Euphony OS w/Stylus player setup and issues thread

[Chopin75]

This may be obvious and so probably a dumb discovery as I am sure many have discovered this already. Tonight I discovered how noisy my external HDD (where the music is stored) is which when attached to  my PC actually affects the sound in quite negative way. I discovered this by accident as I suddenly found the sound of the same music file suddenly has become worse, and I realized that the only difference is I reattached the external HDD. So A/B comparison has confirmed this, with loss of space and air between notes, reduced analogue smoothness, and "harder" sound with the attached HDD, but once taken off the these issues are gone and sound becomes more "relaxed" etc...

Interestingly, even if I plug in the HDD without attaching or "mounting" the HDD to Euphony the sound still suffers. After mounting perhaps the sound gets worse (but rather subtle) compared with physically attached but not mounted.

Previously I did not notice much change probably I was using galvanic isolation device with another computer but now with this finless PC I am not using galvanic isolation device (sounds better without it) and so the HDD noise becomes more apparent. 

 

[Chopin75]

8 hours ago, Johnseye said:

 

 

One thing to note about my external drive storage. The drive is powered by the sPS-500 and connects via USB to a tX-USBexp with its clock tap connected to the sCLK-EX. It does sound noticeably better than from the NAS over ethernet. 

Surely, if the storage device is powered by LPS and/or isolated somehow from the PC then it may not cause much jitter. The cheapest and simplest is to take out the drive !  Lucky for euphony OS, I can load the tracks I want via Ecache and then detach the drive. It is a bit inconvenient but that is ok. Keep the music files in the Euphony OS drive may be another solution but I run out of space there already ! (1 TB SATA drive).  

[Chopin75]

1 hour ago, sergiocurvelo said:

I can not use the Stylus with UltraRendu. Only with the server connected directly to the DAC via USB. Any suggestion?

What exactly is your chain like ? Are you trying to output utraRendu into Euphony OS ? This would probably skip the stylus. (though maybe Stylus EP would  work but I am not familiar with that )

[Chopin75]

21 minutes ago, austinpop said:

On the subject of harshness - there is another consideration when it comes to HQPlayer workloads. Unlike the non-upsampling Roon and Stylus workloads, where CPU utilization is < 5%, HQPlayer workloads run at much higher CPU utilization. You guys can tell me what you typically see.

 

Why does this matter? Given that Euphony pegs frequency with the CPU governor set to "performance," what difference does CPU utilization make on energy consumption and noise? I've been digging into this for my own edification. If you're not an OS geek, you can probably skip this!

 

From my understanding, the answer lies in the concept of C states. Here's a decent intro to C States: https://www.dell.com/support/article/us/en/04/qna41893/what-is-the-c-state?lang=en In a nutshell, when a <HW thread|core|CPU> becomes idle - i.e. the OS has no work (runnable thread) to dispatch - it executes a HALT instruction, that puts it into a lower power C state (C1). One of the key things about this state is that the clock is turned off. From this point, there is a whole plethora of deeper sleep states that progressively lower energy use. Here's a nice picture of what each C state entails:

 

How does this relate to our harshness discussion? Even with frequency pegged to the max, when a workload is running at a very low CPU utilization, these CPUs spend a lot of time with the core clocks off, so this is why core temps don't rise that much, and harshness stays under control. If we had root access in Euphony, we could verify this hypothesis by running turbostat with different workloads. This would tell you the percent of time the CPUs spends in C1 through Cn state.

 

For those of you who have used AL, this also explains the EXTREME and EXTREME2 modes in that OS. EXTREME boots the kernel with a flag setting: intel_idle.max_cstate=0. In the context of the preceding para, you can now see this disables cores from ever leaving C0 state. In EXTREME2, there is an additional flag: idle=poll. This disables even the execution of HALT, and instead causes idle HW threads to run a "no op" idle loop. Theoretically, these flags reduce the latency to dispatch new work, but they have a severe impact on energy - and by association, noise.

 

Hope this helps those interested in a little deeper look.

