Let's talk digital!

[ranjeetrain]

Sorry, but if I comment on this I'll get thrown out.

Why Thad? Nothing like that.

My non-participation here is only due to the fact that if I do participate, I would be constantly altering my original story and it would keep getting influenced by the discussion on the thread.

While all the discussion here is very useful, I don't want to get into that for the fear of losing grip from the original line I have thought for this.

Hope I am understood correctly.


"By the way, if someone could throw some light on the dual PC setup (JPlay and JRiver)"

That's under works

 

[haisaikat]

Can I ask a dumb question?

Why is it that CPU and DMA and bus locking and contention and jitter and interrupts and all the low level problems is causing issues with audio reproduction.. However video which contains audio as well and arguably requires 10x the resources, seems to do a reasonably realistic job on even an average computer?

We can even watch videos reliably (with audio) on pint sized phones and tablets. Why is jitter and io contention not an issue when watching an entire movie on a cell phone or a device like roku or popcorn hour or apple TV?

I am not trying to be snarky, really. But why dedicated audio servers? And why get this low level?

I do not have answer to all but I believe (and of course someone can keep me honest) when we are watching a BD for say we care more of the 5.1 / 7.1 surround effect and thumps more than the pure dedicated stereo effect where we (and all of us here) are evaluating highs, mids, etc in detail. Also this has been discussed in great length that the same priced stereo and AVR do not produce same level of details / amplifications. It is when our amplification gear becomes capable if amplifying the errors / jitters then we start worrying.

I have several friends and colleagues who still feels that the playback of music through their 5K INR media player and AVR over hdmi is still serving all the purpose but even they say sometimes that wav-s are sounding better than flacs, may be their media player with limited resources than dedicated pcs are not doing a fair enough job decompressing flacs.

 

[koushik]

And that is the reason someone said very aptly, "5.1 surround sound is poor men's stereo"

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Why Thad? Nothing like that.

ranjeet, no, I don't mean you, or the vast majority of our members, but I have found out the hard way that there are toes that don't like being trodden on, and they bite.

It might have been better for you to put your writing in the form of an article. If subsequent discussion causes you to change your mind about any content, you can always amend or go to V.2.

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Can I ask a dumb question?

Why is it that CPU and DMA and bus locking and contention and jitter and interrupts and all the low level problems is causing issues with audio reproduction.. However video which contains audio as well and arguably requires 10x the resources, seems to do a reasonably realistic job on even an average computer?

It doesn't cause issues. Maybe the HT people are more content to just sit back and watch the movies, without worrying about file extensions, CPU Mhz and so on. If so, then they are the ones with the right idea.

Why is jitter and io contention not an issue when watching an entire movie on a cell phone or a device like roku or popcorn hour or apple TV?

I'm sure you have asked yourself if the people throwing these words around actually know what they mean. Not that I'm saying that I do, but knowing what one doesn't know is a good start.

I am not trying to be snarky, really. But why dedicated audio servers? And why get this low level?

cf Virtual Machines. People love the idea. I had this disagreement with a guy on another forum who thought, wouldn't it be great to set up VMs on his PC, each to do a different taks, eg file serving, print serving, audio serving, blah serving, etc. He could not get the pint that even Windows does all that, without the overhead of each and every VM, and that what he was proposing was a horrible, absurd, technical mess. But there are people selling exactly that kind of mess to IT directors: people buy the oddest of ideas

... they say sometimes that wav-s are sounding better than flacs, may be their media player with limited resources than dedicated pcs are not doing a fair enough job decompressing flacs.

In the most respectful way, they have to be doubted. I am not saying disbelieved, but doubted. The impossible sometimes happens, but when it is claimed, then it has to be tested blind (at least informally) before digging into why it has become possible. That digging is then, usually, really, really hard and sometimes (especially with Microsoft; just my professionale experience) completely impossible, and conclusions, jumped to, are no better than guesses.

(Of course, guesses can sometimes be right)

 

[haisaikat]

In the most respectful way, they have to be doubted. I am not saying disbelieved, but doubted. The impossible sometimes happens, but when it is claimed, then it has to be tested blind (at least informally) before digging into why it has become possible. That digging is then, usually, really, really hard and sometimes (especially with Microsoft; just my professionale experience) completely impossible, and conclusions, jumped to, are no better than guesses.

