Euphony OS w/Stylus player setup and issues thread

[Chopin75]

9 hours ago, Speedy381 said:

I've listened quite a lot since the update (s). I did think I heard a difference in the bottom end; more emphasis and more rounded perhaps.

But nothing like the change that disconnecting the network has made. Tonight I sat through a Jeffrey Foucault album on buffer and network disconnected in Expert. I  really enjoyed it, but it wasn't until I listened to a track again with network connected and wondered what had happened. I had to do the Expert disconnect again for that track and sure enough, a real change to detail, air and tone. What's that all about?

 

IT also depends on your DAC, I have   a cheap $250 DAC. and I can tell a clear difference if load all buffered tracks and then pulled out the Ethernet cable with immediate improvement. But the other $3000 DAC, well, not sure if I can hear much difference, The cheap DAC has no or poor reclocking but obviously the $3000 has a dedicated clock just for reclock at the USB input. 

[Speedy381]

1 hour ago, Chopin75 said:

IT also depends on your DAC, I have   a cheap $250 DAC. and I can tell a clear difference if load all buffered tracks and then pulled out the Ethernet cable with immediate improvement. But the other $3000 DAC, well, not sure if I can hear much difference, The cheap DAC has no or poor reclocking but obviously the $3000 has a dedicated clock just for reclock at the USB input. 

Maybe the DAC has something to do with it, but I feel it's more likely to be the server. My system is a NUC 10 i7, with Euphony on an Optane M2 drive, feeding a linear ps'd Matrix by USB into i2s on PSAudio Directstream DAC. The music is on a USB connected external hard drive. 

The difference is very obvious; the Matrix in the chain was a good change, this is again something I don't want to miss. Despite the inability to skip, add or stop play, so far it is worth it.

[Lukasluis]

3 hours ago, NanoSword said:

Finally, Very happy my wife always adds a small router to improve the wireless signal but this step makes me hate my system. This small router causes poor sound quality.I disconnect the network cable every time so that the sound is not affected, but now there is a solution without moving my lazy ass while I am drinking coffee and listening to the music .

 

Sometimes the coffee I drink improves the soundstage and the details I think caffeine works better than this little router.

Alcohol works the best! 

[TheAttorney]

4 hours ago, Chopin75 said:

Well, I just tried after the latest update, the entire Euphony is offline, and it is supposed to switch back on after a set amount of time ? The default is 206, so it means 206 min ?

 

You get more info on this new feature if you hover over the ? symbol. It's the number of minutes that Euphony has calculated to play whatever is in the buffered queue. If you subsequently change your mind and want to gain control earlier, then the only action is to physically reboot the server, which is not recommended because such an immediate hard stop could cause problems - so only to be used as last resort.

 

I'm intrigued that this function seems to work for wifi as well as ethernet. I use my NUC's stock wifi card for all networking - primarily for convenience and for a complete reduction of router-based spaghetti. The wifi may well have an impact on SQ, but after a year of use, I don't think it's a major impact. I'm aiming to find out later today - fingers crossed that this new function does work and that the wifi comes back after the designated number of minutes.

[ASRMichael]

Today I’ve listened to 5 full albums! Which is very rare! Thoroughly enjoyed it! No itch either to change track because would have to reboot! 
 

 

[TheAttorney]

4 hours ago, TheAttorney said:

I'm intrigued that this function seems to work for wifi as well as ethernet.

Željko has informed me that wifi won't automatically reconnect when the play queue completes, so I won't be trying this for now. Maybe will be implemented in a future release.

[austinpop]

You need a safe word. 

 

Maybe Željko can recognize an event — like one press on power button — to abort and re-enable the network interface(s).

[bos3812]

I tried the new knob "Go: Euphony: Roon Core & Stylus EP" but nothing happened. The little wheel keeps spinning. It's not totally clear to me what's the function of this knob. I presumed it's to change quickly between Roon and Stylus alone but I am not sure. Has someone tried it with succes?

[Holzohr]

1 hour ago, bos3812 said:

I tried the new knob "Go: Euphony: Roon Core & Stylus EP" but nothing happened. The little wheel keeps spinning. It's not totally clear to me what's the function of this knob. I presumed it's to change quickly between Roon and Stylus alone but I am not sure. Has someone tried it with succes?

