BeagleBone Black MPD Music Server

[grubyhalo]

Ah, OK. Oldie but goodie from what I've heard...

 

[indialogue]

This is a good option with I2S connectivity

A lot of the DAC boards on Ebay also have I2S connectivity options, but they are more DIY and require a bit of work

 

[koushik]

Thanks! I have heard about this DAC but really don't how it flare against other known DAC available around that price range.

Do you have any idea about its sound quality?

 

[grubyhalo]

I'd probably suggest going with the ODac and connect the I2S from the BBB directly to the input line of the DAC chip, by-passing the XMOS USB chip. Not too expensive to risk trying. Atleast, it makes sense in my head...

 

[gobble]

Stop Meee...... My fingers are about to click on order now ...

The CuBox-i4Pro CuBox

eSATA for Audio storage, SDCard for Linux Install, Separate USB, onboard Wifi, Ethernet, IRDA for remote ... :licklips:

By the time I wake up I will have ordered this. hyeah:

Cost Effective? If I were to buy a fanless Mobo 3.5K, RAM, 2K, Chassis, 3K for a good one. This one is less than 9K with import duties an all in one package. :clapping:

No Linear PSU though ... :sad: Which means at least another $100 investment for it or a battery trickle charger somewhere either DIY or more if I end up buying a product.

Convenience? 100%.

Somebody posted a link to this in another thread, cant figure out which now, but thanks whoever it is... hyeah:

~G0bble

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Is it going to be an audio streamer? What were your reasons for going for (I assume it's ordered by now --- unless you fell asleep over the mouse. :lol: (In which case you might wake up to find you've ordered 100 )) the most expensive one?

 

[gobble]

Is it going to be an audio streamer? What were your reasons for going for (I assume it's ordered by now --- unless you fell asleep over the mouse. :lol: (In which case you might wake up to find you've ordered 100 )) the most expensive one?

:lol: no I ordered one dreamily in my sleep then woke up with a rude shock when the sms came in with damages to my credit card .

This ia for an esata hdd based local music playback pc. The idea is that a low power device will make it more feasible and affordable to find or build a power supply that is off the mains (or a linear one).

Currently I use a pc that pollutes the mains power and amplifier signal with RF/EMI as well as the usb audio signal with DC power ripples from the smps.

~G0bble

 

[dips0502]

I have been yearning to order the CuBox myself. Probably will do so in a few days time. Are you sure though that its less than 9k including duty and shipping?

 

[gobble]

159 dollars with power charger and shipping. Ok hitting +10k now if duties are added... I missed adding up the duty part but there is a good lottery chance it wont be taxed.


~G0bble

 

[indialogue]

Did you order the Pro over the Ultra (USD20 difference) just for peace of mind or are there any other applications you're thinking of? I don't think a streaming box really needs a quad-core processor unless you're planning to enable transcoding or internet-streaming

 

[dips0502]

I missed adding up the duty part but there is a good lottery chance it wont be taxed.

I was taxed 30 percent on the Topping TP 20 :annoyed:

 

[koushik]

Topping is alright but import duty for computer motherboards are very less I think. Around 4% or so.

 

[indialogue]

I was taxed 30 percent on the Topping TP 20 :annoyed:

This is a PC, or if the customs cant understand that, then its a computer peripheral and they are rarely taxed, and if that, then in single digits. I think he will be fine

 

[koushik]

Did you order the Pro over the Ultra (USD20 difference) just for peace of mind or are there any other applications you're thinking of? I don't think a streaming box really needs a quad-core processor unless you're planning to enable transcoding or internet-streaming

I would agree with that, it is a bit overkill IMO. But I would love to get corrected if that makes subtle improvement in SQ.

 

[indialogue]

I would agree with that, it is a bit overkill IMO. But I would love to get corrected if that makes subtle improvement in SQ.

Dont get me wrong, I'm always one for overkill and futureproofing, especially if the outlay is just 1000 bucks more :lol:

From my experience, I dont think the processor will make much of a difference to SQ, what will is the amount of RAM as the software player can then cache more data into RAM and reduce reads from the HDD/NAS. For 1000 bucks more you are getting double the RAM and double the cores of an Ultra, so definitely a better choice (hadn't noticed the RAM difference earlier)

 

[gobble]

Hi,
Who knows if tomorrow an audiophile quality opensource equalizer or dynamic room correction software will be published in the next few years... a few extra cores will help. Besides currently on my dual core setup MPD uses 4 threads. After many excruciating hours of listening compulsively over the last 6 months, I also found a correlation between seperation, noise floor and amount of cpu load - even with the cpu load at levels of a steady 7% versus when its only the occasional peak at 3%. The contention for cpu cores and resulting scheduling latencies, and electrical backplane noise are things I want to minimize. Currently I use a low latency kernel. On the cube I will use realtime. This week I will compile rt for my current pc as well.