(Of course, guesses can sometimes be right)

I would be happy to agree with you. Not that I did not doubt but I think I need to visit and judge myself although my ears may not be that "resolution-ed" to be able to judge that since I think many flacs and 320kbps sound the same to me. Perhaps blind test with those colleagues might be a better idea

 

[asliarun]

I do not have answer to all but I believe (and of course someone can keep me honest) when we are watching a BD for say we care more of the 5.1 / 7.1 surround effect and thumps more than the pure dedicated stereo effect where we (and all of us here) are evaluating highs, mids, etc in detail. Also this has been discussed in great length that the same priced stereo and AVR do not produce same level of details / amplifications. It is when our amplification gear becomes capable if amplifying the errors / jitters then we start worrying.

I have several friends and colleagues who still feels that the playback of music through their 5K INR media player and AVR over hdmi is still serving all the purpose but even they say sometimes that wav-s are sounding better than flacs, may be their media player with limited resources than dedicated pcs are not doing a fair enough job decompressing flacs.

You make a valid point about surround systems not being as revealing as stereo systems. Ranjeet has also mentioned this in his posts.

However you misunderstood my earlier post.

I was trying to compare video quality with audio quality, not audio quality on different setups.

My contention was that high definition video plays remarkably well even on cheap systems and handhelds. We do not detect the video equivalents of jitter etc. even on these budget systems and handhelds. I mean frame freeze, tearing etc. And arguably man is a visual creature first so we should be highly sensitive to detecting artifacts and issues with video. Yet we don't. Or so I think

So why the variability with audio that consumes a fraction of system resources compared to video?

I actually do have a theory. Our brain extrapolates a great deal more with audio than with video. Perhaps our brain evolved and adapted trying to convert imperfect audio inputs into something meaningful. Not so for visual inputs since we are mostly visual creatures to begin with, so errors in extrapolation would actually risk us getting removed from the evolutionary gene pool (more risk of injury and death).

That is why we are afraid of the dark but not so much by silence or an annoying noise.

And because of this excessive extrapolation and interpolation that our brain does, minute changes in audio could theoretically cause huge variances in our perception of a given audio input.

 

[haisaikat]

We do not detect the video equivalents of jitter etc.

I think there are errors but we do not perceive them grossly because video is too much data that we cannot memorize easily unlike audio where we memorize all the different instruments playing and for all future playbacks we compare that with what we had heard earlier. But in case of video there may be distortions in the transmission resulting in artifacts that our eyes overlook unless we compare each of the 24 frames one by one with the original reel.

 

[msagar]

My first digital system (still in use):
Wadia 121 transport (acts as a digital transport) with four Ipod classics > wadia 151 > paradigm studio 20 monitors. ( Tara labs cables)

My second digital system:
Mac mini > musical fidelity USB to coax convertor > old Adcom GDA 700 DA converter > arcam delta amp > spica tc 50 (audioquest cables) all audio products are approx. 20 years old except musical fidelity.

My third digital system for high res music:
MacBook Pro > dacmagic plus (soon to be upgraded) > AES pre > AES power > monitor audio (MIT cables)

I prefer high res files to cd quality files. Please do not start a new discussion on low vs high res files.

I use Amarra with Macs.

 

[ranjeetrain]

^^^

Surely a digital guy!

How does Wadia 121 compares to MacMini as a transport? I did consider the Wadia route in past as I do have an iPod (not in use anymore) but didn't materialize. Do you find it better, or equivalent to MacMini?

 

[msagar]

With 121 music files are limited to 16/44, whereas Mac Mini gives you flexibility and you can play high resolution files.

With Mac Mini using Amarra not itunes, the Sound Quality is excellent. My audio friends claim Mini with SSD is a better transport than conventional drive.

 

[reignofchaos]

Had a wadia 121 for a while. It is not in the same league as a basic pc .

 

[vijwilso]

Can I ask a dumb question?

Why is it that CPU and DMA and bus locking and contention and jitter and interrupts and all the low level problems is causing issues with audio reproduction.. However video which contains audio as well and arguably requires 10x the resources, seems to do a reasonably realistic job on even an average computer?

