BeagleBone Black MPD Music Server

[haisaikat]

I will be connecting BBB through wired network to the router. Now I have to connect my smartphone/tab to the same LAN. Which is not possible without wifi. This is necessary for the MPD controller "DroidMpd", Installed on my mobile, to control the music server on BBB via LAN.

Do shoot me with questions until it is clear to you.

I think you have taken the right approach for networking. I have suffered from using a wifi dongle and powered hubs for such bearbone devices. Many a time the dongle used to draw too much power from the board causing it to hang at times when the power adapter fell short of power. I found that USB powered hubs were as short of this extra power as 5V, 1A adapters. So I had to switch to 5V 2.5A adapters instead which too did not completely eliminate this problem but have of course minimized it. All gets resolved if I use wired LAN instead of USB over wifi.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

That's interesting ...and somewhat disconcerting to those of us who never thought of wiring our houses for LAN. For me, it is an absolute requirement, as the essential purpose of the box (like my Squeezebox) is not to act as a standalone media player, but because I have no practical way of running analogue cables from computer to hifi.

The Wandboard has, I think, built-in wifi. But, although we might mention other hard or software in passing, I don't want to distract focus from the BBB story...

 

[koushik]

> From page 1
Connected the uSD card to the PC using a card reader:

• Written the Debian Linux Wheezy Image to the microSD card from PC using Win32 Disk Image.
• Put the microSD card into BBB's uSD card slot and powered the board for the first time. BBB will copy the image to the eMMC flash memory.
• After image copy is finished, connected the Ethernet port. BBB will boot into Debian Linux

Then few Linux Shell Commands to configure the OS and MPD to do Kernel streaming, disable any DSP etc and update the music library ...

I will share in details, the commands to setup and configure BBB as MPD music server that I learned from different forums.

Installed the MPDroid app on my phone and it is working like charm.

The BBB is up and running ...

My USB-to-SPDIF converter still hasn't reached me, so I am testing the the output using a logitech USB headphone
So can't really comment on the quality yet but the thing is ready to get transfered to my main Stereo setup.

to be continued...

 

[koushik]

Here are some more photos -

 

[gobble]

IMHO, using such barebones tiny boards is a bad choice for audio because
1. They have only USB connector that too a mini-A one at that. Which means you cannot upgrade to various audiophile USB A-B type cables for better SQ and lose your choices completely.
2. There is no Wifi integrated, so you cannot easily use your android as a remote without spending an additional 2K on ethernet-Wifi bridge adaptor. Which means the total cost goes up to more than 6K if the board costs 3K.
3. Typical users end up trashing the main benefit of using such low power devices by using a mains connected power supply rather than a low ripple continuous trickle charge circuit with LifePO4 or better battery.
4. USB interrupt load shared between disk drive and audio output and usb-Wifi when using usb bridge to plug in usb-disk and usb-wifi adaptor. IMHO a complete let down of goals of audiophile playback. One has to carefully observe which usb ports are triggering which interrupts and select an unused port for the audio. Impossible with a single USB board.

I would suggest you abandon this board and use it for non-audio apps and switch to a fanless ITX board with multiple USB A type ports and on-board wifi+eth and eSATA ports.

Do not be carried away by all the ruckus on the internet about these board with "audiophile" splashed around without understanding the many compromises you make from a Linux optimization perspective. hyeah:

--G0bble

 

[haisaikat]

IMHO, using such barebones tiny boards is a bad choice for audio because
1. They have only USB connector that too a mini-A one at that. Which means you cannot upgrade to various audiophile USB A-B type cables for better SQ and lose your choices completely.
2. There is no Wifi integrated, so you cannot easily use your android as a remote without spending an additional 2K on ethernet-Wifi bridge adaptor. Which means the total cost goes up to more than 6K if the board costs 3K.
3. Typical users end up trashing the main benefit of using such low power devices by using a mains connected power supply rather than a low ripple continuous trickle charge circuit with LifePO4 or better battery.
4. USB interrupt load shared between disk drive and audio output and usb-Wifi when using usb bridge to plug in usb-disk and usb-wifi adaptor. IMHO a complete let down of goals of audiophile playback. One has to carefully observe which usb ports are triggering which interrupts and select an unused port for the audio. Impossible with a single USB board.

I would suggest you abandon this board and use it for non-audio apps and switch to a fanless ITX board with multiple USB A type ports and on-board wifi+eth and eSATA ports.

