Bottlehead Forum
Other Gear => Digital => Topic started by: Jim R. on March 30, 2013, 07:19:34 AM
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I'm starting this thread so that there will be a separate place for those of us who are/want to be playing around with the Raspberry Pie computer for audio playback. I got my starter kit the other day and this thing is just way cool in how small it is and how much they got on this little card.
As Tom pointed out in the other linux thread, somebody has ported a version of voyage inux and MPD to the RP environment and seems to be makking good progress. Right now the one big limitation seems to be a firmware/lkernel issue related to the usb hardware and it seems the machine is limited to 16/44.1 playback (if I'm understanding things correctly), but the issue has been sent back to the Raspberry Pie Foundation and they have apparently hired an expert to deal with the issue, so this limitation appears to be temporary, but no fix date is given.
If you are into messing about with small computers, especially for audio use, you should get a starter kit, or stand-alone board and take this thing for a spin.
Another thing that really amazed me about this whole thing is that I actually, for the first time, have access to official documentation and related books through iBooks. Just for fun I typed "raspberry pie" in the iBooks search and the official RP user's guide came right up, so I downloaded it, opened iBooks, and sure enough, it was fully accessible (on my iPad) and I read through the entire 460 page manual in a day or two. That in itself was pretty impressive from my point of view, but reading about all the things that comes with the RP and the things people have done with it, the alternative OS builds for it (including a full function media player build), are quite impressive, plus lots of add-on boards and prototyping boards, bridges to arduino boards, etc. was also fascinating.
This little board with a good linear psu, an ethernet connection to a NAS (or usb drive/thumb drive) and a usb dac should prove to be a really sweet, tiny, even portable music server, with remote control possibilities for all kinds of smartphones, iPods, tablets, etc., or if one is really ambitious, a small display screen and some front panel buttons to control it (at this point, it looks like that would all have to be custom built/programmed.)
At $45 for a Rev B board (512 mb ram, 2 usb ports, ethernet port, HDMI port, composite video, 3.5mm stereo audio jack, and i/o connector., it's almost a no-brainer -- if you're into this sort of thing.
Be prepared to do some learning and lots of experimentation and the challenge/frustration of ongoing development though as this is hardly at the point of being a turnkey music streamer at this point. If you want that, the PCEngines Alix boards are a far more developed, proven and reliable solution, with plenty of online tutorials on how to get them running, and witha good linear power supply, can sound very, very good.
Anybody aside from Tom and I going to get on board with this? It would be nice if we could get a critical mass of bottleheads working on this, especially if it can be made to be a low cost, reliable server solution to feed the upcoming BH dac.
Cool stuff!
-- Jim
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Hopefully this thread will eventually get a little traction. I know that Brad, BNAL was interested in experimenting with this. I also recall porcupunctis mentioning that he was going to get a pi to experiment with.
For now I'm using two computers. One Raspberry Pi as a NFS file server and an ALIX computer as an NFS file client. This combination works well for my needs. I like having the External hard drive in the other room for a completely silent system. Have a look at the photo in the link below. The Raspberry Pi is the computer on the bottom that contains my music library. I'm using an iPad to remotely control the headless system.
http://cheap-silent-usb-linux-music-server.blogspot.com/ (http://cheap-silent-usb-linux-music-server.blogspot.com/)
I plan on poking around the Raspberry Pi MPD route sometime in the near future. However, I just got back from "Cruise To The Edge" yesterday and I'm still on cloud nine. What an awesome experience that was. More on that in the "Cruising with Yes" thread.
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I'm watching. Some time I might go to a server. The problem for me is reading in the 1500 CDs.
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I'm watching. Some time I might go to a server. The problem for me is reading in the 1500 CDs.
I can certainly understand that. My collection is a little bit larger than that. I just started off ripping five to ten per day. I also had a couple of marathon sessions on the weekends. Try starting off with the discs that you listen to the most that way you can start listening right away.
Once you have everything loaded it is so convenient having instant access to your entire library on an iPod, iPad or similar android device. But yeah, it takes some time getting there.
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And just FYI, you can buy a refurbed iPod Touch 4g with 8 gb memory (excellent as a remote controller for such a system as we are talking about here) for $150, including the standard Apple warranty.
So getting back to the Pie, there are a couple of scenarios I'm imagining, but at this point I haven't seen anybody doing these things, so they are absolutely not tested and currently aworking approaches.