We can even watch videos reliably (with audio) on pint sized phones and tablets. Why is jitter and io contention not an issue when watching an entire movie on a cell phone or a device like roku or popcorn hour or apple TV?

I am not trying to be snarky, really. But why dedicated audio servers? And why get this low level?

I was watching some of the cover tracks in you tube video by kappa TV , amazed with the quality of audio in it. I thought it was as good as the other hires downloads I have. The I turned off the monitor and just listened to the audio alone , it sounded average , video helps !!!!

I recently started using the nexus 7 as transport with the dragonfly DAC , it showed improvement over the PC which had been optimized for audio with the decent power supply. I think CPU power might not be very important.

The improvement might be due to the clean bettery power from nexus and lightweight OS

I think , clean power to the DAC if it draws power from USB, less noicy , less interrupted transport is more important and better compared the one with more overheads - that includes os , electronic components , number of running process , VMs , hw/sw intterupts etc

 

[koushik]

Ya that is very true. The two points you have mentioned are similar to my experience. Average or even below average audio sounds decent when video is there.

Also about the clean power. When I was using Xonar STX, it turned to be very clean sounding when I upgraded my SMPS to a basic Corsair PSU. The improvement was very apparent. Imaging was a notch higher. I would say 10-15% improvement by swapping Rs. 450 to Rs. 2800 psu.

 

[marX]

Ya that is very true. The two points you have mentioned are similar to my experience. Average or even below average audio sounds decent when video is there.

Also about the clean power. When I was using Xonar STX, it turned to be very clean sounding when I upgraded my SMPS to a basic Corsair PSU. The improvement was very apparent. Imaging was a notch higher. I would say 10-15% improvement by swapping Rs. 450 to Rs. 2800 psu.

Same here.

I had a zebronics PSU and there was this hum which was very irritating. It stopped when I upgraded my PSU to the Seasonic (G550 Gold). The new UPS I got also helps I guess (APC Smart 750).

 

[ranjeetrain]

Daphile in a two-computer setup

My sincere apologies for the delay in bringing the next in this Digital Audio series, specially to those people who wrote to me reminding me about this thread. Thank you very much for your reminders and kind words. Those words were motivating. I have been busy with a number of things and now that I am back I'll be adding more.

Though I am a bit rusty and will have to go back to see where I left off, for the time being I am gonna talk about how to use a Two-computer setup to enhance your music playback. I would be using Daphile to illustrate my point, which in my system worked much better than off the shelf Windows and popular Linux distros.

Daphile is an Operating System for music only purposes. I have worked with Daphile author/lead developer Kimio on off-and-on basis and the understanding I have of Daphile as of my last interaction is that Daphile would be targeted to be licensed as a firmware. Daphile is available for free download as of now at Daphile Digital Music Convenience for Audiophiles and invites testers to install and test.

I downloaded Daphile and gave it a spin. After trying out Daphile I can say its a poor mans alternate to JPlay. People who want to experience the benefits of a two-computer playback are encouraged to try Daphile, which is free as of now. An FM who has probably used paid versions of JRiver/JPlay has heard Daphile in my system and was impressed. I am sure most people who dont use very high end system will be mighty pleased with Daphile. (Save for quirks that are often a part and parcel of Linux based software).

Some facts before I jump into showing how to use Daphile.

(1) Daphile is a music only OS. That is, it will only do one thing, play music. The computer on which Daphile is running becomes unusable for any other purpose (such as using it as a download client). Technically speaking, it cant be used as a singular frugal install without rendering a system useless for other purposes.

(2) Daphile is a headless OS. That is, the computer on which Daphile is running cant use any IO devices. That is, using a full scale desktop/loptop is a waste of resource to run Daphile. Daphile doesnt need/use a keyboard/mouse for its purpose. The best devices for running Daphile are low-power, low-voltage devices such as Raspberry.

(3) Since Daphile is a headless OS, you must use another device (a computer/tablet) to control it. Daphile is only controllable through a web interface. Any device which is capable of running a browser with HTML 4 support can access Daphile. Any and every access to a Daphile running device is only through a web-client. That is, both administration and user access is through the same user interface.

