Pi 2 Design Mercury Streamer

[Powerman]

OK, so Gentooplayer was a little more than I bargained for. I see why Mike used Volumio. One solution OS, to play from drive, and stream services. I'm not even sure what to call gentoo... Is it an OS? Volumio is an OS, but also renderer, and controller... Am I using right terms?

 

I certainly see the power of gentoo allowing the configuration of what... Everything? I guess what I am missing is "RP4 music player/streamer/server for dummies". Does anyone have a good article/tutorial to read? I found one that tried to explain big picture, I looked for more, but nothing. It's one thing to follow a command to execute... It's a whole other thing to know why. It's even harder to ask good questions when you don't even know proper terminology.

[congofather]

If you want to get best from RPi4-based audio streamers, you should have at least high-level knowlege about streaming, audio network etc.

 

If you do not have any knowledge about anything, you had better buy commercial audio streamers like Lumin/Nucleus etc. Another thing you may try is to get support, consultancy from someone and let your system be prepared and get ready to use for you.

 

Even though you choose the most easy Audio OS for RPI4 based streamers, at some time you will probably need to do some technical knowledge to fix/update the system.If you do not know  anything about scripting, network, streaming, it will be difficult for you in the future to manage such a system.

 

Gentooplayer is also an operating system based on linux(gentoo linux distribution). It is customized for audio processing. 

 

Start by using RopieeXL or VolumIO. When you feel you have more knowledge, at least high-level overview, about how the system works generally, then you can try other operating systems like Gentooplayer etc.

 

When I start testing Mercury streamer(I am one of the early beta users), I do not have any knowledge/information about Raspberry PIs etc. I just knew that customized linux-based operating systems can be run on that hardware.But I already have deep knowledge about scripting, network setup, streaming(bit-perfect vs down/up-sampling etc), effect of jitter in such systems, effect of power sources in such systems, signal processing, operating systems, softwares, caching, memory management etc. as I am working as a software architect professionally. Therefore, in almost 3 -4 weeks, I had a chance to try and test most of the important OSs for Mercury.

 

I advise you to understand the main idea/logic at every step you try to do or you are told to do. Don't do it just because it is said so. Try to understand at each step why you do it.Try to make logical connections/correlations with what you have already known when you learn new things. It may seem difficult and may take a significant amount time. But you'll feel better by time and make the right decisions by making less mistakes than before. During that time start with simpler systems and move further step by step.

[Powerman]

I completely agree... I'm not the do it cause somebody said so kind of guy. It's pretty clear that all of this stuff assumes a certain level of detail is filled in by previous knowledge. I can figure most things out, but this has a steep curve.

 

Big picture is I have no interest in a whole new computer programming hobby... But since all my music is digital, I do want the best audio I can get, so here I am. Volumio is pretty easy, and I can throw the card back in, but I am willing to learn, if I can find some good resources.

[bobfa]

1 hour ago, Powerman said:

I guess what I am missing is "RP4 music player/streamer/server for dummies"

There have been a lot of words on this thread since it started.  These are the most salient.  I could not agree more.  Yet in a sense working within the confines of the premise of the Mercury I think that Volumio delivers on 90% of the promise and I am sure that Michael will eventually get the 10% done.  Michael is also relying on Volumio to work properly.  My main example of that is network discovery of local shares, which may seem simple but in fact is getting more complex due to changing information security setting and software in network devices.    Volumio may be a bit slow in addressing some of these issues.

 

Some folks may take exception to the way the Volumio OS is delivered and the fact that some of their features are subscription based,  I get that also. 

 

Now for that last 10%.  I think the main problem is the use of the internal NVME port on the streamer.  I know that there are some complexities there that are not shall we say easy.  I hope that this will come soon if/when Michael starts shipping with internal drive supplied.  The Question for Michael is how do I install and use the NVME drive with the supplied OS. Is Volumio well documented, I would say better than some and worse than others.  Michael is relying on them for "support of the OS"!

 

If we choose to play games with OS variants not supplied with the device then we are on our own!  

 

None of this takes away the fact that we have a very fine piece of hardware here that is marred by documentation, training and software.

