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Post by Tim on Jun 23, 2020 10:53:52 GMT
Anyone know how much power a Pi or Tinkerboard uses when playing music with Volumio?
My Atom board is using 30W playing music with just a USB stick attached. Would be interesting to know what a Pi uses, I suspect a lot less?
That's total draw at the wall...
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Post by MartinT on Jun 23, 2020 10:58:45 GMT
The Tinker Board S runs at around 0.9A (over 2A when booting) and my old Pi 3 used to run at 0.6A when playing music. Both take 5V.
So that's 4.5W for the TBS and 3W for the Pi (total draw at the wall would depend on the PSU efficiency, let's say 10W maximum for the TBS). Both considerably lower than a full Intel PC board, as you might expect.
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Post by Tim on Jun 23, 2020 11:45:50 GMT
My PSU is drawing 14W, the Intel board is 16W, so that's 25% for the TBS give or take, quite a difference but to be expected.
Thanks Martin.
I might stick with what I have for now as I'm happy with the sound quality - it's where I used to be, but with zero effort and also the convenience of having Spotify embedded is a bonus. I've been using a hacked Win 10 laptop for sometime now with JRiver, but whatever I've done to a laptop, I've never been able to reproduce the sound quality of that Intel board and PSU. For me a Windows laptop has always been the worst kind of music server for sound quality. Very convenient mind you but compromised for performance.
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Post by MartinT on Jun 23, 2020 11:59:44 GMT
That's fair enough and not a great power penalty, Tim. If it works, keep it!
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Post by Tim on Jun 23, 2020 14:30:07 GMT
Just found the button to switch to the Classic view . . . much better  |
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Post by MartinT on Jun 23, 2020 14:33:26 GMT
LOL - I prefer the modern view!
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Post by Slinger on Jun 23, 2020 21:49:08 GMT
I couldn't resist. I spotted some Kingston HyperX Impact memory (2x4GB) going for silly money, so my MSI Cubi will now have 8GB of matched memory instead of the standard 4GB. If it does end up as a Kodi box it should be quite a decent one.  |
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Post by speedysteve on Jun 24, 2020 6:47:54 GMT
Any way around the search facility when in Qobuz being so annoying?
It's the lack of an effective back function and being chucked out and having to search again that I find so annoying. Sometimes the only option is Home and start again with selecting Qobuz and search anew, over and over. Maddening!
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Post by MartinT on Jun 24, 2020 8:57:27 GMT
Agreed. My browser the Volumio app keeps the search string so I have become used to backspacing one character and then typing it again, which re-searches.
I need to report it in the Volumio bugs forum but keep forgetting. Others have also reported it.
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Post by Tim on Jun 24, 2020 15:07:02 GMT
I've just scanned through this thread and goodness me, you boys do like to tinker   I'm a recovered tinkerer as well as a recovered audiophile, so I very much doubt I'll be joining in as much. I'm just going to play music and won't try 'fixing' it until it breaks. Still very impressed with the sound quality and it's simplicity, it certainly seems very stable on the Atom board. Couldn't get the Last.fm scrobbler plug-in to work, so I uninstalled it.
I'm going to keep it as simple as possible - no background, plain black classic view, no playlists (or config files) and nowt added apart from Spotify. I suspect I'll use JRiver mostly anyway as my FLAC library is still my primary music source. JRiver seems to like it, Spotify works and it plays music from a wired network share, so that'll do me - KISS.
One thing of note, I remember Hans Beekhuyzen saying very early on that it didn't do gapless playback from JRiver, so that was one reason why I dismissed it very early on. I just played Dark Side of the Moon using JRiver via the JRemote app and Volumio as a DNLA renderer. Seamless playback with no gaps for the entire album. So he was either wrong or they fixed it?
Likes: Sound quality is on a par with more expensive music servers that require a lot of configuration, especially Windows based
Simplicity of installation (sorry Mike and Slinger, but I just copied the image to a USB stick, plugged it in and voilà) Spotify Integration DNLA functionality using JRiver as the server Ability to run on very low powered hardware Ability to run on x86 architecture Simple but functional GUI (I find the contemporary layout clunky)
It's free!