(4) So far I have only tested Daphile with x86/x64 devices. Chances are that it can work with other hardware architecture as well.

(5) An important piece of information which should be documented but is not: If Daphile is running on a device with a display, the resolution of the display should be a minimum of 1024x768. However, Daphile author is constantly working on various aspects and this might have changed in newer releases. Bottomline is that: The device running Daphile must have a standard display resolution and must have a minimum resolution. For current release the minimum resolution (perhaps) is 800x600. If you need to run a Daphile on a device with a non-standard display or a display not meeting the minimum resolution criteria, you must tweak it. I'll cover that as a part of advance configuration of Daphile.

(6) More details can be had from the Daphile site. I am not repeating the information already present on the Daphile site. Some specifics will be covered soon in this tutorial.
​

***********************************************
Stuff you will need:
***********************************************

Now that we have covered the basics, lets see how to run Daphile as music only OS on a standard desktop/laptop. To be able to try it you will need to have the following:

(1) A computer for downloading Daphile distribution binary. This computer can be running any OS that allows you to follow the steps given in this tutorial. In this tutorial I will show you how to do it on Microsoft Windows (Hey, the CEO is a desi guy now, quit hating the MS, will ya).

(2) An Internet connection. The size of download is about 200 MB. Any connection including a 3G connection on phone should do for such a small download.

(3) A USB flash drive. Minimum required is 256 MB. But a 4GB or higher is recommended. With a slightly high capacity (say 32GB drive, you can actually have a good working music system running off a USB drive).

(4) A computer to run Daphile. You many use the same computer as the one in step 1, but you will need two computers (devices) in total to run Daphile in any configuration. If you want to use the same computer to run Daphile, you will need another device such a Smartphone with a Browser and Wi-Fi, or a Tablet with Wi-Fi.

This computer must be able to boot from a USB drive. 1 GHz or faster processor with 1 GB or more RAM is recommended. It must also have an Ethernet port or on-board Wi-Fi.

(5) A controller computer. This controller computer (or smart phone or tablet) just needs to be able to run a Web browser over Wi-Fi. See above, you can choose any two devices for any of the two roles so long as the device where you intend to run Daphile is based on an x86/x64 processor.

(6) A NAS, if you intend to play your music from a NAS. You can also use any computer sharing your music collection. Daphile supports multiple file sharing protocol, hence, you can access a shared folder hosted by most OSs. However, this equipment is optional. To test drive Daphile, you dont need this.

(7) A Router with DHCP capability and two or more unused LAN ports or Wi-Fi capable of supporting two-three more devices.

(8) Ethernet cables, if you intend to have a wired connection. Ethernet cables are optional. You can also use a wireless connection but connection will not be as good as a wired connection, even with the cheapest of cables. However, if you do want to access your music from a NAS device, a wired connection is very highly recommended.​

Once you have everything together you are ready to go. There would be three parts of this tutorial:

(1) Installation of Daphile
(2) Simple configuration
(3) Advanced configuration​

To begin with I will only do the part I. I will do the part II and III only if there is a further interest.






​

To be continued...

 

[jls001]

It might have been better for you to put your writing in the form of an article. If subsequent discussion causes you to change your mind about any content, you can always amend or go to V.2.

+1.

This should be a reference "how-to" article that we can refer to when setting up a digital playback system, or troubleshooting and improving an existing one. I had really hoped to learn a neat tricks from this great initiative but right now, there is so much clutter that I can't make out what is the "signal". Right now the noise floor has been raised - by too much participation - to the point where the signal is overwhelmed and lost. This is not to discourage the OP. Rather a request to other participants to allow the OP to say what he has to say without diverting his attention too much from the topic at hand. Let's try and raise the S/N here

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

Great that you are active with Daphile. I did not read the tutorial, as I am not going to try it now*, but interested in the rest. There are a few "Squeezebox alternatives" that need evaluating: the more the merrier

*No... I will... but not while getting the last few minutes out of the UPS before everything goes dark!

 

[subro99]

When can we have the next article, please........

We all are waiting eagerly..........

 

[koushik]

Ranjeet,

Please do continue with this if you get time. Most of us are eagerly waiting for the next steps.

Thanks.