 

I have two Euphony NUCs and can switch the web interface between them by this feature. Also nice that I can shutdown both at once now.

[bos3812]

Hi Holzohr,

 

thanks for your answer. It's clear to me now.

[flkin]

22 hours ago, ASRMichael said:

Today I’ve listened to 5 full albums! Which is very rare! Thoroughly enjoyed it! No itch either to change track because would have to reboot! 
 

 

Yes, here’s something to be said for a forced sit thorough of the playlist.
 

It’s a whole different experience from flicking through tracks made available with remote controls. A slower and deeper experience of music. Especially with a good drink 😄

[TheAttorney]

On 1/9/2021 at 5:13 PM, TheAttorney said:

Željko has informed me that wifi won't automatically reconnect when the play queue completes, so I won't be trying this for now. Maybe will be implemented in a future release.

Seems that Željko never rests. Yesterday he RC'd in to add the final step to enable wifi reconnection.

The good news is that it works very well. near the end of the last song in the queue, wifi kicks in again and everything back to normal. I expect wifi support will be formally added to next release for the minority who use this feature.

 

The better news, for me, is that I couldn't reliably tell the difference between wifi enabled of disabled. Which could be due to:

a. My system or ears aren't resolving enough

b. Wishful thinking because I find wifi networking to be so convenient

c. On my particular NUC configuration, Euphony Stylus does a great job of minimising the impact of built-in wifi - to the point I can stop worrying about it and worry about more productive things instead.

 

I've chosen to believe "c" because of "b". In which case, maybe others with similar set-ups may find they can stop fussing over super switches, super clocks and super ethernet cables, and just enable their NUC's built-in wifi? 🙂

 

On 1/9/2021 at 11:38 PM, austinpop said:

You need a safe word. 

Maybe Željko can recognize an event — like one press on power button — to abort and re-enable the network interface(s).

This awakened my latent s/w designer tendency 🙂.

If this new network-disable feature is primarily for occasional testing to get a baseline reference point, then the current interface works fine. But if users will continue to use this long term to listen to music, then something like the following would be better:

 

When the network is disabled, instead of "Euphony is offline" being displayed, you see "Euphony is playing offline - press [special key] to interrupt". The special key sets a flag on the browser. Meanwhile, the server will, every 5 minutes, briefly reconnect the network just to check flag status and then fully reconnects if flag requests it. Which means that if you change your mind after loading 20 albums, you have to wait no longer than 5 minutes, or configurable time, to regain control.

 

There may be browser limitations that mean it can't be done exactly as above, but I'm sure something equivalent could be achieved by clever people. I'm just the ideas man...

[ASRMichael]

Great work by Zeljko. Only request I have is instead of going to Expert menu to press play. You tick box in expert menu accepting this feature. Then when you load albums & press play it does it automatically. 

[flkin]

A lot of great suggestions above. Once connection is lost with streamer, how about a countdown timer showing minutes till online instead of the usual “Euphony is offline” message.
 

Alongside the switch back on button in X seconds @TheAttorney. I think a minute is ok, 5 might be a touch too long?

[flkin]

Or even return online after current track is finished rather than a set time. 
 

 

[TheAttorney]

1 hour ago, flkin said:

Or even return online after current track is finished rather than a set time. 
 

I considered that, but then thought about the classical works that have lots of short tracks, causing network to keep switching in/out, and the prog rock tracks that last half an hour. I would expect the duration parameter to be configurable. So that purists (suckers for punishment) could choose a longer duration and realists choose shorter.

 

As an aside, I've been trialing Qobuz for a couple of months and have been delighted with the SQ - broadly as good as local files.

And also pleasantly surprised with Qobuz/Stylus integration. It's not as fully integrated as with Roon as you might expect, but it's more than usable in its own way, particularly if you make full use of Qobuz "favourites" function.

[ASRMichael]

I agree, each track is not worth it. I don’t think people would use it. It probably takes 30 seconds to come back online, depending on network config, people will be checking the app ever few seconds to see if back online.
 