The first idea I have is to use the HDMI port for music data, instead of USB -- of course I have no idea yet if this will be an improvement or not over usb, but it does have that potential, especially given the current state of the usb kernel issues. HRT now has an HDMI dac that takes an HDMI signal in, strips the sound data out, reassembles the full HDMI packet and can send it on to the display. This dac also has two hdmi inputs, so you could still send the data from a dvd player or whatever, plus the music data source to it, and then still connect it to your monitor for the picture. It also does 24/192 PCM, but no idea if DSD will work in this scenario, but probably not, at least not with some serious programming effort.
The second option would be to use the HDMI port with and HDMI tospdif converter, and this will get you an spdif stream for feeding something like the BH dac, which has been said, at first will only have spdif input.
So, the raspberry pie with one of these options (hdmi dac or spdif converter), and a decent linear psu, should get some very nice results.
Of course the possibility of getting the usb issues fixed is pretty likely, so going to a standard usb dac, is also a possibility. One thing I think would make for a small, compact, very decent sounding dac, fed from a NAS for fileserver, and with a direct audio out, would be to pair the RP with something like the AQ dragonfly, or the new HRT MicroDAC, which is said to be somewhat better sounding than the dragonfly, and cheaper too at $189. 24/96, direct audio out, plus a volume controllled headphone out usign a digitally controled analog volume control, not dithering or bit dropping digital control. Again, the usb kernel issues would have to be addressed by the RP foundation before this will work beyond 16/44.1.
All of these solutions are based on receiving the data stream over ethernet from a fileserver or NAS, and as Tom has done, an RP will also make a fine fileserver using a usb hard drive for music storage., so even if you had no home ethernet network, you could build one of the dac/spdif options above, feed it from another RP as fileserver, connected with a piece of ethernet cable, and with a usb wireless adaptor connected to the fileserver for remote control. Relatively inexpensive,, probably a good deal less than even a basic mac mini with a cheap usb dac, and potentially better performance (given less hardware/processing complexity, and other things. Power supply quality will also figure pretty prominently in the final outcome as well.
Also, forgot to mention it, but the HRT HDMI dac is something like $230, so not terribly expensive as dacs go, and is said to have performance somewhere between the hrt musicstreamer II and musicstreamer II+, and as I said, full 24/192 capability.
Lots of potential here for sure, but none of this is really turnkey at this point and is going to take a good bit of experimenting, tweaking, maybe some hacking, and perserverance to get going, but when done, it should be as easy as distributing preconfigured SD cards with a custom image on them, and assembling the hardware, plugging it all in, andputting it all in some sort of enclosure if desired.
So for the computer timid, you could buy the hardware, and then get an image from one of us on an SD card, follow some basic setup instructions and be ready to go with a very high quality music streamer.
-- Jim
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I'm also interested in using the RP to connect to my music library. My goal is to get my library to be accessible on my home network so I no longer need my DAC to be connected to my iMac but rather use the little RP.
Once some solid specs are released on the Bottlehead DAC I'd lke to see how to incorporate the RP into the DAC enclosure so I can simply connect to my network via ethernet or wifi and stream everything in hi rez.
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We are assuming that the bottlehead DAC will have a USB input. I'm not sure that assumption is valid.
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One of the items I have been looking at is the WaveIO board to bridge the USB to SPDIF. The DAC I currently use does not support 24/192 USB, so I'm using the SPDIF out on my SB Touch to feed my DAC music at that sample rate.
What is nice about the board is that it appears to support Voyage MPD and the USB power can be bypassed and you can use your own power supply.
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Tom,
Still suffering the after-effects of the cruise? :-) I did mention that with the RP you could use an HDMI to spdif converter for the BH dac and others, like Brad's that he just mentioned, that don't have a usb option, or won't go to full resolution with usb. Again, this is not tested, just theoretically possible with the RP with it's HDMI port.
AAlso, comparing specs of the RP to the Alix, I can't help but wonder if the RP may make a better platform in the long run, based on some basic specs: RP is 700 mhz, Alix is 500 (for 2D2 board which is what I'm using), basic ram is 512 mb for Rp and 256 for Alix, and if I recall, sd card is a bit faster than CF card.. Of course this is nowhere near the full story, but it will be interesting to compare them when done.
-- Jim
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I just skimmed a post on another forum saying the raspberry pi has i2s headers. Would that open up the possibility of bypassing usb and going directly to a dac board that accepts i2s as an input? I know several diy dac board have this capability. Exciting?!
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I may be wrong about this, but I'm not sure i2s and I2C are the same thing -- the RP has the latter. If this is the same as I2S, yes, that could be really interesting, though dacs with direct i2s inputs are not very common and for the most part tend to be fairly expensive.
