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Post by Tim on Aug 12, 2014 21:17:24 GMT
Have you heard a Voyage MPD machine like Kieth on AoS runs Martin?, superb and again very little money and very low power. There are identical ALIX motherboards like those used by Bryston available and you get a ready made package like Volumio, just load it onto a flash memory card, configure your network and off you go. But you can run Voyage MPD on all sorts of boards, they work well on Atom boards. Some great MPD apps available for control too and they Scrobble. The Bryston machine is a couple of grand+, an ALIX board is under 100 and the software is free. Careful now though, you might start liking FBA when you see what you can achieve for less than the price of a cartridge! I warn you know though, if you do start liking it, it's very addictive
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Post by Stratmangler on Aug 12, 2014 21:38:53 GMT
How Hard is the RPi Working?
Some interesting findings, showing how hard the CPU in the RPi needs to work to decode a stream and process it outbound.
RPi streaming Radio Paradise at 320kbps to the Audio Jack (this forms a baseline measurement): 10.2% CPU usage running MPD.
RPi streaming the same stream to the USB port and into my DAC. 11.5% CPU usage running MPD. So there is some overhead generating data for the USB port.
Now for the eye opener. RPi streaming the same stream but upsampled to 24/96 with best quality to the USB port and into my DAC. 57.1% CPU usage running MPD! The RPi is now working very hard.
I didn't go on to try upsampling to 24/196 because I see no point in upsampling a 320k compressed stream to such an extent and, anyway, the poor CPU would run out of puff to even keep the display updated. It will be interesting to see what CPU usage there is using the same test into I2S and then into the HiFiBerry Digi+ board. How hard does the CPU work playing native 24/192 FLAC files Martin? I'd expect the RPi to be struggling to resample down to 24/96 on the fly to be truthful. Reason I ask is that I have no issues playing 24/192 stuff on the Touch from a SD card, and I know that TinySC is in use when playing from the SD card, and that TinySC cannot resample on the fly. Likewise, my server is normally LMS running on a Zyxel NSA310 NAS box, and the version of LMS is a stripped out version loaded from the Zyxel support website. The stripped out elements are the heavy load CPU intensive actions such as resampling on the fly; basically the transcoding stuff is removed. Again, I have no issues playing 24/192 files natively through the Touch, which is running wired on the network (no wireless issues here ).
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Post by MartinT on Aug 13, 2014 5:44:49 GMT
I don't have any native hi-res FLAC files, Chris. I would love to perform the same test as I agree that the downsampling will probably be too heavy for it, as it is for the Touch. However, that is when using the USB interface. Once I have S/PDIF on the RPi then it should just stream 24/192 and pass it through without transcoding.
If a Dropbox or OneDrive shared FLAC file should come my way, I'll do the testing...
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Post by MartinT on Aug 13, 2014 5:52:37 GMT
Have you heard a Voyage MPD machine like Kieth on AoS runs Martin?, superb and again very little money and very low power. There are identical ALIX motherboards like those used by Bryston available and you get a ready made package like Volumio, just load it onto a flash memory card, configure your network and off you go. But you can run Voyage MPD on all sorts of boards, they work well on Atom boards. Some great MPD apps available for control too and they Scrobble. The Bryston machine is a couple of grand+, an ALIX board is under 100 and the software is free. Careful now though, you might start liking FBA when you see what you can achieve for less than the price of a cartridge! I warn you know though, if you do start liking it, it's very addictive This is relatively new to me, Tim, having only played with the Touch previously, which is an awkward bugger to control. It didn't get me downloading files, although I greatly appreciated having Radio Paradise and Spotify on the 'big rig'.
Once we have all the principles nailed here, then they should apply to a whole number of similar Linux boards. I think doing it with the RPi is a fun challenge, to see just what can be achieved with something so inexpensive. I'm hoping we can form a TAS RPi club if we get members sufficiently interested. Our TAS sponsored member who will be building and documenting one should get going soon.
I see this as an addition to my system's capabilities, not a replacement for buying vinyl and CDs.
