ALLO USBridge Signature

[Richard Dale]

2 minutes ago, dkskl said:

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Posted October 23

Reposting my question from a couple of months ago, hoping someone will be able to answer 🙂

 

 

Hi all!

 

A little on the fence here.

I am really tempted to hit the buy button, but I have a question to you experts first.

 

My plan is to use a WLAN Raspberry Pi 4 as a LMS server and connect it to a PiCorePlayer driven USBridge Sig / Digione Sig with a short ethernet cable.

 

So. Is it possible to reach the PCP OS through the Rpi/LMS/ethernet cable?

Wired connection is not a possibility for me as of now.

 

Thanks in advance.

I'm not clear what you question is. You say you would like to reach PCP running on an Allo Signature via an ethernet cable from LMS running on a Rasberry Pi via ethernet cable. But then you say "Wired connection is not a possibility for me as of now". Do you mean you want to connect the machines via WiFi? If so there is a USB slot in the front of the Allo that you could use for a WiFi dongle.

[Richard Dale]

17 minutes ago, dkskl said:

Yes. I want to connect the RPI/LMS via WIFI and then connect the RPI to the USBridge via ethernet cable.

My only concern is, if I will be able to reach the PCP OS insalled on the USBridge for setting/updates, if I connect the devices like this 🙂

 

You would need to give the LMS Pi and PCP Pi static addresses of something like 10.0.0.1 and 10.0.0.2 with a netmask of 255.255.255.0 and it should just work. But you wouldn't be able to access the internet from the USBridge Pi. If it is only for occasional OS updates, it might be easiest to temporarily move the USBridge near your router and connect with an ethernet cable to do the updates. Alternatively, you could use a WiFi USB dongle on the front USB port to connect to the internet. You would need to run Samba or NFS with the ethernet cable IP address of the LMS of '10.0.0.1' on the USBridge.

 

 

[Richard Dale]

16 minutes ago, dkskl said:

Thanks Richard, but you lost me there 😄

I know next to nothing about handling IP addresses and all things related.

 

But you're right, I could just move the USBridge and connect it to my router for the occasional update.

 

I do run Samba on my present Allo Digione Signature.

I would personally just try running the USBridge with a WiFi dongle so it would be on the same LAN as your router and LMS machine, and not bother with the ethernet cable. The Volumio team believe that a WiFi connection sounds better than wired ethernet AFAIK, and so the sound may even be better with a WiFi connection or at least the same as wired.

[Richard Dale]

2 minutes ago, dkskl said:

Hmm. I'm quite sure Allo do not recommend wireless when using the USBridge as an endpoint if best possible sound quality is wanted. Hence my "alternative" set up wish, where network connection is only needed to control LMS (and updating PCP).

 

I believed it would be pretty much plug and play. But if it's not, I guess I'll have to put a purchase on stand by and find time to run some in-wall ethernet cables. Sadly it won't be in the near future though.

 

See if I can find some info about wifi dongles an sound quality further back in the thread..

 

Thanks Richard.

You can connect the LMS and USBridge with a wired ethernet connection use it just for Samba access to the files on the LMS using IP address 10.0.0.1. Then have a WiFi dongle on the USBridge that is just used to access the MPD or Squeezelite player in the USBridge to control which tracks you want to play via an ordinary address on your LAN such as 192.168.1.23. That way the LMS server would work like it was a local hard disk, although over Samba while the WiFi connection over the dongle controlled what was being played.

[Richard Dale]

1 minute ago, dkskl said:

That would be way to complicated for me 😉 My skills are not even rudimentary.

It’s not complicated, only that I might not have explained it in a clear enough manner. I see no reason to hold off buying a USBridge if the only problem is doing what I just suggested - there are a large number of people who can help with setting up Raspberry Pis and help you get the configuration going.

[Richard Dale]

2 minutes ago, clipper said:

Good to know...  Thanks.

 

The default setting (with at least the 2 versions of piCorePlayer that I tried) is definitely ondemand.

The slower the processor is running, the less noise there is as far as I know. The default in moODe is on demand and I’ll leave it at that, unless I have clicks and pops problems that might indicate that the processor isn’t keeping up. Is the maximum frequency for the performance governor the as for on demand?

[Richard Dale]

9 hours ago, nbpf said:

The min. amd max. frequencies can be set for all governors. Avoiding max. frequencies is one of the reasons why one should not use the ondemand governor. The problem with ondemand frequency scaling is that, under varying load, the CPU frequency is constantly changing between min. and max. All basic setups for dedicated audio applications suggest to avoid this. On certain CPUs, frequency scaling can even be heard as acoustic noise, perhaps induced by thermal effects. I am travelling at the moment and I have little time to look for references. But if you remind me in a few days I should be able to provide pointers to web pages with the basics of OS settings for audio applications. The simplest way to avoid frequency scaling on RPi devices is via config.txt, see     

 

Thanks. I’ve done some searching and can’t find anyone who prefers the on demand governor for audio use, so I’ve set the moOde governor config option to performance on my USBridge.

[Richard Dale]

19 minutes ago, Mycenius said:

Richard - I think @nbpf was recommending you do it in the config file - rather than that GUI setting. Did you see the link he embedded in his post to an older post which has some suggested settings in it? See the linked post embedded in the quote below:

 

Maybe in other systems you need to change it via the config file, but in moOde you do it via the GUI. Here is my system after changing the GUI option:

 

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu*/cpufreq/scaling_governor

performance

performance

performance

performance

[Richard Dale]

1 minute ago, Mycenius said:

  

Cool. Where is that setting the frequency @Richard? Guess it's just not showing in your post?

The default moOde values are a maximum of 1200 and minimum of 600, and so with the performance govenor it will be at a constant 1200.

 

pi@klipsch:/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu3/cpufreq $ cat cpuinfo_max_freq

1200000

pi@klipsch:/sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu3/cpufreq $ cat cpuinfo_min_freq

600000

[Richard Dale]

30 minutes ago, jram said:

The new ASIX AX88179_178A driver v2.0.0 integrated in Gentooplayer last kernels seems to solve all the clics/pops problems. Thanks @antonelloaroli !!!

Is this driver a proper fix for the upstream Linux driver that uses usbnet? I ask because there was a previous release of a driver that looked like old pre-usbnet code that never could be upstreamed.