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Post by Slinger on Apr 11, 2018 21:10:20 GMT
Looks like you're all ready! Physically, yes. Mentally... Sounds daft, especially at my age, but I'm...well...excited is too strong a word...but let's say I'm seriously looking forward to hearing some music through all this new "stuff" once I get it set up. I'm a bit worried that some of it is due on Friday 13 th though.  |
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Post by Slinger on Apr 12, 2018 13:18:39 GMT
The Pi and the Micro SD card have arrived so I suppose my first task is to get the card sorted and ready to install.
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Post by MartinT on Apr 12, 2018 13:22:20 GMT
If you have any kind of micro USB charger you should be able to fire it up once you get the build onto the SD card.
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Post by Slinger on Apr 12, 2018 14:38:45 GMT
Card formatted and loaded up.
Card in Pi.
Pi hooked up to power and network.
Rune UI 'seen' in browser.
As the rest of the kit is arriving tomorrow I'm not going to test the analogue connection to the amp today. I'll wait until I have the header attached and everything neatly inside the case before I attempt to get any actual sound out of it.
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Post by Slinger on Apr 12, 2018 23:31:33 GMT
That's it, I have achieved a state of happy bunny-ness for the evening. I've added the addons option to the Rune menu, discovered PuTTY, and stored my favourite radio station, The Arrow. Hopefully, tomorrow, I'll get some actual noises out of it. |
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Post by MartinT on Apr 13, 2018 5:11:28 GMT
...that's the clincher!
It's very satisfying what the Pi does, especially when you look at it and see how small it is, and remember that it's a general purpose computer.
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Post by ChrisB on Apr 13, 2018 5:41:56 GMT
Your restraint is admirable.
.....but very, very misplaced!
Part of the fun of it for me was how little time it took to get some music out of it and to hear the evolution of it from its most basic form - headphone output, directly into an amp, then via usb into a cheap dac, before squirting it through the piggy back board into an input on my Accuphase.
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Post by MartinT on Apr 13, 2018 6:36:02 GMT
I looked at the Rune site, curious, and it's uncannily close in appearance to Volumio. Does it have a common heritage or was it (or Volumio) the result of a splinter group?
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Post by ChrisB on Apr 13, 2018 6:52:42 GMT
I understand that the developers of Volumio, Rune audio and Moode were all working together on Volumio at one time. The three all look similar in use too, though as time moves on they are developing their own individuality.
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Post by Slinger on Apr 13, 2018 15:08:08 GMT
Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa...nd, we have sound. Bunged the card back in the card reader and uncommented one line in a text file to allow the new addition to the pi ( or the "Kuman SC07 Raspberry Pi HIFI DiGi+ Digital Sound Card I2S SPDIF Optical Fiber for Raspberry pi 3 2 model B B+ SC07" to give it the full manufacturer's nomenclature) to be seen by Rune and Robert is my Dad's brother...which is quite confusing as my Dad's name was Robert, and his brother was David. So, anyway, Dave's my uncle, and Anonymous 4 are singing An English Ladymass for me.
I've got the Gnome Music Player Client set up on the PC, but to be honest it's just as easy putting a link to Rune on the bookmark bar of my browsers. Gnome has a couple of features I quite like. It has a "similar artist" button which brings up a pretty good selection of suggestions. It also has a "Web Links" button, and an "Artist Information" button, both of which I like. Aesthetically, though, the Rune UI is much more pleasing and is currently displaying the correct album cover whereas Gnome is just displaying a generic image, as it has for several albums which I've just tried, including Pink Floyd's 'The Final Cut' which I would definitely have expected to see delivered by the software. [EDIT] Just found the "info" button on the Rune UI, which gives an artist bio and has "similar artists" The Rune UI now wins hands down.
Next, I have to hook up the new CD player, which arrived while I was setting up the Pi. I'll kick off running it straight into the amp, and leave buggering about with DACs for another day. I'll be using a 40cm set of Klotz AC110/Neutrik Rean leads between amp and CD player, and as the CD player is the matching model for my amp I'm expecting more nice noises to follow shortly after.
Eventually, I dare say I'll start comparing DACs for both Rune (currently playing through an SMSL Sanskrit 6) and for the CD player. For the rest of this afternoon though I shall mostly be playing music.