Not entirely sure what you mean with C states, but my CPU is usually running  < 5% for all cores even with HQplayer upsample from 16/44hx ---> 24/352  but occasionally jumps top to 10%. (From Euphony OS, it shows I have 16 CPU, but only about 5-7 are used at anytime) Both Stylus vs HQplayer embedded are similar in CPU usage.  I use AMD Ryzen 2700x 8 core.   I actually prefer the STylus upsample right now as the HQplayer, while smoothening things a lot, seems to do so too much so the natural instrumental color is altered but I have not had chance/time to adjust the different filters yet. THe only time CPU goes up to >20% is when I use HQplayer upsample to DSD256.  Hope this helps. 

[Chopin75]

7 hours ago, sergiocurvelo said:

 

Bob,

Two days  testing various configurations and I can assure you that Stylus + HQ Player is the best setting I've tested here. More natural textures, analog, energetic and lively sound.

As the server is near my DAC, I will no longer need the Ultra Rendu and I'll sell it. I'll connect the Curious USB cable in the DAC working along with ISO Regen.

 

Maybe Roon's annual subscription will not be renewed. Until November I will decide.
But I'm really enjoying it: Stylus+Tidal+HQ Player

 

Can you clarify what Stylus + HQplayer means? As far as I know, you can only play either Stylus or HQplayer embedded or NAA. When you play HQplayer embedded the Stylus is actually disabled and the HQplayer takes over. Do you really mean using Stylus as library management but HQplayer that actually plays the music files ?  

[Chopin75]

9 hours ago, Superdad said:

HELP!!

 

So I have wasted a bunch of hours this holiday weekend just trying to get Euphony booted and a connection to it.  They sure have some fix-in to do.

 

Setting aside my end objective configuration I'd like to audition it in, I'm just trying to get it going at all.  No problem creating a Euphony boot USB stick using Etcher (have used that and other utils many times to make bootable Linux sticks).  But despite Euphony's indication that they support UEFI booting on Macs, here is what happens once I boot to the image--same on 3 different Macs:

 

 

 

So then I figure I'd try booting this thumb drive on either my NUC or my Win10 laptop.  I can get either one to boot successfully--to the point where it says "EUPONY IS UP AND READY," please access on a web browser, etc.

 

Problem is, Euphony self-assigned itself an IP address--on a sub-net different from what my ADSL modem/router hands out.  On both machines it to 192.168.1.237.   But all addresses on my network are 192.168.8.xxx.

So of course attempting to access it from a browser does not work.

 

Suggestions anyone?

Thanks,

ALEX

 

P.S.  Regarding the Mac efivarfs/emergency shell issue, an hour ago I submitted a ticket, and now received the following reply:

 

"This is very peculiar issue with iMacs. You have to install gdisk command line utility.
http://macappstore.org/gptfdisk/
After that use gdisk /dev/disk3 (or whatever number is USB with Euphony on it) and then enter these
x
e
w
y
(Enter after every letter).
I'm writing from phone so I'll explain later what this is and why this problem occurs.
And use USB stick, not SD card because with them there is no solution at all."

 

That's nice I guess, but I replied that the issue is not just with iMac.  I at first tried two different Mac minis with same result.

What yrs are your Macs made ? Any Mac that has T2 Chip won't work at all with external USB boot drive or any other type of foreign non-mac OS reboot for that matter. It is the nice high security of Mac (you see, this bans anyone trying to reboot a mac into PC or Linux mode in case someone try hack in ???) ! All 2018 Macs whether macbook, macmini etc have T2 chip. 

[Chopin75]

3 minutes ago, Superdad said:

 

Late 2012 mini, Late 2014 iMac Retina.  Both boot fine from other Linux USB sticks.

Strange, but it may be due to V3 version of the Euphony. I no longer can boot from my macbook 2011 using the V3 version. There is a complex way to make it work for V3.  But the PC that you booted from seem to work. Probably should just try that

[Chopin75]

10 hours ago, Johnseye said:

 

 

In Euphony's settings, after you enable Stylus as your player, you should be able to select HQPlayer as your upsampler.  There's a limited selection of parameters provided.  You can also direct HQPlayer to an NAA in this mode.

 

Euphony uses HQPlayer Embedded.  I believe it's v4 but have not confirmed this.  There's no plan for them to use the Desktop version and it will require a separate license or else you're limited to 30 minute sessions, then need to restart the service.