 

 

Bob

 

 

 

 

 

[Powerman]

2 hours ago, bobfa said:

There have been a lot of words on this thread since it started.  These are the most salient.  I could not agree more.  Yet in a sense working within the confines of the premise of the Mercury I think that Volumio delivers on 90% of the promise and I am sure that Michael will eventually get the 10% done.  Michael is also relying on Volumio to work properly.  My main example of that is network discovery of local shares, which may seem simple but in fact is getting more complex due to changing information security setting and software in network devices.    Volumio may be a bit slow in addressing some of these issues.

 

Some folks may take exception to the way the Volumio OS is delivered and the fact that some of their features are subscription based,  I get that also. 

 

Now for that last 10%.  I think the main problem is the use of the internal NVME port on the streamer.  I know that there are some complexities there that are not shall we say easy.  I hope that this will come soon if/when Michael starts shipping with internal drive supplied.  The Question for Michael is how do I install and use the NVME drive with the supplied OS. Is Volumio well documented, I would say better than some and worse than others.  Michael is relying on them for "support of the OS"!

 

If we choose to play games with OS variants not supplied with the device then we are on our own!  

 

None of this takes away the fact that we have a very fine piece of hardware here that is marred by documentation, training and software.

 

 

Bob

 

 

 

 

 

Ha... So Mike does Pi2aes.... Then develops Mercury for those that want less DIY and more plug n play... Which is exactly why I got it. (and for a drive) . I get it... And promptly jump into DIY. 😜

 

The Mercury itself is an upgrade in SQ from other budget streamers. It is packaged well with good features, and Volumio is more than enough for most. I pay for roon too. So it is everything Mike intended, and a worthwhile solution. The fact you can go far beyond that is a plus. I will play with gentoo, and if it's not worth it, I will happily go back to volumio and call it good. I'm glad I got it, but the vast majority just want a box and download an app... Which is what I did, but now I'm here. 😁

[blippio]

On 7/10/2022 at 4:49 PM, Superdad said:

Since the Roon Core has to be on another machine on the network, using Roon to play files stored on a drive in the Mercury is not beneficial since Roon Core has to fetch the files from the drive—and then send them back to the Mercury to be played (by either RoonBridge or Sqeezelite).  You are doubling the network traffic out and in of the Mercury.

 

The internal storage only makes sense to use if either the entire server/endpoint is on the Mercury (e.g. LMS/Squeezlite, but I personally don’t like the SQ of LMS on the Mercury—and I am not alone in that), or if the architecture of the s/w is such that the endpoint directly retrieves the tracks.

Does this mean there is no way to play local files on the Mercury (specifically on the NVME M.2 drive) when using a Roon control (with an iPad etc) and without the penalty of “doubling the network traffic”? How can I get the sonic benefits of playing files locally from the Mercury M.2 ssd drive while being controlled by Roon? Can’t Roon see a “watched folder” on a network? why can’t that folder be the Mercury’s M.2 drive?

 

Apologies if I’m missing something as I’m a bit new to Roon and I’m anticipating on receiving my Mercury next week.

[congofather]

58 minutes ago, blippio said:

Does this mean there is no way to play local files on the Mercury (specifically on the NVME M.2 drive) when using a Roon control (with an iPad etc) and without the penalty of “doubling the network traffic”? How can I get the sonic benefits of playing files locally from the Mercury M.2 ssd drive while being controlled by Roon? Can’t Roon see a “watched folder” on a network? why can’t that folder be the Mercury’s M.2 drive?

 

 When you want to use Roon, you'll see 3 main components. Roon Client, Roon Server and Roon Bridge. Roon Client can be your Android/IOS phone, your tablet(IPad Pro etc), Windows/Macos Client app.. It's totally free.

 

Roon Server mainly does the audio processing(monitors the changes in audio folders(may be stored on local disk or network disk), reads and loads them to memory, DR calculation, metadata management, audio conversions(upsampling/downsampling etc) and uses high CPU/Memory; therefore it requires Linux (x64) OR Mac OS X OR Windows (x86 and x64) machines to run on. You can not install ROON SERVER on RPI based devices(Mercury also relies on Compute Module-4; think of it as RPI4). This is a fact and a basic requirement of Roon.

As Roon Server needs to read the audio files and if these audio files are stored locally on Mercury streamer, it needs to read the audio file from the Mercury streamer by using  either WIFI or Ethernet network connection. Note that Roon Server can not be installed on Mercury!!