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Post by canetoad on Aug 13, 2014 6:02:02 GMT
I'd like to see how close it gets to the Touch in performance, not because I don't like the Touch, but because I'd like to get away from using LMS. Ideally I should just build a media server but, unfortunately, I can't afford it at the moment. Far too many other things needing monetary attention.
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Post by MartinT on Aug 13, 2014 6:11:10 GMT
Doing away with LMS and any server software is a very big plus for me.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 13, 2014 9:14:41 GMT
Interesting results Martin, I can see in the not too distant future these devices coming of age and being able to produce so very nice sounds indeed.
Interesting you mention the up-sampling capability on the Pi and how more processing power it requires to this.
With the recent coding expeditions I've been traveling it seems this feature when used on many of the stock skin players, like foobar, Jriver, Mqn when using the asio component or Jplay (should you need to lol) the amount of cpu capacity does rise some what, more markedly in some players than others and the average cpu usage sits around 2-3% for native red book and can increase as much as 21 threads and upto 7-8% on the cpu capacity when reproducing say 192Khz files. (non memory ram storage type)
Interesting SQ results with ram voltages and buffering on the latest software revisions to.
All grist for the mill keep up the informative work.
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Post by Tim on Aug 13, 2014 10:31:39 GMT
I see this as an addition to my system's capabilities, not a replacement for buying vinyl and CDs. Absolutely and for you I didn't mean that and I would never expect it to replace your enjoyment of LPs, as I know how much pleasure that gives you. I still prefer to buy CDs as I don't really like downloads, so I still buy them and rip them, I just don't have to have them readily accessible which when you have thousands is an absolute godsend. However, it 'might' possibly make you think about CD playback? If you can get it to match or even exceed what you have (not sure a Pi would, but who knows?) there are distinct advantages IMO over having racks of CDs and the hassle of playing them. Of course if you enjoy having racks of CDs around and like the tactile experience of selecting and playing, then it won't . . . it's fun learning though, I thoroughly enjoyed my journey and was constantly surprised by the results. If you remember I was a doubter at first, but for me it's the best thing I have ever done regarding playing and enjoying music. This is a great thread too as it will hopefully encourage some others to dip their toe in the water and they might be surprised what can be achieved from file based audio, for very little money
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Post by MartinT on Aug 13, 2014 19:08:28 GMT
TAS Sponsored RPi Build is Go!
Pinch (Tom) has very kindly agreed to build an audio streamer from a Raspberry Pi, sponsored by TAS. He will document his progress in his blog and ask questions as he goes.
If any other members would like to follow the project, the cost of entry is only £50 to start with (if you have your own USB DAC), about £80 (if you have an S/PDIF DAC or direct digital input) and about £100 (if you want a fully fledged streamer with built-in DAC). Start your own blog and we'll follow you and give help as you progress. We'll also keep a log of members doing the build, together with their customisations, so that other members may easily reference their findings.
Good luck!
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Post by terrybooth on Aug 13, 2014 19:47:35 GMT
192/24 flac played on Raspebrry pi with HiFiBerry Dac
login as: root
root@192.168.0.190's password:
Linux volumio 3.12.25+ #701 PREEMPT Fri Aug 1 16:37:40 BST 2014 armv6l ___
/\_ \ __
__ __ ___\//\ \ __ __ ___ ___ /\_\ ___
/\ \/\ \ / __`\\ \ \ /\ \/\ \ /' __` __`\/\ \ / __`\
\ \ \_/ |/\ \L\ \\_\ \_\ \ \_\ \/\ \/\ \/\ \ \ \/\ \L\ \
\ \___/ \ \____//\____\\ \____/\ \_\ \_\ \_\ \_\ \____/
\/__/ \/___/ \/____/ \/___/ \/_/\/_/\/_/\/_/\/___/
Free Audiophile Linux Music Player - Version Beta1.4
C 2013 Michelangelo Guarise - Volumio.org
Volumio Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
permitted by applicable law.