[EDIT]
Flying Pickets on the CD player and all is well with the world.
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Post by MartinT on Apr 13, 2018 16:41:32 GMT
How's it sounding, Paul?
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Post by Slinger on Apr 13, 2018 17:14:55 GMT
It's all sounding very, very, nice, Martin. I've just switched back to the CD player again, and a bit of Van Der Graaf Generator. I'm very happy and bearing in mind that it's Friday 13 th quite worried that everything has gone so smoothly.  |
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Post by MikeMusic on Apr 13, 2018 17:37:51 GMT
Worry when midnight strikes. Then it all stops working  |
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Post by ChrisB on Apr 13, 2018 18:24:55 GMT
Excellent!
I'll never forget the moment mine gave forth for the fist time. I was somewhat dubious of my ability to get it working properly but I selected a random radio station and, as if queued by a psychic dj, the oh-so apt sound of John Kay singing "...get your motor running..." belted out of the speakers.
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Post by Slinger on Apr 13, 2018 20:55:44 GMT
I have to be honest, although I've written code for a living in the past the idea of learning another programming language and writing long lines of strange, incomprehensible, non-words really didn't appeal to me. It turns out that what I actually needed to do was read the write-ups properly. I would then have realised that whilst programming is possible, it isn't actually necessary...at all. The closest I came was opening a text file and un-commenting one line of code so Rune recognised my PIFI Digi SC07 which it 'sees' as the ubiquitous HiFiBerry Digi+, and added it to the MPD configuration menu as an output option. I copied and pasted a bit of code to install the addons submenu (if you use Rune you really should install the ' addons') using a neat little program named PuTTY, and that was about it. It's useful not being scared of doing stuff, and it's useful knowing how to search for the proper info on Google, but that's about as complicated as it gets. My background meant I wasn't daunted by the prospect of messing with stuff, but that's all really. My advice, for what it's worth... A) Don't be scared to get a Pi if you've been wavering. B) Don't be scared to ask for advice on a forum if you do actually manage to screw up. |
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Post by ChrisB on Apr 13, 2018 22:03:08 GMT
This is something I have been struggling with right from the start.
Computer guys take to the Pi because they are interested in the technology and they're not (too) afraid to take on something new because they understand the landscape that they are working in.
They have a go and they can't help themselves from tinkering with, and talking about things like 'code' and 'sub-menus' and all that other stuff they do on those black screens.
The rest of us think "Oh shit, that sounds frightening, I'm not messing with that"
But the reality is that I know nothing, and yet I got music from my first Pi in under 30 minutes, including the time taken to unpack the items as delivered, build the thing and then download the appropriate software. It wasn't a fluke because I own and use three (yes three) Pis!
It really is simple.
It costs less than a good night out for two.
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Post by MartinT on Apr 14, 2018 11:57:00 GMT
Every member should have a Pi, if only to learn what they are capable of. Superb little computers that cost pennies.
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Post by Slinger on Apr 14, 2018 12:30:17 GMT
Every member should have a Pi, if only to learn what they are capable of. Superb little computers that cost pennies. The Pi itself, a USB lead to power it, the case, and the output card cost me around £70.00 in total, from Amazon. You'll possibly need to consider the cost of storage for your files to that, but so you would with most "shop-bought" solutions. If you do things the way I have, for instance, a 2Tb external USB drive will cost you another sixty or seventy quid. That's not a bad total for a professional-sounding file streamer and of course, you've just bought yourself some serious bragging rights as well. - "Oh, the streamer, yes, I built that." |
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Post by MikeMusic on Apr 14, 2018 13:59:19 GMT
If the skill to put a Pi together isn't computer based then there is something else out of the norm and I don't have it.
Might be laziness
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Post by Slinger on Apr 14, 2018 14:10:35 GMT
If the skill to put a Pi together isn't computer based then there is something else out of the norm and I don't have it. Might be laziness Mike, although I was confident of doing whatever needed to be done I really didn't want the hassle. There was no hassle. Zilch. Zero. Nada. Nowt! The most complicated and time-consuming thing I had to do was get that horrible brown adhesive-paper covering off of the 6 bits of acrylic that made up the case, and then putting the case together without bits falling off. Anything I needed to know was found pretty quickly on Google...except the easy way to separate that bloody paper from acrylic. |
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