Post by alp on Feb 4, 2019 20:53:49 GMT
For the last few weeks I have been using the excellent C-3PO plug-in for upsampling in LMS.
C-3PO provides an easy to use means to configure sox on the LMS server. I had been upsampling using sox in Picoreplayer but C-3PO offloads it to the LMS and provides a PCM stream (note you need to set -W in the Picore Sox settings otherwise you will just get hissing). My Synology 218+ NAS happily upsamples to 384 KHz (should you actually need it) with the RPI3+ using only ~1% of CPU (reducing power draw from my battery). You can also stream DSD but when I tried with an Audiophonics 9023 DAC (which should support it) I just got broken sound - perhaps a step too far for my Synology and/or network. To my surprise, the Audiophonics DAC happily worked with 384 KHz output, although I could not determine any improvement over 192 KHz.
Upsampling my collection to 174 or 196Hz sounds very good. You can also control the volume output (sox uses dithering unlike LMS) which I used to reduce the volume a few dB to allow my passive pre-amp analogue to work further around the dial. With these tweaks I get detailed, dynamic music with a very good sound-stage but without any digital harshness.
All settings are player specific so if you have, as I do, a Squeezebox radio, you can choose to not use C-3PO at all or get it to stream flac instead of PCM, DSD or whatever you have with your other rig(s).
If you use LMS and have a moderately powerful NAS or server, and want to explore the world of upsampling, then I recommend giving it a try. Let me know how you get on.
(See Marco's C-3PO thread)
C-3PO provides an easy to use means to configure sox on the LMS server. I had been upsampling using sox in Picoreplayer but C-3PO offloads it to the LMS and provides a PCM stream (note you need to set -W in the Picore Sox settings otherwise you will just get hissing). My Synology 218+ NAS happily upsamples to 384 KHz (should you actually need it) with the RPI3+ using only ~1% of CPU (reducing power draw from my battery). You can also stream DSD but when I tried with an Audiophonics 9023 DAC (which should support it) I just got broken sound - perhaps a step too far for my Synology and/or network. To my surprise, the Audiophonics DAC happily worked with 384 KHz output, although I could not determine any improvement over 192 KHz.
Upsampling my collection to 174 or 196Hz sounds very good. You can also control the volume output (sox uses dithering unlike LMS) which I used to reduce the volume a few dB to allow my passive pre-amp analogue to work further around the dial. With these tweaks I get detailed, dynamic music with a very good sound-stage but without any digital harshness.
All settings are player specific so if you have, as I do, a Squeezebox radio, you can choose to not use C-3PO at all or get it to stream flac instead of PCM, DSD or whatever you have with your other rig(s).
If you use LMS and have a moderately powerful NAS or server, and want to explore the world of upsampling, then I recommend giving it a try. Let me know how you get on.
(See Marco's C-3PO thread)