Euphony OS w/Stylus player setup and issues thread

[shadowlight]

Can I run the software on a virtual host and does it have support for something similar to Roon Radio?

[davide256]

 another update out today (10-08 date)

[ASRMichael]

[edwardsean]

Another new update went live. Just a few a minor fixes. 

[edwardsean]

Okay, I found out that "now playing" page can now use cover art stored in the folder and displays it at full resolution. Fantastic.

 

Thanks to Euphony! 

[k27R]

I must be the only one that found the sound quality difference with the latest release to not necessarily be an improvement.  I noticed a little more detail (mostly in the highs) that others are reporting and a little more authority in the lows, but I find the sound to be less natural overall and noticeably shorter soundstage (the first thing I noticed right off the bat). The release must’ve affected the balance I had with my configuration somehow, and I probably need to tweak some settings to optimize it. But reverted back 20200712 and all is well again, so I’ll probably just stick with this as long as I can.

[Speedy381]

I agree with the sound quality k27R, it has gone to pieces for me. It has lost the natural feel and there is less space and musicality. The core temperatures and stress have gone right up, I have had to allocate more cores to Stylus to keep them out of the red continually as this was causing a harshness to the sound. Now to figure out if it will let me go back two releases, or do I have start again?

[TheAttorney]

14 hours ago, k27R said:

I must be the only one that found the sound quality difference with the latest release to not necessarily be an improvement. 

I felt SQ gained some detail and PRaT as earlier posts had noted. It seemed to give more of everything, so beautiful recordings showed greater beauty and bright recordings seemed a touch brighter. Overall, the gains were greater than the losses, but after a few albums I could no longer remember how the old version sounded.

 

I saw no obvious increases in CPU loading or temperature. Most of the time, each core flicked between 0-3% and sometime a bit more. The cores running the O/S would occasionally jump to between around 10% and 25%, but this only lasted for a brief second, as it did before. This running standalone Stylus, ramroot, buffering, no DSP, direct to USB.

 

On 10/7/2020 at 10:56 PM, shadowlight said:

Can I run the software on a virtual host and does it have support for something similar to Roon Radio?

Yes Stylus has a Radio feature similar (not identical) to Roon's (see bottom right of screenshot below). However, in my case it hasn't worked for the last few releases , with amber error message below. I've not bothered to raise a bug so far because it's not an important feature for me. I don't know whether Euphony will run on virtual hosts, but I guess that any extra O/S layer can only degrade SQ.

 

 

 

[Lukasluis]

Disabling CPU Isolation settings returned the balance to pre-upgrade sound signature. 

[dminches]

4 hours ago, Speedy381 said:

I agree with the sound quality k27R, it has gone to pieces for me. It has lost the natural feel and there is less space and musicality. The core temperatures and stress have gone right up, I have had to allocate more cores to Stylus to keep them out of the red continually as this was causing a harshness to the sound. Now to figure out if it will let me go back two releases, or do I have start again?

 

If you are finding a very big difference in CPU usage then something is not right with your system.  How long did you allow the system to run on the new version before concluding there was an issue?

 

[Speedy381]

30 minutes ago, dminches said:

 

If you are finding a very big difference in CPU usage then something is not right with your system.  How long did you allow the system to run on the new version before concluding there was an issue?

 

I have tried a few reboots over the past couple of days. It starts well then begins to build cpu usage.

[dminches]

1 hour ago, Speedy381 said:

I have tried a few reboots over the past couple of days. It starts well then begins to build cpu usage.

 

Is the system rescanning your library?

 

[Speedy381]

Update to my issues. 

Support were superb in their speed of response and action. It seems that the e_cache directory had been deleted, either in the update or by myself somehow. If it was me, it would have been using file manager, but unsure how. 

That was causing a loop as the system hunted for it. 

Sound testing later, but I'm confident now the cpu is unstressed that all will be well again. 

 

[davide256]

Anyone running Stylus endpoint on a Mac mini? If so, thoughts on which used Mac mini to use? (Euphony says OSX supported, newer models run Catalina?)