root@volumio:~# top
top - 20:47:17 up 3 days, 1:37, 2 users, load average: 0.17, 0.30, 0.22
Tasks: 75 total, 1 running, 74 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 15.8 us, 19.5 sy, 0.0 ni, 56.4 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 8.3 si, 0.0 st
KiB Mem: 496660 total, 464556 used, 32104 free, 63440 buffers
KiB Swap: 0 total, 0 used, 0 free, 340508 cached
PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
2319 mpd 20 0 89708 14m 4168 S 22.9 3.1 15:45.26 mpd
2954 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 11.1 0.0 5:15.18 cifsd
17294 root 20 0 4760 1356 1028 R 2.2 0.3 0:06.53 top
3260 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.7 0.0 1:45.80 kworker/0:1
17270 root 20 0 11304 3584 2932 S 0.7 0.7 0:00.99 sshd
1 root 20 0 2192 736 636 S 0.0 0.1 0:10.53 init
2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 kthreadd
3 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:53.07 ksoftirqd/0
4 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/0:0
5 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kworker/0:0H
7 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:33.80 rcu_preempt
8 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 rcu_bh
9 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 rcu_sched
10 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper
11 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 kdevtmpfs
12 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 netns
13 root 0 -20 0 0 0 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.00 writeback
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Post by terrybooth on Aug 13, 2014 19:49:46 GMT
The HiFiBerry appears to do what it says on the tin - take the load of music streaming off the CPU.
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Post by MartinT on Aug 13, 2014 20:38:04 GMT
Thanks, Terry. I changed the font to Courier in an attempt to get your columns to line up, but they still don't! Best do screenshots in future.
What was the baseline CPU % before you routed the music through the HiFiBerry? Is it the Digi or the DAC? I'm looking forward to receiving my Digi+.
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Post by Stratmangler on Aug 14, 2014 7:46:53 GMT
... I'd like to get away from using LMS ... What's wrong with LMS?
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Post by MartinT on Aug 14, 2014 8:53:04 GMT
Uses up resources and processing on your host PC. Another service to install and check for functionality. Creating a share is so much easier - let the streamer do the pulling.
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Post by Stratmangler on Aug 14, 2014 11:05:52 GMT
Ah! I run LMS on a NAS device, so it's not an issue for me. LMS is a superb way of accessing a digital music library in my experoience.
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Post by canetoad on Aug 14, 2014 12:22:20 GMT
... I'd like to get away from using LMS ... What's wrong with LMS? Nothing! It's just another link in the chain to worry about. A server with everything handled onboard would simplify things. I run LMS on a Synology NAS as well. It does have shortcomings like it can't transcode flac files to pcm so the Touch has to do the conversion.
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Post by MartinT on Aug 14, 2014 16:40:46 GMT
RPi Running on Battery Power
I thought I would have a listen to the RPi on battery power while I'm waiting for the Digi+ board to arrive. So this is the RPi with Volumio v1.41 streaming out via USB to the Caiman-II DAC, running on an 8800mAH 5V phone extender battery.
It actually sounds pretty good. This is reaching the performance level of the Touch at its best, so my expectations are immediately raised. In fact, I could imagine that this level of performance would be very pleasing to many members.
The nice thing is that the battery's charger (you can use the RPi power supply) plugs into a different port in the battery and could be plugged into a timer to charge it during non-use hours, leaving the RPi running on pure battery while you're listening.
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Post by John on Aug 14, 2014 17:53:23 GMT
This is very encouraging Martin and still some further improvements when you move to SPDIF as the Caiman works a lot better this way
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Post by terrybooth on Aug 14, 2014 18:10:30 GMT
Thanks, Terry. I changed the font to Courier in an attempt to get your columns to line up, but they still don't! Best do screenshots in future. What was the baseline CPU % before you routed the music through the HiFiBerry? Is it the Digi or the DAC? I'm looking forward to receiving my Digi+. Sorry - took a screenshot but couldn't see a way of uploading images. This is from a Raspberry Pi B/HiFiBerry DAC. (not the Digi). Never routed music through the Pi. Background CPU usage before playing any music is around 1%
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Post by MartinT on Aug 14, 2014 18:55:52 GMT
Thanks, Terry. Ok, so 22.9% CPU load to play via the HiFiBerry DAC? Was that a settled figure (i.e. after waiting a while)? Was it a hi-res file you were playing?
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