Do not be carried away by all the ruckus on the internet about these board with "audiophile" splashed around without understanding the many compromises you make from a Linux optimization perspective. hyeah:

--G0bble

I think this board does have a proper female USB port on the left hand side as appears from picture. My RPi has Two such ports. As for interrupt sharing, kousik has used wired ethernet hence usb is only free for his spdif converter. Although I am linux novice but still "I want to" believe that there is certain amount of incentive in not using an optimized all purpose windows OS for audio listening even with higher hardwares.

Of course such barebone devices were made primarily for one reason which is reuse of your existing things. So if you need to buy everything separate for as high as the cost of the device, I believe that is overexpenditure but at the same time not enough to stop an audio enthusiast from experimenting

In my opinion kousik has started a thread on an initiative using BB which I did not see earlier by anyone else over here. So let us give him the credit and the encouragement for him to venture further so that everyone can benefit from the outcome no matter which way it goes

 

[jawedsoft]

IMHO, using such barebones tiny boards is a bad choice for audio because
1. They have only USB connector that too a mini-A one at that. Which means you cannot upgrade to various audiophile USB A-B type cables for better SQ and lose your choices completely.
2. There is no Wifi integrated, so you cannot easily use your android as a remote without spending an additional 2K on ethernet-Wifi bridge adaptor. Which means the total cost goes up to more than 6K if the board costs 3K.
3. Typical users end up trashing the main benefit of using such low power devices by using a mains connected power supply rather than a low ripple continuous trickle charge circuit with LifePO4 or better battery.
4. USB interrupt load shared between disk drive and audio output and usb-Wifi when using usb bridge to plug in usb-disk and usb-wifi adaptor. IMHO a complete let down of goals of audiophile playback. One has to carefully observe which usb ports are triggering which interrupts and select an unused port for the audio. Impossible with a single USB board.

I would suggest you abandon this board and use it for non-audio apps and switch to a fanless ITX board with multiple USB A type ports and on-board wifi+eth and eSATA ports.

Do not be carried away by all the ruckus on the internet about these board with "audiophile" splashed around without understanding the many compromises you make from a Linux optimization perspective. hyeah:

--G0bble

I am sorry..but I dont' agree with this...certainly not with a generalisation that small boards won't give good performance.

I suggest that you look at the Raspberry Pi. You will be pleasantly surprised.
I am using it as a headless player for the last few weeks. All other things remaining equal, it sounds better than sound from Galaxy Note, Galaxy S, Transcend MP3, Dell Laptop. I am not using any external DAC.

Also there are custom OS for Raspberry which are made specifically for audiophiles which provide for far less jitter and higher SNR.

Maybe it won't sound better than a 20k CDP but at less than 4k its awesome.

regards,
Jawed

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

G0bble, If it works, it works, and one has saved oneself all that trouble! :lol:

 

[koushik]

Gobble,

I am a music lover and very finicky about sound quality. Though I am very very hopeful about the project but let me tell you it will not take even a day to discard this if I find it not to be an excellent file transport to match up with my present system, regradless of price.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Great! Let's see how your story unfolds

 

[gobble]

As for interrupt sharing, kousik has used wired ethernet hence usb is only free for his spdif converter.

Hi Saikat,
I was talking about the generic case. Using wired means your "portable" device is now locked into one place and not so portable anymore.

Although I am linux novice but still "I want to" believe that there is certain amount of incentive in not using an optimized all purpose windows OS for audio listening even with higher hardwares.

:clapping: I am glad you are down that path already.

In my opinion kousik has started a thread on an initiative using BB which I did not see earlier by anyone else over here. So let us give him the credit and the encouragement for him to venture further so that everyone can benefit from the outcome no matter which way it goes

Yes of course. I am as much interested in his experience as you are. Just a side note though - we have too many threads spawned on the same thing. Perhaps, this should be merged with the Lets go Digital thread?

I am sorry..but I dont' agree with this...certainly not with a generalisation that small boards won't give good performance.

I suggest that you look at the Raspberry Pi. You will be pleasantly surprised.
I am using it as a headless player for the last few weeks. All other things remaining equal, it sounds better than sound from Galaxy Note, Galaxy S, Transcend MP3, Dell Laptop. I am not using any external DAC.

Also there are custom OS for Raspberry which are made specifically for audiophiles which provide for far less jitter and higher SNR.