If you can confirm this, do let us know.
-- Jim
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Ah, didn't notice one was i2c the other i2s. From Wikipedia, they sound very different, but I'm no expert. Maybe one is a subset of the other.
Or maybe someone can develop code to bit-bash i2s through the gpio pins. That's as techno babble as I can get, but there's some truth in it.
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Count me in. I might not have time to play this week much but I have seen some webpages where users have used MPD and a python script to play internet radio. I know there are successful media servers (XMBC) but most use that for streaming video / movies. I would imagine it would play music as well.
I thought it might be as simple as using the audio out to the preamp but I guess not. Still I have a brand new RPi and no project yet so what the heck. I'll spend a little time digging and count me in.
John
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Hi John,
Welcome... again.Good to have another hand on board. I'm not exactly sure when I'm going to get busy on this as bot this and the alix will be going on in the background while I continue some work on other things, but that also gives more time for the usb issues to get resolved byt the rPi foundation., and I may just give the HRT HDMI dac a shot in the mean time as well.
-- Jim
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Looks like HRT has a few new products out. I really enjoyed my HRT II+ so I can imagine the new HD model will be fantastic. The HDMI stream is also very interesting to me.
Jim, I'm curious how you intend to use the HDMI stream with the RPi.
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Hi Tom,
The Raspberry Pie has an HDMI port on it (just at the rear of the ethernet connector), and with a little configuring of devices for the music stream, it should be possible to send the PCM file through the HDMI port. Note, I said "should be" as I've not done this and will have to do some research on this to start, and then see what may need to be done to optimize it. I plan to run headless,but I'm also guessing that you could use the video out as well, but I myself will most likely not be trying that. The x.11 GUI/gnome are not really accessible to me so I'm going to stick with a remote SSH console interface using my macbook air over ethernet.
Note I will also be using the Raspyfi voyage linux distro with MPD for music playback.
Yes, it's about time the streamer HD came out -- that one has been promised "next quarter" for a couple of years now. My guess is that it will be a solid performer for it's approx $450 price. If I weren't already in possession of so many dacs, I'd likely get one myself. I'd also very much like to hear the new Micro dac as well. I was hoping the micro dac would work directly with an iPad and camera connector kit, but it looks like that is not the case.
-- Jim
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Looks like there is i2s but there are serious doubts about the quality. The discussion is beyond me, but that seems to be what they are saying:
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-line-level/233230-raspberry-pi-i2s-output-asynchronous-usb-i2s.html
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Just saw this article on ArsTechnica:
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/04/airplaying-music-and-video-from-ipad-to-raspberry-pi-its-as-easy-as/
This article makes it sound pretty easy. Easy as pi maybe.
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Randall,
Thanks for the pointer -- I'll have to check it out.
-- Jim
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I've got mine - now reading Raspberry Pi for Dummies 8)
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This is kind of just barely touching around the subject of the raspberry pi as a media server and probably not something a dedicated audiophile would want to do but I built up a Raspberry Pi with something called Screenly. It is a digital signage program. My gf owns a bar and I took a small flat screen TV, made a bunch of Power Points regarding drink specials, etc. and made a bunch of joke slides. It's pretty cool in that you can upload stuff wirelessly through the browser on a network.
Anyway I download a couple videos from YouTube in H264 and they play real nice. I see no reason why I couldn't download a ton of videos and Screenly has a shuttle mode as well. Other than that not much user control. I guess my point, if I have one, is that the HMDI out for video and sound is pretty impressive.
I have my other Raspberry Pi built up with the latest Raspian OS but I haven't touched it all week. Been playing around with DD-WRT routers and set up a VPN here in my home in Japan to stream Hulu, Netflix, and Pandora. Better than any cable system here and much much cheaper. I let the cat out of the bag and it seems like everybody wants my help doing the same for their home.
John
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I use a Raspberry Pi as a headless dedicated music player, connected through a very cheap Chinese USB DAC (hifimediy) to my Foreplay, Parabees, and Straight 8s. It works very well. I use Squeezelite, player software designed to work with Logitech Squeezebox systems. The software is free. I control the current playlist (or internet radio) from any computer in the house via a web interface. My collection is stored as lossless flacs on a readynas server, which is in a different part of the house and serve it up by wifi.
Yes, it was a pain to rerip everything to flac, but I just did a few at a time (with DBPoweramp) whenever I was sitting at my computer, and eventually it was done. I am glad to now have my collection archived, and the cds put away in boxes.