 

Lastly you need to understand Roon Bridge.  Roon Server does not directly communicate with the DAC to send the processed  audio file in a bit-perfect manner. Instead, it communicates with Roon Bridge  instance. Roon Bridge can be installed on the operating system(Gentooplayer, Ropieee, VolumIO etc.) on Mercury Streamer.  By this way(Roon Bridge on Mercury for example) , you can use the AES/I2S output of Mercury to connect to your DAC which have very very low jitters.

 

So there are 3 common components that are explained above. You can install all of them on a Mac Mini, Macbook or a Windows PC. But you will not get a good result. You'll feel that you are listening something very different in a good way when you install Roon Bridge on Mercury (Gentooplayer for example). For Roon Server, instead of using MacOS or Windows, using a Linux based(AudioLinux, Euphony, Gentooplayer for X86 etc.) X64/X86 machine (a fanless silent Intel NUC which is fed by a 19V LPS for example) and running Roon Server and other processes directly on RAM would be much better..

 

High-Level Roon audio Processing

Roon Client(simple tablet or phone) sends the playback request >> Roon Server on NUC(does the main processing) >> Roon Bridge(bit perfect playback) >> DAC 

 

In this case, if you install SSD on Mercury, Roon server will read the file from Mercury streamer and send the processed audio stream back again to Roon Bridge on Mercury streamer as @Superdad mentions.  

 

Other than Roon, You can use other players and run them on Mercury directly(LMS & SqueezeLite-r2 endpoint for example) to prevent double network traffic. But for the maximum performance(audio quality), as it is in the "Roon architecture", running the main processor/player (LMS in this case) on another machine would give much better results. Other than LMS, there are various Linux players for free(their UI(user-interface) may not be as user friendly as Roon or LMS) which you can directly run on Mercury and use the ssd disk on Mercury..

 

But I would not prefer that. That's why a commercial silent  NAS(like Synology, QNAP) to store your audio albums which is connected to the same network(preferably gigabit fiber optical/ethernet) with your streamer and router(for Tidal/Qobuz streaming) would be a much better choice(in terms of flexibility and performance) than installing the SSD directly on Mercury.

[blippio]

Congo- thanks for the quick response! I’ll have to digest this to fully understand the options that you graciously laid out… I’m sure I’ll have more questions but this is super helpful 😊

 

[congofather]

54 minutes ago, congofather said:

Other than LMS, there are various Linux players for free(their UI(user-interface) may not be as user friendly as Roon or LMS) which you can directly run on Mercury and use the ssd disk on Mercury..

Mpd is a good example to one of these players.https://www.musicpd.org/

It is a very basic player(does not have rich features like Roon or does not have rich plugin support like LMS).

You can run it directly from one of its clients(myMPD , a web based simple client for example) on linux based OS on Mercury streamer to play your files stored on disk(Tidal/Qobuz streaming is not supported as far as I know)

As it is not very user friendly, you need to edit its configuration file(conf file) to change settings when you need to do.

 

There is a good documentation of it for Gentooplayer. If you mount your SSD drive on Gentooplayer, it says, in the documentation below, that it automatically sees the drive without making any configurational change..

https://sites.google.com/view/gentooplayer-documentation/info-software/mpd

 

I use UPNP client of MPD named "Umpdcli" with "MPD"(main process) when I want to stream a song from Euphony Stylus OR Audirvana to Mercury. Euphony Stylus is a much better option by the way.

 

You can use MConnect app from your phone  to play files by using MPD. You can also use Linn Kazoo etc.For either of these choices, you should run UPMPDCLI on Gentooplayer with MPD before that.

 

[bobfa]

I am working on an article about some of this.!!!

 

Roon Labs has a nice overview of their systems:  https://roonlabs.com/howroonworks

 

Roons' key component in this discussion is the Roon Core (server). The server does all the heavy lifting of moving music files from where they are sourced to where then end up for playback.  The Roon Core can only be run on an X86 platform it will not run on the Raspberry Pi.

 

The shipped software on the Mercury is Volumio that has the ability to operate with locally stored music.  Volumio has all of the software components in a single platform.  Note that there may be some issues on setting up the NVME drive but I assume that it is a configuration issue.

 

There is an underlying discussion here about the potential issues around network traffic in and out of the Mercury effecting ? affecting? sound quality.  Theory!

 

Up until recently I have been running a two box solution with the Raspberry Pi.  I have been using PiCorePlayer OS with LMS on one box with attached storage.  The second box is a Pi4 with pi2AES and it only runs Squeezelite.  There is a lot to parse but it does sound really good.  