Dislikes: Spotify connect can sometimes be a bit flaky for me using the standard plug-in
Scrobbling issues, but these are moot if using JRiver Spotify interface doesn't show all material from artists with large back catalogues
So overall it gets a big thumbs up from me and certainly lives up to it's claim regarding sound quality.
Job done
(for now...)
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Post by Tim on Jun 25, 2020 9:41:51 GMT
Shaved a few watts off by taking out a SO-DIMM. It's now running on a single 2GB module and drawing 27W at the wall.
2GB RAM should be plenty, unless anyone with more user experience thinks otherwise?
Save me reading the thread again, what benefit is there supposed to be in underclocking the CPU, other than reducing temps? Not looked yet but this might be possible in BIOS, so it would just be a set and forget option.
I have to admit the classic view looks good in a full size PC web browser window, but not so much on a smartphone. So as I'm going to be controlling it that way a lot more, it's back to contemporary view  |
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Post by MartinT on Jun 25, 2020 11:14:45 GMT
Underclocking reduces noise back into the power supply and is effective with the Pi. I don't use underclocking with the Asus. It could be worth trying it with a PC board although modern Intel chips vary their clock according to workload and you don't really want to mess with it and cause glitches etc. You could look at the BIOS settings and select maximum economy, which would run low clock settings as much as possible. You might then be able to select a lower fan speed (if there is a fan).
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Post by Tim on Jun 25, 2020 12:56:16 GMT
Thanks, just checked and it has Enhanced Intel SpeedStep Technology and thermal monitoring, so not really worth trying anything else. It's a passive board designed to be fanless, with a maximum operating temperature of 85 °C and it sits at 41 °C running Volumio. I can however achieve a stable 26 °C using a silent Noctua fan running at 500RPM, which right now is only 3 °C over ambient - so that might be a better idea TBH. I never ran it with a fan previously and it was doing a lot more work as a Windows JRiver server, but cooler is always better.
The only thing I'm going to try out is attaching a HDD directly to the board with a FLAC library. My previous Windows incarnation I always felt gave better results with an attached SATA drive, rather than streaming from a NAS. I don't see why this should be any different, but only one way to find out?
I want to stop tinkering by the weekend then just relax and enjoy the music |
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Post by Slinger on Jun 25, 2020 15:57:32 GMT
The MSI Cubi has had its memory upgraded. I've flashed Volumio to a brand new 8GB Verbatim USB drive, and Volumio has been set up and has just started importing albums from my two NAS drives. The little 7" touch screen I bought was invaluable in helping me set up first Windows and then altering the bios to boot from the USB drive.
When the importing has finished I'll reboot Volumio and then attempt to load the OS onto the Cubi's internal drive.
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Post by Slinger on Jun 25, 2020 17:27:08 GMT
Yay! Booted from the Cubi, and music is playing.
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Post by Tim on Jun 25, 2020 23:06:57 GMT
Yahoo, jobs a good un' |
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Post by Tim on Jun 26, 2020 8:15:03 GMT
When the importing has finished I'll reboot Volumio and then attempt to load the OS onto the Cubi's internal drive. I haven't got around to this yet, so would be interested to know how you get on?
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Post by Slinger on Jun 26, 2020 11:50:10 GMT
When the importing has finished I'll reboot Volumio and then attempt to load the OS onto the Cubi's internal drive. I haven't got around to this yet, so would be interested to know how you get on?
There's no need for the techie mumbo-jumbo any more, Tim. There's now an option within Volumio to transfer the OS directly to your HD, which is what I did. One caveat, it will wipe EVERYTHING from your SSD. |
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Post by Slinger on Jun 26, 2020 12:05:39 GMT
I should have said, you can find the option in "System," Tim.  |
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Post by Tim on Jun 26, 2020 12:08:26 GMT
Now see, I looked for that option recently after reading someone say it's in the settings, but couldn't find it.
I'm going to have another go, senior moment I guess - or just plain stoooopid!
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I'm a recovered tinkerer as well as a recovered audiophile, so I very much doubt I'll be joining in as much. I'm just going to play music and won't try 'fixing' it until it breaks. Still very impressed with the sound quality and it's simplicity, it certainly seems very stable on the Atom board. Couldn't get the Last.fm scrobbler plug-in to work, so I uninstalled it. 