Euphony OS w/Stylus player setup and issues thread

[biosailor]

I finally found out what the problem with my library and Euphony Stylus was! The file structure in my library was artist folder containing several albums of the same artist. While in other players, like Audirvana, such file structure worked without problems, but Euphony gets confused. I simply dragged the individual albums into Euphony, and so far it works without hiccups! One exception, though, is one album that gets stubbornly split into two. I do suspect a tagging problem with this album.

[dminches]

10 minutes ago, biosailor said:

I finally found out what the problem with my library and Euphony Stylus was! The file structure in my library was artist folder containing several albums of the same artist. While in other players, like Audirvana, such file structure worked without problems, but Euphony gets confused. I simply dragged the individual albums into Euphony, and so far it works without hiccups! One exception, though, is one album that gets stubbornly split into two. I do suspect a tagging problem with this album.

 

I am not sure why having multiple albums in a folder is an issue.  That’s how my entire music collection is organized.  I have a folder for each artist and within that folder I have folders for each album.  Euphony has no issues with that.

 

My only pet peeve is that if you have a CD1 and CD2 folder they will appear as separate albums even if all the tags are the same.

 

[biosailor]

17 minutes ago, dminches said:

 

I am not sure why having multiple albums in a folder is an issue.  That’s how my entire music collection is organized.  I have a folder for each artist and within that folder I have folders for each album.  Euphony has no issues with that.

 

My only pet peeve is that if you have a CD1 and CD2 folder they will appear as separate albums even if all the tags are the same.

 

 

I don't understand it either, as I used to have such a file structure before. But it's the only way I can get the library working. Mysterious!

[biosailor]

I give up! 
 

Now that I thought I had finally set my library up , I start Roon core it starts to mess up things badly!

 

In the attached file you see the second album from Harry Allen/Jan Lundgren ,Quietly There‘. Roon now supplies a cover with Chet BakerI have never seen nor do I have it any where in the library! When I click on it, the correct album appears, though.

 

Other albums are also affected: an album from Feenbrothers ,Play Dave Brubeck‘ is covered with the face of a Saxophon player, presumably Grover Washington, and Grant Green appears as Herbie Hancock!

 

I guess I am just too stupid for this sophisticated piece of software 🤔!

 

 

 

[biosailor]

Finally progress with Euphony Stylus! Certainly not wanting to leave this thread where it was in the end!

 

In my library, my files are ordered by artist folder, and the artist folder contains all albums of this particular artist (see SS0 attachment). Upon import into Euphony's music folder, many albums got split into two, mostly containing track 1 (attachment SS1), and all other tracks were split into a second album (attachment SS2). Such splitting never occurred when I pulled an individual album without being embedded in a higher order album artist folder. But, in my library, I have a number of albums entitled 'Ballads' from various artists, which without artist association would cause problems in tracing the album to the artist.

 

In the information tab of the split albums, I noticed that either of the two had Artist and Album Artist annotated identically (SS3), but the second had Various Artists annotated in the Album Artist entry (SS4)! Correcting Various Artitst to the same name as Album Artis made the splitting disappear (SS5).

 

I opened a ticket with Euphony concerning this issue and Zeljko suggested going to the Album folder in Files View and clicking the blue DB icon while holding CTRL key (option key for Mac, see SS6). I tried this, but it made things worse. So eventually, I had to go manually through a large number of albums to correct the Album Artist.

 

Why this happens in the first place, I have no idea. All albums had been correctly tagged in MusicBrainz Picard.

 

Let's see how stable the library is. Once I reached a stable library, I see if this nasty Roon mix up re-occurs. But I tackle step-by-step and I am satisfied that I reached at least this level!

[dminches]

3 hours ago, biosailor said:

 

Let's see how stable the library is. Once I reached a stable library, I see if this nasty Roon mix up re-occurs. But I tackle step-by-step and I am satisfied that I reached at least this level!