 

 

 

 

[congofather]

13 minutes ago, bobfa said:

Up until recently I have been running a two box solution with the Raspberry Pi.  I have been using PiCorePlayer OS with LMS on one box with attached storage.  The second box is a Pi4 with pi2AES and it only runs Squeezelite

I think it is a good solution to run LMS seperately. SqueezeLite-R2 can be run on Mercury in this case.

 

13 minutes ago, bobfa said:

Volumio has all of the software components in a single platform.  

Except Roon Server(Core) which requires X86 device.It is the same for other Operating systems like Gentooplayer(except native Tidal playback.. Just over LMS etc)

[bobfa]

With LMS you do not need nor do you want Roon on the same network.  they can conflict.

 

You can get both Tidal and Qobuz using LMS

[congofather]

Yes, it is said that you can not run them at the same time. But it does not mean you can't use both. I stop LMS if I want to use Roon. No need to stop SqueezeLite-R2 . Moreover, Roon(both Tidal and Qobuz are also supported like LMS) can connect to SqueezeLite-R2 instead of RoonBridge if you want.

[Powerman]

4 hours ago, bobfa said:

I am working on an article about some of this.!!!

 

Roon Labs has a nice overview of their systems:  https://roonlabs.com/howroonworks

 

Roons' key component in this discussion is the Roon Core (server). The server does all the heavy lifting of moving music files from where they are sourced to where then end up for playback.  The Roon Core can only be run on an X86 platform it will not run on the Raspberry Pi.

 

The shipped software on the Mercury is Volumio that has the ability to operate with locally stored music.  Volumio has all of the software components in a single platform.  Note that there may be some issues on setting up the NVME drive but I assume that it is a configuration issue.

 

There is an underlying discussion here about the potential issues around network traffic in and out of the Mercury effecting ? affecting? sound quality.  Theory!

 

Up until recently I have been running a two box solution with the Raspberry Pi.  I have been using PiCorePlayer OS with LMS on one box with attached storage.  The second box is a Pi4 with pi2AES and it only runs Squeezelite.  There is a lot to parse but it does sound really good.  

 

 

 

 

I was just going to ask if you could run 2 pi boxes with one as a server after Congos great explanation...

[Powerman]

So with all this discussion on all the various ways to skin the cat... And understanding we are trying to get the best SQ... Exactly what is wrong with Volumio? Where does it fall short? It easily streamed tidal and qobuz... Roon was easy, and once I figured out the real path to the drive it played files no problem.

[congofather]

Nothing is wrong with VolumIO. Each of us try different Players, optimize them and find the best one for us according to how we hear.

 

In a stereo system, we change /upgrade some part of the system by time. After each change, if the result is good, we sit back and say "ohh this is great, I think this is what I am searching for finally. I won't change anything more". But this is not true:)) We always continue searching for better and find "the better" by time.

Changing some part of the system and observing an incremental improvement does not mean that your previous system is bad. It is just the current one which is better. It is a long journey which will continue as long as your ears support :) There will be several times you feel that you find your best setup for you but it never exists.. 

 

Therefore, try VolumIO and if you feel like it is great for you, just let yourself enjoy it. 

 

By the way , do not think much about "double-network traffic" if you do not hear any drops etc . It's a technical issue and may or may not cause pauses during the playback. As these hardwares are fast enough and if your network setup is good, it may not be a problem for you. What you hear and how you feel about it is more important. As I am a technical person, I try to setup and improve my network technically as far as I know/learn.I just prefered a seperate Synology NAS(QNAPs are also fine) using SSD's and connect it  with a CAT8 Supra ethernet cable to the same network. This is what I prefered. There is no single "truth" in this game..Internal SSD configuration may be fine for you.

[Powerman]

Thanks. I'm not so concerned with network traffic. Sure minimizing interactions is good, but if a signal is already network traffic, so be it. What I don't want is to make a local file on the mercury... Network traffic. Even another NAS or second Pi working as server... You have to send it over network. I want the mercury taking a file from PCI and sending it I2S to DAC. That is cleanest, least prcessessing. Even now, I only put in a 1TB drive and only have 100GB on it. I do not forsee me owning a huge library of hi-res content... Only the best of the best recordings, and life long favorites I will always listen to.