Yes, I understand and have done that. It is the language that needs clarification, just to let the readers understand:

 

So tp clarify:

Stylus + HQplayer embedded really means you are using HQplayer, not Stylus. You do pull the music from the Stylus music library, but otherwise there is nothing else to do with stylus.

 

Note there is SQ difference between HQPlayer embedded vs stylus player alone for Upsampling PCM (note stylus alone cannot do PCM--> DSD or DSD upsampling)  

I prefer Stylus as the HQplayer tends to give too smooth a sound, the high freq are mutes, though this could be due to my filter setting issue (no time to figure that out right now)

 

 

[Chopin75]

6 hours ago, austinpop said:

 

I don’t disagree. If there is an alternative to the SR7 with equal or better SQ and better availability, I want to know about it.

I want to see what PinkFaun has to offer. They do recommend their own LPS.

 

http://www.faradpowersupplies.com

 

 

(addendum: I believe someone above has mentioned Farad LPS already, likely the same thing)

 

Good value it seems, but no multiple rails on single unit which they think is bad for sound. 

 

Mojo supposedly have very nice LPS too. 

 

Or

[Chopin75]

3 hours ago, Superdad said:

 

Give 120/240VAC to our choke-filtered JS-2 and it will happily crank out 7.6 amps at 12V all day long without breaking a sweat. Available and in demand all the time too.  Just sayin'... 

 

Now to try again to get Euphony to boot on a Mac.  Apparently that is not supported--even though their web page lists instructions for creating a boot stick on a Mac.

The problem is that all macbooks with T2 chip (2017 onwards) cannot use Euphony reboot. Macbooks too old are not compatible with V3 boot so I am not sure if there are many MACs that can use euphony now.  MACs are obsolete for computer audio now. Shame on them!  Not sure if Steve Jobs would have done better.... 

[Chopin75]

10 hours ago, Dev said:

 

Ahh...the unobtonium SR7 comes into every other discussions 🙂 You lucky chaps!.

 

Can anyone tell if the differences from other good quality PSU is like splitting hairs or the improvements are massive ? How much in terms of % are we talking about ? I am trying to guesstimate how much I am missing 🙁

 

On the other hand (and playing devil's advocate), maybe all these money spent into motherboard, CPU, chassis, Network/USB audiophile card, unobtonium SR7, expensive DC cables and endless tweaking is not worth than getting a reference server like a Auralic G2 which will mostly cost about the same. Anybody compare yet ? 

One of the reason for doing DIY Computer audio is that you can build a device or number of devices to your specific needs. Probably not so much about Bang for the buck/cost effectiveness.  I for e.g could not find a server that could do DSD/DXD and multi-channel (at least not sure if the commercial devices could do them all back then)  So tinkering with software was the starting point -e.g trying audirvanna and J River/HQplayer etc. and finally I arrived at Euphony that meets my needs of simplicity and function.  

With your own server you can constantly upgrade too, e.g I may get a I2S bridge or optical bridge etc... or upgrade the internal clocks...

Change software, OS etc...

The problem is that these ready made commercial devices are already out of date the moment they are launched on the market. So spending > $2000 on a device that will become obsolete sooner than you pay off your credit card is not ideal.   The digital tech are advancing day by day, it is not like dealing with vinyl where the technology is already established. 

E.g. now when I check the commercial devices they can finally do DSD/DXD but a  yr back most could not, but now a PC server can do DSD512! So again they are lagging behind. We are using 4-6 or 8 core CPUs, upsampling, PCM-DSD conversion, but the commercial ones are doing duo core CPUs (maybe some do quad now,? at least last I checked).......

 

Sorry to digress. But back on topic: the Euphony is really a great step to get into computer audio. I really like it. Can use as single box or if you want to be complex you can do Roon etc... 

It's library management sucks though, I have not checked out the V3 yet, is that any better in library management ?

 

[Chopin75]

1 hour ago, TheAttorney said:

With my head still spinning from all the server options available on these threads, I've decided to go for the KISS approach to replace my W10/Roon laptop as music server. This will be:

 

A single box server with USB out to my existing HMS->DAVE DAC. I've settled on Euphony Stylus running on 7i7DN Porcoolpine fanless box (thank you @bobfa for the posts and links). With Porcoolpine setup just like bob's example, e.g using a 32GB Optane in the M.2 slot. My moto for this exercise will be "ditch the spaghetti" or at least as much as possible - and I'm prepared to sacrifice some SQ in order to get compactness, simplicity and conveniance.