Maybe it won't sound better than a 20k CDP but at less than 4k its awesome.

regards,
Jawed

Hi Jawed,
No doubt it will give better performance than Android. In that sense, the BB or any small device may be considered useful and besting other options. What I am saying is that you start with compromises on a small board and the same audiophile customized Linux will sound better on a bigger board with a minimum requisite number of I/O ports.

I use Linux in a headless configuration too, since last year actually. I looked at the small boards and it did not take me long to rule them out. I settled on a E-350 AMD chipset ITX board with a CM350 PSU rather than buy one of these stunted boards with no "arms and limbs". The logic was that i would not compromise on I/O ports separation but would temporarily compromise on lack of battery power with a slightly better than mass market PSU, with the idea that either I would fix the SMPS deficiency with power conditioning at a later stage or migrate to a BB or raspberry style battery powered board later when products with multiple USB ports, ethernet and onboard linux compatible WiFi opensource chipset came along.

G0bble, If it works, it works, and one has saved oneself all that trouble! :lol:

Sure you can get better sound, but when the same OS install and tweaks can give you even better sound simply by choosing different hardware why not?

G0bble

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Yes, of course.

I had to apply tweaks to my system to get it to work at all, let alone sound better --- but found myself relieved of having to worry about such things when I discovered KXStudio. some of the linux guys, like rnbc, for instance, have done wonders at sorting out some of the lower-level stuff like intereupts, to make Linux work well for audio.

 

[gobble]

Yes, of course.

I had to apply tweaks to my system to get it to work at all, let alone sound better --- but found myself relieved of having to worry about such things when I discovered KXStudio. some of the linux guys, like rnbc, for instance, have done wonders at sorting out some of the lower-level stuff like intereupts, to make Linux work well for audio.

Thad
Is that what you are running? Do you really drive that Ferrari (KXStudios) to purchase potatoes (jitter free playback) at the local market? :lol:

I gotta come to Chennai local markets to see the sight ... "that crazy Firang" with a Ferrari at the vegetable market hyeah:

--G0bble

 

[koushik]

I think this board does have a proper female USB port on the left hand side as appears from picture. My RPi has Two such ports. As for interrupt sharing, kousik has used wired ethernet hence usb is only free for his spdif converter.

Yes that is right. It has a proper USB 2.0 port.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Is that what you are running? Do you really drive that Ferrari (KXStudios) to purchase potatoes (jitter free playback) at the local market?

Yes, indeed... I'm a confirmed KXer

(Apart from the KDE desktop: I use MATE)

 

[sam9s]

HI,

I achieved the same using my CubieBoard, with Voyage MPD, however the experiment lasted only a month as I had to shift to my new flat (still in process) and my focus shifted to my terrace home theatre. Plus my NAS USB audio out was working perfectly, so didnt bother to re config the same. But your thread has re inspired me. I will in all probability re configure my cubieboard with voyage, once I shift to my new house and my HT setup is complete.

But would love to see how you configure the same. Keep it up.

 

[koushik]

Hi Guys,

Just came across a article about Arch Linux:

What do you think about this article: http://42gems.com/blog/?p=149

 

[gobble]

Hi Guys,

Just came across a article about Arch Linux:

What do you think about this article: http://42gems.com/blog/?p=149

For the BB or like boards, just install the readymade audiophile linux images. Unless you know how to build a custom linux system by hand.
Where are you based BTW?
G0bble

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

My prejudice: I prefer things with "studio" in the name over things with "audiophile" claims :lol:.

koushik, i can say yes to everything in that Arch write-up, but when it comes to actually doing it, the Ubuntu-type installation is so straightforward, and it is not only beginners that like to have some help with not screwing up the other several OSs on their hard disk. Whether that is a good enough reason it's hard to say: does something one does one day justify all the other days?

As per above, I use something called KXStudio. The reason, offtopic, is that I needed to use "JACK" as I was using a Firewire device. KXStudio, far from being a monster itself, actually tames JACK. I have now got so used to the Cadence tools and stuff, that I find it hard to imagine working any other way. I think someone on LinuxMusicians.com got KX working on a Raspi, not sure now.

It's a bit like an old friend of mine, who, as a mother of three, said, "I absolutely cannot think of any good reason for anyone ever getting pregnant." ... I cannot think of a good reason for music listeners to take on JACK, especially without the Cadence front end.

 

[koushik]

Where are you based BTW?
G0bble

I am from Kolkata ...