 

As it stands, I can listen to files with GP and Lumin. I already paid for a year so I will continue to see how good it can be made. My yearly purchase of Volumio triggered, so I guess I won't be shelving that either. I will have to spend some time seeing if GP sounds better, because if it is a marginal improvement, then Volumio is much easier and more complete solution. I'm trying Audirvana, but streaming services is easy. I will probably drop Roon because there is just no point for me.

[Powerman]

So let me ask... Volumio comes with a NAS folder mounted. The only way to add files to the library, is to point to my folder, on the nvme, as a "network" drive to be a "source" in Volumio. I assume that (NAS folder) is what Volumio calls "the library".

Now, when I go to "library" in Volumio, it shows my nvme folder with my files, and the NAS folder... But I will only play from the NAS folder, not my folder. Before it played from my folder. I can look at directories with Filezilla, and the NAS folder is also populated with my content.

 

So... Does Volumio actually duplicate actual files, or is it just using the file in NAS to say where it is located on nvme?

 

And... Even though it's called a network drive in volumio... It's not actually converting content to network protocol is it? Isn't it just rendering file from drive and sending to DAC? Cause if there are conversions to other protocols for processing that would suck... Just like any other shared network drive that is transported with network.

[zackthedog]

On 7/14/2022 at 8:50 AM, Powerman said:

So let me ask... Volumio comes with a NAS folder mounted. The only way to add files to the library, is to point to my folder, on the nvme, as a "network" drive to be a "source" in Volumio. I assume that (NAS folder) is what Volumio calls "the library".

Now, when I go to "library" in Volumio, it shows my nvme folder with my files, and the NAS folder... But I will only play from the NAS folder, not my folder. Before it played from my folder. I can look at directories with Filezilla, and the NAS folder is also populated with my content.

 

So... Does Volumio actually duplicate actual files, or is it just using the file in NAS to say where it is located on nvme?

 

And... Even though it's called a network drive in volumio... It's not actually converting content to network protocol is it? Isn't it just rendering file from drive and sending to DAC? Cause if there are conversions to other protocols for processing that would suck... Just like any other shared network drive that is transported with network.

 

Volumio is an MPD player.  All it does is point MPD to the requested file so MPD can play it from wherever it lives on your network.  Unless you are using the upsampling feature, there is no transcoding that I know of.  Does that answer your question?

[Powerman]

On 7/16/2022 at 9:22 AM, zackthedog said:

 

Volumio is an MPD player.  All it does is point MPD to the requested file so MPD can play it from wherever it lives on your network.  Unless you are using the upsampling feature, there is no transcoding that I know of.  Does that answer your question?

Yes... And it would be weird to bounce around network... Just asking.

[PoMarantz]

On 7/13/2022 at 12:18 PM, bobfa said:

There have been a lot of words on this thread since it started.  These are the most salient.  I could not agree more.  Yet in a sense working within the confines of the premise of the Mercury I think that Volumio delivers on 90% of the promise and I am sure that Michael will eventually get the 10% done.  Michael is also relying on Volumio to work properly.  My main example of that is network discovery of local shares, which may seem simple but in fact is getting more complex due to changing information security setting and software in network devices.    Volumio may be a bit slow in addressing some of these issues.

 

Some folks may take exception to the way the Volumio OS is delivered and the fact that some of their features are subscription based,  I get that also. 

 

Now for that last 10%.  I think the main problem is the use of the internal NVME port on the streamer.  I know that there are some complexities there that are not shall we say easy.  I hope that this will come soon if/when Michael starts shipping with internal drive supplied.  The Question for Michael is how do I install and use the NVME drive with the supplied OS. Is Volumio well documented, I would say better than some and worse than others.  Michael is relying on them for "support of the OS"!

 

If we choose to play games with OS variants not supplied with the device then we are on our own!  

 

None of this takes away the fact that we have a very fine piece of hardware here that is marred by documentation, training and software.

 

 

Bob

 

 

 

 

 

Thanks for the sobering overview, Bob. As mentioned I am a noob on a Mac with no programing experience (other than reformatting SD cards in FAT32 on my Mac and Flashing The Volumio Image on the card to load on The Mercury).

After some missteps (many 🙂), I currently have Qobuz running natively in Volumio and am using The Volumio Interface to play Qobuz. (I currently have a 2-Week Volumio Premium Trial which allowed me to list and play Qobuz). I had a few missteps with understanding the difference between Free and Free Premium Trial in Volumio. I am slow.

For me your words ring true, I would like to keep this venture as simple as possible and stay in the OS that Michael shipped with The Mercury.