 

With that in mind, I intend to start with Porcoolpine's stock USB output and use its default WiFi (using up the M.2 2230 slot and with external antennas) to connect to my broadband router on the other side of my house). Both of these points are less than ideal for SQ, but I did a "proof of concept" test by installing Euphony+Stylus on USB stick on a (different) laptop -> USB -> HMS -> DAVE and comparing to my existing W10/Roon -> bridged mR -> IR -> HMS -> DAVE.

 

And the Stylus version won easily on SQ, although only after I had cleaned the direct USB output with my trusty ISORegen. This was not a like-for-like comparison, but was enough of a POC for me to imagine that a NUC server would give even bigger improvements.

 

My remaining question is regarding Optane drives: There are many options around, but most of them won't fit into the M.2 2280 slot of DN-boarded NUCs. I'm starting with a 32GB pure Optane to be the Euphony/Stylus boot drive (and with an external filestore drive), but to continue the KISS principle, it would be more elegant to use the H10 drive with a combined 32GB Optane + up to 1TB NAND, thereby keeping everything within the same box.

 

So my H10 questions are:

1. Can one boot Euphony/Stylus from the 32GB Optane partition, which then reads the music files from the NAND partition? 

2. Or is it better to put everything on the NAND partition and use the Optane as accelerator (which is after all its originally intended purpose)?

3. How would a H10 drive compare SQ-wise with Optane + external drive?

 

Solution 2 seems to be the most elegant to me, but it'snot clear if adding the NAND SSD onto the Optane card will make that drive as noisy as a typical SSD?

 

Solution 2 may be best in terms of speed of getting the files loaded. The ecache can work just as well where ever the source but gets a bit cranky at times and takes longer to load/sink into euphony etc... 

Probably not much difference in sound except that external drive can be noisy. I can’t comment on different compartment of optane would make a difference ? 

[Chopin75]

On 6/2/2019 at 12:34 PM, austinpop said:

 

The whole local storage question still remains a matter of compromises. We have disparate data points from folks who have tried different approaches:

• @romaz in his experiments feels conventional NVMe SSDs to be particularly harsh sounding
• Others have had good success with HDDs in an external enclosure, with both USB and the drive separately powered with 5V and 12V PSUs.

The rationale for Optane was based on the fact that you need something to boot the OS, and the Optane SSD (note - we're not talking about using it as a cache, just a small SSD) has the potential to be less harsh because of these metrics - per specs:

• Idle power: 8mW
• Active power: 2.5W

The rationale as the OS drive is based on the fact that the drive is either always idle after boot - say in the case of AL with ramroot, or mostly idle, since over time the OS drive has very low I/O utilization. So power consumption is closer to the idle value, and by implication, harshness is lower. Music drives are different, since their utilization (and hence the %time they are active and in active power mode) is higher.

 

In contrast, the quintessential "noisy" SSD, the Samsung EVO 860 is rated:

• Idle power: 50mW
• Active power: 4.5W

With these bounds, the specs of the H10 are interesting:

• Idle power: 12-13mW
• Active power: 5.3-5.8W

Based on specs alone, I would be inclined to trust the H10 more as an OS drive, and less as a music drive. At which point, the whole point of H10 becomes moot in a music server.

 

Bottom line - I don't see anything with H10 that tempts me to change my own strategy, which is:

• Optane M10 32GB SSD OS drive
• All music on a NAS somewhere else on the network.

With that said, if some curious mind has the means and stamina to conduct a listening comparison with various storage strategies, you'd be doing us all a service. I'm prepared to change if a better sounding solution emerges.

 

Am I reading this wrong or this is outdated info?:

Below states the optane actually consumes most power in idle & active states ??

 

https://www.anandtech.com/show/11210/the-intel-optane-memory-ssd-review-32gb-of-kaby-lake-caching/7

[Chopin75]

Does anyone know on Euphony playback options, what the  "Enabled internal Cards" mean ?   I have always left it unchecked, 

[Chopin75]

Does anyone have issue with connecting to internet from Euphony? Now and then I get a message stating I am not getting internet signal. I am still using the older version, not upgrades yet. I have no new updates at all but then Maybe there is no updates for the older version.