 

 

For what it's worth, there are many ways to configure Roon with respect to how it process your library.  You may have some "bad" Roon setting which is making decisions about your library that are contrary to what you want.  It isn't as though there is only 1 Roon approach.

 

In the end, Euphony will sort your music based on the tags.  In many ways it is much simpler than Roon which tries to apply its own view of your music into the library view.

 

[biosailor]

4 hours ago, dminches said:

 

For what it's worth, there are many ways to configure Roon with respect to how it process your library.  You may have some "bad" Roon setting which is making decisions about your library that are contrary to what you want.  It isn't as though there is only 1 Roon approach.

 

In the end, Euphony will sort your music based on the tags.  In many ways it is much simpler than Roon which tries to apply its own view of your music into the library view.

 

I learned a lot while fixing my library Euphony Stylus! In the end, it turned out to be quite simple, once you know where to look! 
 

Euphony‘s library management reminds me a bit of Audirvana, relatively simple and efficient. 
 

Roon, I agree, overdoes it regarding library management!

 

I just bought a full Euphony license and I am very satisfied now. But it took some learning to get there 😅.

[maxst67]

Hi, I have a self-assembled PC with Gigabyte z390 mini itx mobo, which can host 2 m2 ssd, on one, Intel Optane, I installed Euphony and I have an ssd connected via sata for music: it would make sense, for how it is structured Euphony, take an m2 ssd and install it in the second slot for the music files? Would there be a sonic improvement as this would eliminate the sata cable? thanks

[stefano_mbp]

If you load in ram the full album/playlist (you can configure it to do it by default) I think it could be useless .... btw .... you can configure Euphony/Stulus to run in ram too, in this way you’ll minimize I/O 

[maxst67]

Thanks Stefano for the answer, I was asking because many on the net, more experienced than me, assert that the quality of the sata cable is decisive even in cases where it reproduces from ram, because (this seems to be the reason) the transfer in ram always takes place via sata cable. Hence my question is whether it would be better to have the shortest route possible for the transfer

[biosailor]

In the meantime, I managed to solve the problem of mixed-up covers when running Roon Core in Euphony. In > Settings > Setup, I needed to Clear Cache, and in the Settings > Library > Import Settings I changed Metadata preferences for albums to 'Prefer Roon' (see attachments). I don't always get the same album covers as in my library, but at least there's no mixing up of the covers. 
 

All is good now! Next project is setting up a NUC or similar!

 

 

[Joerg D]

Hello
I like Stylus because I like the sound very much. Actually I listen with Roon. But now I want to get to know Stylus better and I have some questions about how to use it.
It would be nice if you could help me.
How do I assign tags to songs and how do I create playlists and assign playlists to songs?
Does it matter whether I select in the setting that the music is loaded 100% into the memory or whether I select the function 
"Buffer queue to Ram " ?

Thanks for your help

Joerg
 

[ASRMichael]

36 minutes ago, Joerg D said:

Hello
I like Stylus because I like the sound very much. Actually I listen with Roon. But now I want to get to know Stylus better and I have some questions about how to use it.
It would be nice if you could help me.
How do I assign tags to songs and how do I create playlists and assign playlists to songs?
Does it matter whether I select in the setting that the music is loaded 100% into the memory or whether I select the function 
"Buffer queue to Ram " ?

Thanks for your help

Joerg
 

http://audiokernel.com/EuphonyGuide.pdf
 

The link has all tye answers you will need

[biosailor]

2 hours ago, Joerg D said:

Hello
I like Stylus because I like the sound very much. Actually I listen with Roon. But now I want to get to know Stylus better and I have some questions about how to use it.
It would be nice if you could help me.
How do I assign tags to songs and how do I create playlists and assign playlists to songs?
Does it matter whether I select in the setting that the music is loaded 100% into the memory or whether I select the function 
"Buffer queue to Ram " ?