I have mechanically inserted a M.2 SSD into the Mercury…but have stopped there as implementing that seems QUITE complicated "to me". (I have no RPi or programming background).

I bought The Mercury to improve my streaming music quality, and without knowing much (but understanding that there would be a learning-curve adventure 🙃), my hope was to Stream Qobuz and to be able to download music files from Qobuz to the internal SDD and play them back all within The Mercury confines. If I am reading the 12 pages here correctly…(I am grateful for all of it!), this part of my "adventure" is not possible in a simple, basic, straight-forward way. Actually, for a person like me it is quite complicated…but I take responsibility for my noobiness, which I did when I ordered The Mercury and knew that this was out of my comfort zone.

For now, I plan on just enjoying the streaming that I have implemented and perhaps down the road there will be a simpler, more straight-forward way for me to understand how to implement the internal SSD for storage and playback within The Mercury using its included OS.  
This is all so interesting and challenging for this music lover and I thank you and everyone else for all the valuable information in this forum! 😎👍🏼

 

 

[zackthedog]

I think, in fairness to Michael, we should all be clear here.  The Mercury is sold as a "streamer".  This means, of course, streaming audio to a DAC.  All of the software Mike recommends can do this.  Nowhere on his web site does he refer to the Mercury as a "server," which would entail storage and delivery of personal music files.  The NVME port is, as it were, an "easter egg" or bonus feature that allows the more adventurous to configure an auxiliary drive for music storage.

 

I would point out that Moode and RopieeeXL allow you to stream Qobuz for free, with only an extra step or two.

 

And, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, Gentooplayer can easily configure the Mercury as a streamer *and* server without any programming knowledge.  The only drawback is the licensing fee, but that is a one-time fee, unlike Volumio's subscription service.  You also need to spend some time familiarizing yourself with it, but it's not difficult and plenty of assistance is available.  In the course of an evening you can have it up and running and unlock all of the Mercury's potential.  I'd be more than happy to walk anyone through the process.

[PoMarantz]

37 minutes ago, zackthedog said:

I think, in fairness to Michael, we should all be clear here.  The Mercury is sold as a "streamer".  This means, of course, streaming audio to a DAC.  All of the software Mike recommends can do this.  Nowhere on his web site does he refer to the Mercury as a "server," which would entail storage and delivery of personal music files.  The NVME port is, as it were, an "easter egg" or bonus feature that allows the more adventurous to configure an auxiliary drive for music storage.

 

I would point out that Moode and RopieeeXL allow you to stream Qobuz for free, with only an extra step or two.

 

And, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, Gentooplayer can easily configure the Mercury as a streamer *and* server without any programming knowledge.  The only drawback is the licensing fee, but that is a one-time fee, unlike Volumio's subscription service.  You also need to spend some time familiarizing yourself with it, but it's not difficult and plenty of assistance is available.  In the course of an evening you can have it up and running and unlock all of the Mercury's potential.  I'd be more than happy to walk anyone through the process.

Zack, I think everything that you state is spot on…and sizes up the complete Mercury picture very well. I am going to step back from this and just use The Mercury to stream and do some sound-quality comparisons with my previous method of streaming…

I will take a break and maybe come back and give GentooPlayer a shot at utilizing the Mercury with a different OS. Seems like everyone is on a different path which the Mercury set-up "as-delivered" facilitates, depending on one's needs and abilities. 
It all very interesting and intriguing to me, even though I do not have much experience! 
Well-said!
 

[bobfa]

I think that we need to ask Michael if he is going to give us instructions for Volumio to install the drive.

 

 

[stefano_mbp]

6 minutes ago, bobfa said:

Volumio to install the drive.

Doesn’t this work ? … from the Volumio community forum …

……

(1) Identify the drive that you are wanting to use with ‘fdisk’ or ‘lsblk’. Make sure you get the correct one or you are going to get into problems.
(2) Make a suitable directory as a mount point eg. ‘mkdir /mnt/MyHdd.’
(3) Mount the hdd with ‘mount dev /mnt/MyHdd’, where ‘dev’ is the name of the drive you identified in (1) eg. ‘/dev/sdc2’.
(4) Make a symbolic link from you hdd for mpd to find your music ‘ln -s /mnt/MyHdd /var/lib/mpd/music/MyHdd’
(5) Update the mpd database ‘mpc update.’