered to make this changes via remote control.
The not so nice thing is you must repeat these changes after each new version of Euphony. The installation of a new version overwrites the rtirq.conf files. But well it keeps the braincells awake.

I *think* giving more rt priority to the irq16 really brings *something*. At least the good feeling that you don't waste rt priority for usb ports that are not in use. 🙂

Mario

 

 

 

 

The Matrix card is using the irq16

 

 

 

 

Audiolinux rt priority by default (with my former Gigabyte board)

 

 

 

Euphony rtirq.conf by default

 

 

 

from the top.log with the settings by default

 

 

 

 

the changed rtirq.conf

 

 

 

from top.log with the new rt pirority

 

I also use pinkfaun USB bridg, no issue but u think that priority change to the usb bridge would help with SQ? 

[Holzohr]

1 hour ago, Chopin75 said:

I also use pinkfaun USB bridg, no issue but u think that priority change to the usb bridge would help with SQ? 

 

Maybe. It is up to you to find out. Why not sending a request to Željko? I would like to hear the opinions of other users of such PCIe-USB cards.

[Holzohr]

Quote

sudo nano rtirc.conf

 

Oops..it musst be sudo nano rtirq.conf

[EliteDJ]

Hi Folks,

 

I'm evaluating Euphony in a single machine config and have a ESI Juli@ sound card that gets recognized but doesn't output audio or show any songs progress when playing.  I'm thinking it isn't being recognized 100% by the Euphony software because ESI doesn't have a Linux driver.  I also have a spare Paul Pang V2 USB PCI-E card that isn't recognized either, which means it doesn't even show up as an option in Stylus.  Can anyone recommend the USB PCI-E cards that they are currently using with Euphony and are recognized in the Stylus interface.  I did see a reference to a Martix Element H card mentioned and was hoping to see some additional options. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help a brother out! Dave K

[luisma]

23 hours ago, EliteDJ said:

Hi Folks,

 

I'm evaluating Euphony in a single machine config and have a ESI Juli@ sound card that gets recognized but doesn't output audio or show any songs progress when playing.  I'm thinking it isn't being recognized 100% by the Euphony software because ESI doesn't have a Linux driver.  I also have a spare Paul Pang V2 USB PCI-E card that isn't recognized either, which means it doesn't even show up as an option in Stylus.  Can anyone recommend the USB PCI-E cards that they are currently using with Euphony and are recognized in the Stylus interface.  I did see a reference to a Martix Element H card mentioned and was hoping to see some additional options. Thanks in advance to anyone who can help a brother out! Dave K

Did you asked Euphony's support already about the drivers? they may support you and include these inside Euphony, Zeljko is very helpful with these matters.

 

[EliteDJ]

I emailed support and the Juli@ only has 3rd party Linux support and the 3rd party can't be identified.  :)  In regards to the Paul Pang USB Card Roger mentioned that it is NEC based and should be compatible.  I'm going to try a different motherboard to see if I have a better experience with recognizing the Paul Pang Card, it can be seen in Windows 7 with a driver but WS 2012 R2 or the Euphony OS it isn't recognized.  I'm still curious what PCI-E USB cards folks have working in their servers?  In the long run a wanted to have a dual boot Music Server using an audio card that is compatible with both WS2012 R2 and Euphony.  I'm thinking about replacing WS 2012 with Windows 10 to allow for better driver combatibility.  I'm doing a bit of experimentation to get the proper configuration as you can see. :)

[Chopin75]

30 minutes ago, EliteDJ said:

I emailed support and the Juli@ only has 3rd party Linux support and the 3rd party can't be identified.  In regards to the Paul Pang USB Card Roger mentioned that it is NEC based and should be compatible.  I'm going to try a different motherboard to see if I have a better experience with recognizing the Paul Pang Card, it can be seen in Windows 7 with a driver but WS 2012 R2 or the Euphony OS it isn't recognized.  I'm still curious what PCI-E USB cards folks have working in their servers?  In the long run a wanted to have a dual boot Music Server using an audio card that is compatible with both WS2012 R2 and Euphony.  I'm thinking about replacing WS 2012 with Windows 10 to allow for better driver combatibility.  I'm doing a bit of experimentation to get the proper configuration as you can see.

If u are referring go the USB card at the server or end point, i use Pinkfaun USB bridge and it works fine, i used it in my smaller vertical PCLe slot.