Thanks for your help

Joerg
 

 

I find that Euphony manual pretty awkward, and I'd appreciate too if the community here would help beginners by communicating their experience they gained by setting it up.

 

I myself had a hard time to get things going and for the moment I am using it for running Roon. That's the simplest setup, at least for me.

 

Here's just a bit of what I gained to answer your questions:

 

Assigning tags can be done in the album info. If memory serves me well, an album has three dots in the upper right corner. If you click on them, you get to the album info. In the album info you can change tags the way you like by clicking on the editing menu. See also my post from Saturday 23rd Jan.

 

I checked 100% buffering of music in the settings menu, but I haven't used Buffer queue to Ram (and I probably won't).

 

The people at Euphony Audio are very responsive, so you can also contact them, or open a ticket should you run into problems.

 

I keep my fingers crossed!

[ASRMichael]

2 hours ago, Joerg D said:

Hello
I like Stylus because I like the sound very much. Actually I listen with Roon. But now I want to get to know Stylus better and I have some questions about how to use it.
It would be nice if you could help me.
How do I assign tags to songs and how do I create playlists and assign playlists to songs?
Does it matter whether I select in the setting that the music is loaded 100% into the memory or whether I select the function 
"Buffer queue to Ram " ?

Thanks for your help

Joerg
 

I and many users use ramroot! It improves SQ, also buffering. Try it for yourself mind you. 

[TheAttorney]

18 hours ago, Joerg D said:

Does it matter whether I select in the setting that the music is loaded 100% into the memory or whether I select the function 
"Buffer queue to Ram " ?

 

Best to always select "Buffer before play=100%" to load the current track into RAM before play starts (and also loads next track for gapless switchover).

The "Buffer albums added to queue" is an extension of the above and buffers the whole album(s) into RAM (up until the RAM becomes nearly full). Some report that this further improves SQ, I haven't noticed that so much. Both these options apply to local music files (streamed files from Qobuz etc only buffer current and next tracks).

 

As has been mentioned, I and some others think that the biggest single SQ boost you can do is to enable ramroot, which loads the entire Euphony operating system and Stylus player into memory, which means that disc I/O is greatly reduced. This is in Expert Settings and I don't think it's described in the user guide. Boot time is obviously increased with ramroot, but it's worth it.

 

There are other SQ-boosting options in System -> Expert Settings, which requires further explanation, but first get ramroot going.

 

 

[biosailor]

5 minutes ago, TheAttorney said:

Best to always select "Buffer before play=100%" to load the current track into RAM before play starts (and also loads next track for gapless switchover).

The "Buffer albums added to queue" is an extension of the above and buffers the whole album(s) into RAM (up until the RAM becomes nearly full). Some report that this further improves SQ, I haven't noticed that so much. Both these options apply to local music files (streamed files from Qobuz etc only buffer current and next tracks).

 

As has been mentioned, I and some others think that the biggest single SQ boost you can do is to enable ramroot, which loads the entire Euphony operating system and Stylus player into memory, which means that disc I/O is greatly reduced. This is in Expert Settings and I don't think it's described in the user guide. Boot time is obviously increased with ramroot, but it's worth it.

 

There are other SQ-boosting options in System -> Expert Settings, which requires further explanation, but first get ramroot going.

 

 

 

Good explanation, thanks!

[kraftundkultur]

I have a question.

In expert mode, what to set in the ethtool command line params?

So far I have not seen a dissertation on this here

 

 

[austinpop]

8 minutes ago, kraftundkultur said:

I have a question.

In expert mode, what to set in the ethtool command line params?

So far I have not seen a dissertation on this here

 

 

 

Search back on this thread. Use the search function on the top of the screen, and limit the search to "this topic."