I'd like to give Stylus server + Stylus endpoint a shot but don't want the USB endpoint to be a NUC, wasnt that impressed with the difference using 2 NUCs vs

1 in the past.

[Chopin75]

3 hours ago, davide256 said:

Anyone running Stylus endpoint on a Mac mini? If so, thoughts on which used Mac mini to use? (Euphony says OSX supported, newer models run Catalina?)

I'd like to give Stylus server + Stylus endpoint a shot but don't want the USB endpoint to be a NUC, wasnt that impressed with the difference using 2 NUCs vs

1 in the past.

Be careful

using Mac. Latest Macs do not support USB boot, unless there are new changes, mainly due to T2 chip

for security. 2018 mini and macbooks are affected

[edwardsean]

 A couple days ago I made a DC umbilical for the Sean Jacobs DC3 which powers my DAVE. I followed Nenon's suggestion of using Mundorf Silver/Gold. I'm posting about it here, because the stuff added such a nice smoothness and density to my sound I decided revisit my Euphony core isolation. 

 

I settled in at 0-2 gstp 3-7. Giving more cores to gstp seems to improve the sound but at the cost of some thinness and stridency. 

 

However, with the new DC umbilical I went up again to 0-1 gstp 2-7 with some nice results. So, I decided to go further than I had before and tried 0 gstp 1-7, giving the playback engine 7 cores. 

 

I don't know, if your system can handle it, the benefits to SQ are knocking me out. More dynamics, clarity, soundstage, definiteness, detail, and extension in the highs. gstp 2-7 also lost some 80KHz bass punch to gstp 3-7. gstp 1-7 retains low end as well. 

 

I've been watching temperatures, because 3 of the 4 physical cores have dropped in temp, but core 1 is now up and holding around 74 degrees. That's acceptable to me.

 

if you have a 8 core NUC can you test this and see what you think? Again, this is all system dependent, this wouldn't have worked a couple days ago. 

[kraftundkultur]

I have been looking at it, but I can't seem to find any information in the software description as regards how CPU isolation can be set up.

Could someone please demonstrate it with images how the CPU isolation of the registered Euphony Stylus can be configured and what needs to be put into the Expert Settings > CPU Isolation field?

 

 

I use the software in Roon Core + Stylus EP configuration with an Intel i7-9700T CPU.

I have 8 CPU cores at my disposal and I would like to allocate those cores.

 

I have set up the min - max CPU frequency and the SQ has dramatically improved, therefore I would like to perform further settings.

 

My motherboard is an ASUS ROG STRIX Z390-I itx.

Furthermore, as I have been reading the forum, it is not clear for me what settings need to be performed (what needs to be enabled) in the motherboard's UEFI in order to improve SQ under Euphony.

Does the Stylus need for the virtual cores to be enabled, is there anything that needs to be enabled or disabled in the CPU power management in the motherboard's UEFI, furthermore is there anything that needs to be set up anywhere else in order to improve SQ?

[edwardsean]

The first range of core numbers are for general processing of Euphony. Then comes stylus, and next Roon, HQP, etc. I don't use either so I forget the process names. However, once you hit apply, you'll get the screen that shows the processes and core assignments. Roon should be easy to identify. "gstp" is the actual playback processor and so, personally, I've found that giving it more cores is beneficial, up till the point it causes harshness. 

 

The image below is a good starting point. Along with some others, I haven't found isolating stylus did much and that devoting cores to gstp did a lot. So what I posted above (0 gstp 1-7) gives one core to everything including stylus and reserves 7 cores for gstp. This seems extreme to me even as I'm doing it so it may not work well in other systems.

 

Good luck and report back if you can!

 

 

 

 

[Randomrunner]

10 hours ago, kraftundkultur said:

I use the software in Roon Core + Stylus EP configuration with an Intel i7-9700T CPU.

I have 8 CPU cores at my disposal and I would like to allocate those cores.

 

I have set up the min - max CPU frequency and the SQ has dramatically improved, therefore I would like to perform further settings.

 

My motherboard is an ASUS ROG STRIX Z390-I itx.