I’m being selfish here but being able to play, sit back & enjoy is probably the best part for me! 
 

If not I’ll need to handcuff myself to stop changing tracks! 😂

[Speedy381]

I'm reasonably happy with the network switch off as it is, just remember not to have too long a playlist if you may want to change style. 

It would be slightly more convenient to have the button a bit nearer the control interface.

Back to vinyl type listening to an album, it's not all bad. Especially as I don't have to get up to change the record over. I have a very nice vinyl replay front end, but I must be lazy as 15 to 20 minutes is not enough time to relax

[Dev]

Have anybody using Euphony with 10th Intel CPU and motherboard with Z490 chipset successfully ?

 

I recently build a server with i9-10900k and Asus ROG motherboard and am having a bit of trouble. As soon as Euphony boots, it resets and reboots. I have noticed this behavior whenever hyperthreading and turbo is enabled in the Bios. If one of them is disabled, it boots fine. I am wondering if the Euphony kernel has all the support for the Comet Lake cpus and z490 chipset ? 

[ASRMichael]

I had this issue, wasn’t related to Euphony. What PSU you using? On start-up there’s a big power draw. I think your PSU doesn’t have enough power. 
 

Sean Jacobs had to put higher spec transformer in to cope with 5.0ghz settings. 
 

It booted fine on non turbo. 

[Dev]

3 minutes ago, ASRMichael said:

I had this issue, wasn’t related to Euphony. What PSU you using? On start-up there’s a big power draw. I think your PSU doesn’t have enough power. 
 

Sean Jacobs had to put higher spec transformer in to cope with 5.0ghz settings. 
 

It booted fine on non turbo. 

 

I am using a DIY SJ DC3 with a separate 12v rail for the CPU EPS.

 

I should have written some more details - it boots fine from USB with both HT and Turbo enabled. As soon as I install it on the Optane drive and boot off it, I start seeing this issue.

 

My previous build was a Xeon E-2278G which Turbos to 5Ghz and the same power supply works fine.

 

Thinking it could be an Optane issue, I tried different Optane but landed up in the same issue. For experiment I installed Roon Rock on Optane and it works just fine. On a side note, I haven't tried Rock in a while and listening to it this weekend and found to actually sound very very good - better than Euphony in my setup.  

 

To top this over, Euphony support, for the first time has been very disappointing...after finger pointing and going back and forth, they clearly told me that they have no desire to solve this and closed the ticket...Sigh!
 

[ASRMichael]

What happens if you set CPU in Bios to 4.5ghz? If it boots then change to 5.0ghz in Euphony settings. Obviously doesn’t resolve the issue but still gets you there.

[Dev]

I haven’t found an easy way to tinker with the Bios to set CPU frequency. There are loads of advance OC tweaks in the Bios through which it can probably be done but I need to wade through it. The motherboard manual does even talk about them :-)

[Dev]

There is another issue with Euphony - pop sound with sample rate change. I tried two different DACs with different USB receiver (XMOS and JLSound). Both of them have the same issue. The pop is very prominent when you click on the next track which happens to be of a different sample rate than the one that is currently playing. For example, if I am playing 44.1K and I click next in the middle of it, if the next track is 48K, it would pop loudly. When transitioning to next track as a result of current track finishing, its not so evident. I filed a ticket but they left in hanging saying its a DAC issue. I am wondering if anyone else has this issue as well ?

[dminches]

1 hour ago, Dev said:

There is another issue with Euphony - pop sound with sample rate change. I tried two different DACs with different USB receiver (XMOS and JLSound). Both of them have the same issue. The pop is very prominent when you click on the next track which happens to be of a different sample rate than the one that is currently playing. For example, if I am playing 44.1K and I click next in the middle of it, if the next track is 48K, it would pop loudly. When transitioning to next track as a result of current track finishing, its not so evident. I filed a ticket but they left in hanging saying its a DAC issue. I am wondering if anyone else has this issue as well ?

 

I was playing a 16/44.1 file and then went to a 16/48 file.  No click.

 

My experience has been that this is always the DAC.  One of my DACs doesn’t like changes in sampling frequency.  I don’t get a pop but I have to cycle through the inputs to get it to re-lock on the signal.