[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? 

[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, 

[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? 

[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. 

[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. 

[Chopin75]

The pinkfaun spdif/I2S bridge does not work well with intel chips I was told by them but the

RyZen works fine. So I got Ryzen 2700x  which is more than enough, even with resampling/upsampling. Pinkfaun recommends that so I don’t think 3000s Ryzen is really needed as then u need a

stronger PS and bettet cooling system. 

[Chopin75]

7 hours ago, genvirt said:

Hello, actually I don’t no if this was answered, but I had the same issue - I solved it by changing settings for DSD converting for DoP  but if Your DAC support native DSD it better way as Euphony service said.

 

I am already using DoP as my DAC cannot receive native DSD. I use HPplayer only for resampling or upsampling but not to play native DSD directly

[Chopin75]

7 hours ago, EliteDJ said:

I found the exact Corsair memory that they are using in the 2.16x, it took a bit to figure that out.  Since I wanted video to be available for the 2nd SSD that will host WS2012R with Audio Optimizer and JRiver, I picked up a AMD Ryzen 3400G 4-core 3.7GHz with 4.2GHz Boost 65W CPU.  Does the 2.16 and 2.16x actually take advantage of the 8 cores?  I'm also assuming that the Pink Faun folks needed to add a video card to that motherboard to tweak the system's BIOS before shipping to clients because the AMD 1700x doesn't have built in graphics.

 

The Pink Faun SPIDIF card has clock options, I was always under the impression that when using a SPDIF connection to your DAC it would use the clock in the DAC, am I incorrect?  If I am correct, what is the advantage of updating the clock on the Pink Faun SPDIF card if is going to use the one in the DAC?

 

Thanks so far for everyone's replies and advice. Dave

As far as I know the clock at the PF SPDIF card is to reclock the signal so that all the jitter will be reduced just before the digital signal is sent out, like they do with CD transport.  As to whether DAC needs to recheck, I think so, as the digital signal gets degraded by the time DAC gets it. And so DAC reclocks it. Though, I think it uses the clock info from the source, if I am correct, hence asynchronous, though I am not sure if this statement is correct.  But to answer your, the SPDIF signal needs to be reclocked anyway to reduce jitter or the incoming signal to DAC would be too degraded regardless of whether DAC rechecks it or not and so it would not sound good even if DAC reclocks it, if that makes sense ?? 

[Chopin75]

15 minutes ago, EliteDJ said:

I'm following you, makes sense.  I wonder why they offer the card with no clock as an option, I'm thinking the signal would be no better than one sent out of the motherboard's stock USB or optical out from a jitter standpoint.  I guess they include some filtering and an option to power their card from an external power supply so those are advantages.  So adding their clock options are the way to go which certainly kicks up the price by more than double the price of their basic offering, I better start saving!   Thanks for your explanation and time! Dave

Regards the basic PF Spdif or USB card they do have a basic clock bur not an OCXO clock so there is still advantage. I suspect it is similar to the basic card offered by SOTM etc. their super clocks should be game changer, u just stick it onto the card and automatically the new clock is used per PF

[Chopin75]

4 hours ago, austinpop said:

 

Not a dumb question, and no apology necessary! 

 

Loading the OS from an NVMe SSD (which is what your internal Optane drive is) is different from Ramroot:

• In normal mode, the boot loader will load the operating system (Euphony or AL, since both are based on Arch Linux) from the partition on the SSD that contains the root filesystem, i.e. that contains the / filesystem.
• In Ramroot mode, the boot loader proceeds with an extra step. Early in the boot process, it creates a RAM disk partition (/dev/zram0) in memory, copies the contents of the / partition from the SSD to this partition, and then completes the boot from this RAM disk partition. 

What this means is that the filesystem containing the kernel and the OS files is now completely in RAM.

 

Why exactly this sounds better is yet to be explained, although a lot of theories abound, having to do with reducing the latency of OS operations due to all OS files being in RAM.

But Euphony OS cannot run in RAMROOT correct ? I know AL can.