 

Remember, these are expert settings, so there is no need to use them unless you a) have a specialized need, and b) know what you're doing. In this case, you need to know enough about the use of the Linux ethtool command to use this safely. In the past, when I was a Euphony OS user, I've used this to:

1. override auto negotiation, to force the interface down to 100Mbps: eth1 speed 100 duplex full autoneg off
2. override EEE during the early months of the etherRegen, when this was an issue being resolved: --set-eee eth1 eee off

"Normal" users don't need to (and shouldn't) mess with this, as you could lose connectivity!

[Chopin75]

On 1/24/2021 at 1:31 PM, Joerg D said:

Hello
I like Stylus because I like the sound very much. Actually I listen with Roon. But now I want to get to know Stylus better and I have some questions about how to use it.
It would be nice if you could help me.
How do I assign tags to songs and how do I create playlists and assign playlists to songs?
Does it matter whether I select in the setting that the music is loaded 100% into the memory or whether I select the function 
"Buffer queue to Ram " ?

Thanks for your help

Joerg
 

THe 100% into memory I think you mean the 100%. buffer. ? It loads a single track entirely before playback. The Buffer queue loads entire album(s) to the RAM before being played. 100% buffer appears most important, recommended to use at all times unless u have very little RAM to work on.  The   Buffer. queue I. find only. useful for huge files, like. DSD/DXD. It means while you play the entire album, there won't be further loading of files into the RAM. ssh can improve the. sound. I does make a. little difference but for small files like PCM 24/96, not really a lot of difference. It is a nice feature so u feel better psychologically, haha. BTW, you need good quality RAM chips to do anything like this as. the RAM becomes more important, esp if you run RAMroot. ON crappy RAM, the RAMroot mode sounds worse or not any better,  

[biosailor]

So, in regards to buffering, once that option is ticked, does this also hold for Euphony running Roon Core? There's this discussion over at Roon Labs Community asking for implementation of buffering tracks before playing them, just as Audirvana does.

 

Also, has anyone compared SQ between Stylus and Euphony running Roon Core? Is there an audible difference?

[davide256]

5 hours ago, biosailor said:

So, in regards to buffering, once that option is ticked, does this also hold for Euphony running Roon Core? There's this discussion over at Roon Labs Community asking for implementation of buffering tracks before playing them, just as Audirvana does.

 

Also, has anyone compared SQ between Stylus and Euphony running Roon Core? Is there an audible difference?

Buffering only seems to happen when Stylus is the active server.  I didn't renew Roon this year, it didn't match the clarity and midrange timbre integrity of Stylus

under A/B comparison using Euphony, found the only time I was using Roon was if I was curious about discography and related music

[walloon]

25 minutes ago, davide256 said:

under A/B comparison using Euphony, found the only time I was using Roon was if I was curious about discography and related music

 

I agree. Currently testing Roon using the free trial period. Library management and music info are great but is it worth the price? Not sure if I will go for the 1 year licence. Still 7 days left to consider.

[Speedy381]

26 minutes ago, davide256 said:

I didn't renew Roon this year, it didn't match the clarity and midrange timbre integrity of Stylus

under A/B comparison 

Nailed it,  good description and exactly how I feel 

[davide256]

13 hours ago, Chopin75 said:

THe 100% into memory I think you mean the 100%. buffer. ? It loads a single track entirely before playback. The Buffer queue loads entire album(s) to the RAM before being played. 100% buffer appears most important, recommended to use at all times unless u have very little RAM to work on.  The   Buffer. queue I. find only. useful for huge files, like. DSD/DXD. It means while you play the entire album, there won't be further loading of files into the RAM. ssh can improve the. sound. I does make a. little difference but for small files like PCM 24/96, not really a lot of difference. It is a nice feature so u feel better psychologically, haha. BTW, you need good quality RAM chips to do anything like this as. the RAM becomes more important, esp if you run RAMroot. ON crappy RAM, the RAMroot mode sounds worse or not any better,  

Still trying to get some Apacer RAM for NUC8i7 to replace the Crucial memory I have but looks like COVID has shut down shipments to US?  Only seems to show up

in weird places where I don't trust shippers/customs.