~G0bble

 

[indialogue]

Hi,
Who knows if tomorrow an audiophile quality opensource equalizer or dynamic room correction software will be published in the next few years... a few extra cores will help. Besides currently on my dual core setup MPD uses 4 threads. After many excruciating hours of listening compulsively over the last 6 months, I also found a correlation between seperation, noise floor and amount of cpu load - even with the cpu load at levels of a steady 7% versus the occasional 3%. The contention for cpu cores and resulting scheduling latencies, and electrical backplane noise are things I want to minimize. Currently I use a low latency kernel. On the cube I will use realtime. This week I will compile rt for my current pc as well.

~G0bble

Very interesting. Which RT kernel are you looking to use?

 

[gobble]

Very interesting. Which RT kernel are you looking to use?

I will have to download the kernel source patch it with realtime patch and compile on my more powerful desktop with target pc architecture. All the linux mint kernels seem to lack a matching realtime version when I follow the sub release decimal numbers. I boot in headless console mode only ofcourse. The cube OS wil be a handrolled custom built most likely - I havent studied the other audiophile flavors deeply yet.

PS: sorry to hijack this thread. I will start a new one when it arrives or rather update the "lets go digital" thread. Let the original discussion continue....

~G0bble

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Hi,
Who knows if tomorrow an audiophile quality opensource equalizer or dynamic room correction software will be published in the next few years...

Equalisers are there aplenty. I use Calf plugins with their own stand-alone host. I haven't looked for Linux room correction software.

a few extra cores will help. Besides currently on my dual core setup MPD uses 4 threads. After many excruciating hours of listening compulsively over the last 6 months, I also found a correlation between seperation, noise floor and amount of cpu load - even with the cpu load at levels of a steady 7% versus when its only the occasional peak at 3%

.
I can lock my 3.2 Ghz, 4-core pc down to 0.8Ghz, and it is fine for playing music while using the resource-heavy firefox/thunderbird! It draws the line at HD Youtube video+sound, though: that just stalls. Can do it at the next step (on the CPU Freq applet) of 2.1 ghz, although, for that, I'd probably just lock to "performance" which fixes the cpu freq at max. I'd do that for any recording/editing work, too. Of course, I wouldn't be browsing whil doing that.

I guess this stuff applies to any linux device, so not too offtopic from the BBB. But, hey, yes... start that dedicated thread for your device!

The contention for cpu cores and resulting scheduling latencies, and electrical backplane noise are things I want to minimize.

Thanks to the work done by rnbc (I think you mentioned the IRQ balancing setup in another post somewhere) this should not be too much problem.

Currently I use a low latency kernel. On the cube I will use realtime. This week I will compile rt for my current pc as well.

Probably you want to do this as a satisfying technical exercise anyway, but it is really not necessary. I don't know about other distributions, but KXStudio comes with standard low-latency kernel. Bear in mind that studio users and music makers are driving their systems waaay beyond anything that us mere listeners are ever going to do.

I had to fix my kernel level at 3.2, because of Compiz/ATI-video dependencies, but I can say that the low-latency kernel is more stable and better at playing music than any RT kernel I used earlier.

(Upside of sticking at 3.2: I missed out on the experience of finding that, at some kernel version, some USB DACs stopped working!)

Raspberyy pi relevant... Raspberry Pi gets its own sound card

 

[gobble]

Well Thad

Equalisers are there aplenty. I use Calf plugins with their own stand-alone host. I haven't looked for Linux room correction software.

The MPD volume control bandied about as using highly sophisticated algorithm for dithering increases the noise floor on my setup. So I am skeptical about any software based EQ as well. But as it happened, I screwed my system by moving too many things around and the sub placement is all wrong now - I just might have to experiment with EQ the coming weekend to get some decent punch at 40hz if moving the sub around doesn't work.

I can lock my 3.2 Ghz, 4-core pc down to 0.8Ghz, and it is fine for playing music while using the resource-heavy firefox/thunderbird! It draws the line at HD Youtube video+sound, though: that just stalls. Can do it at the next step (on the CPU Freq applet) of 2.1 ghz, although, for that, I'd probably just lock to "performance" which fixes the cpu freq at max. I'd do that for any recording/editing work, too. Of course, I wouldn't be browsing whil doing that.

That was an idea I was toying with for log before I even setup my PC, but never implemented. Thanks for the reminder, I am going to try that too this weekend.


KXStudio uses the GUI and dozens of packages I don't need. Besides that I have reviewed the kernel related tweaks for audio in Linux and I am pretty confident it will use the same tweaks as I have already setup and can setup easily. Rather than install a hulk of a GUI with its apps and have a dozen user processes running under Gnome or KDE, all my console mode linux ever runs is ONE single userland process - MPD. Everything else you will see in the linux top command on my system is either a kernel thread, or an ssh session I have logged into or an interrupt or housekeeping program.

Think about it this way - Rather than start with a lot of fat and struggle to shed weight, I would rather start with a lean sculpted figure and maintain it that way hyeah: Of course I could start with KXStudio and with a single configuration change boot into text mode only so that all that lard and fat never gets to juggle around the waist of my OS, but my current proof-of-concept Linux mint setup used up all the 6GB of the primary partition I had planned for and around twice, the setup failed with 100% partition usage. I had to move /usr /var /and /tmp to my Audio partition and create a symlink to generate 1.6GB of free space and give it some breathing room.

I expect the hand rolled Linux install to be about 300MB max on disk.

~G0bble