 

Hi, can you share what min - max CPU frequency you used? I think I have the same motherboard as you do, my CPU is i9-9900K.  Best if you could share a screenshot, thanks!

[edwardsean]

Does anyone know if min frequency functions now?  I haven't found that it does.

[dminches]

8 hours ago, Randomrunner said:

Hi, can you share what min - max CPU frequency you used? I think I have the same motherboard as you do, my CPU is i9-9900K.  Best if you could share a screenshot, thanks!

 

What power supply are you using?  That is what really drives what max CPU frequency will work with your setup.  Before I got my Sean Jacobs DC4 I had to throttle the max frequency back.  After I added the SJ DC4 I didn't have to limit it.

 

[kraftundkultur]

15 hours ago, edwardsean said:

The first range of core numbers are for general processing of Euphony. Then comes stylus, and next Roon, HQP, etc. I don't use either so I forget the process names. However, once you hit apply, you'll get the screen that shows the processes and core assignments. Roon should be easy to identify. "gstp" is the actual playback processor and so, personally, I've found that giving it more cores is beneficial, up till the point it causes harshness. 

 

The image below is a good starting point. Along with some others, I haven't found isolating stylus did much and that devoting cores to gstp did a lot. So what I posted above (0 gstp 1-7) gives one core to everything including stylus and reserves 7 cores for gstp. This seems extreme to me even as I'm doing it so it may not work well in other systems.

 

Good luck and report back if you can!

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the information, I'll try it soon

[kraftundkultur]

15 hours ago, Randomrunner said:

Hi, can you share what min - max CPU frequency you used? I think I have the same motherboard as you do, my CPU is i9-9900K.  Best if you could share a screenshot, thanks!

 

of course

[edwardsean]

I put my min frequency up to 4000000 and Euphony shows the frequency dipping down below to 3.8-3.9GHz all the time. 

 

I'm not sure setting the min frequency does anything. 

 

 

[Anwar]

I started using Euphony with NUC715BNH and 19V LPSU, getting reasonably good sound with the help of iFi iSilencers and iFi Micro iUSB3.0 reclocker.  But the sound quality is still inferior compared to playback/rendering directly using my DAC/SACD player with discs or USB drive.

 

I don't need high-powered CPU as I don't upsample using HQPlayer but rather let the DAC handles that since my SA-10 upsamples all signals to DSD 4x.  The past week, I completed my DIY 2-rail LPSU using China-made R-core transformer (80W 230V AC in, 16V and 9V AC outs), 2 Sigma11 kits (China clone unassembled), and China-made PSU Alu enclosure.  I bought ASRock J4105-ITX low-powered fanless Celeron 4-core (10W TDP) and Samsung 8GB DDR4-2666 x 2 (but operates at 2400), and then put them inside Streacom FC7 Alpha enclosure, and prepared 1 small SSD for Euphony O/S and another 2TB Samsung EVO 860 SSD for music files.  Experimented with various accessories but settled with Elfidelity AXF-104 PCIe power filter and Elfidelity AXF-94 power filter for each SSD.  The 12V DC rail powers the ATX 24-pin power socket using 20-pin PicoPSU 90W.  The 5V DC rail powers both SSD.  Regular SATA data signal cables used.  Outside the Streacom FC7 Alpha, 1 iFi iSilencer is used where the DAC connection is made (J4105-ITX back USB2 port).  Curious USB is used into my DAC.

 

I played with different J4105 BIOS settings but settled with the following: Turbo Boost: OFF, SpeedStep: OFF, C-State: OFF.  With the Celeron J4105 only having 4 cores, I settled with "0-1 gstp 2 stylus 3" CPU isolation setting.

 

Wow, the SQ is so close to the SQ of my DAC's own rendering.  It even beats my Innuos ZENith Mk2.Std.  It surprises me as I don't need to spend crazy money on expensive USB reclocker.  To Euphony users who use low-powered NUC and don't do CPU intensive tasks such as HQPlayer but purely using Stylus only, this experience sharing is for you.

 

P/S: Elfidelity has newer PCIe power filter, AXF-107.  The one I used, AXF-104, is the older one.