You can build up the system on the Pi from scratch, but you don't have to. There is a distribution called "squeezeplug" that has an image with squeezelite and other music server/player software already installed.
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A new potential competitor?
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/04/for-your-robot-building-needs-the-45-beaglebone-linux-pc-goes-on-sale/
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I use a Raspberry Pi as a headless dedicated music player, connected through a very cheap Chinese USB DAC (hifimediy) to my Foreplay, Parabees, and Straight 8s. It works very well. I use Squeezelite, player software designed to work with Logitech Squeezebox systems. The software is free. I control the current playlist (or internet radio) from any computer in the house via a web interface. My collection is stored as lossless flacs on a readynas server, which is in a different part of the house and serve it up by wifi.
Yes, it was a pain to rerip everything to flac, but I just did a few at a time (with DBPoweramp) whenever I was sitting at my computer, and eventually it was done. I am glad to now have my collection archived, and the cds put away in boxes.
So many ways to 'skin a cat'.....
You can build up the system on the Pi from scratch, but you don't have to. There is a distribution called "squeezeplug" that has an image with squeezelite and other music server/player software already installed.
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Okay here's what I did with my Raspberry Pi. But first a little backstory. I have a Squeezebox Radio which I enjoy. I live in Japan so can't stream Pandora or MOG from the US because of the geo restrictions.
However anything can be beaten. I just set up a router with DD-WRT and have a VPN service so now I have a US IP address and can now stream US content.
So I got Pandora and MOG and have really been loving it. Then I decided I needed a Squeezebox Touch for my upstairs bedroom. To my dismay I found the SQ Touch is no longer in production and sells for basically double or triple of retail now. Ouch.
So I downloaded the Squeezeplug distribution which appears to be an altered Raspian with Samba and the Squeezeplay libraries.
It took about 2 hours to set it all up. To my complete and total surprise it shows up on my Logitech Media Server as just another Squeezebox appliance. I can control my Rpi Squeezeplug player from my iPhone with iPeng.
I guess next I'll get a DAC but to be quite frank it sounds awesome the way it is. I have it hooked to my home built Foreplay 2 from the headphone jack and feeding my Paramour amps.
Amazing little project. I've now ordered my third Rpi and I'll play around with that a bit maybe as a little higher end project.
John
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John,
Way to go! I'm loving MOG myself. I'll bet even something like the HRT MicroStreamer pllugged directly into the usb port will sound quite a bit better. Then another step up could be had with a linear regulated or battery power supply -- just make sure you don't give it more than 5v or things could go pop.
Another possibility is the HRT HDMI streamer connected to the HDMI port on the RPi but that would require some reconfiguration of some of the files and maybe ALSA as well. I do plan to try it, just have not had time yet and don't have the hdmi dac yet.
I'll be getting one of the Beagle Bone black boards too when they're available again.
-- Jim
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I found a place that has the BeagleBone Black boards in stock...
http://www.specialcomp.com
I just ordered one, but gotit through amazon as I also needed a memory card reader/writer. That's another one of those little things I had but can't seem to locate after the move.
-- Jim
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Jim,
I'm not real pleased with the sound however I just bought a HiFiMeDIY Sabre USB DAC that is supposed to be supported. Will report how that works out.
FWIW one raspberry Pi I have sounds much better than the other.
John
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John,
Interesting about the difference in sound -- are they both the rev b board, same power supply, etc.? Wonder if it is hardware or software? Maybe try swapping CF cards? Does one have wireless and the other not? This is really kind of interesting.
My BeagleBone shipped yesterday and I'll have it wed or thurs this week. Wondering if there will be a difference in SQ between RPI and BBB.
-- Jim
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Both Rev B boards although one is clearly better sounding (to me). All I did was swap the CF cards and used the same dongle for wifi between cards.
Amazon says DAC is in the mail. Should be here in 4-5 days.
John
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John,
Interesting (still). Maybe I'll get a couple more and see if I can find the same thing.
My BeagleBone arrived a day ahead of time yesterday and it looks possibly even more compact than the Rpi I'll have to compare them side to side to really know, but this one is quite nice too. Only one usb host port, but the power port can double as a client port.
Going to see if I can find a micro HDMI cable.
It will be interesting to see which of these fares better in audio performance. This does have a faster processor (1ghz vs 700 mhz for the Rpi) but for audio both are easily plenty. Once the main system is done and running, I'm really going to dive into both of these tiny boards, as well as the two kinds of alix boards I have (2D2 and 6F2) and really see how far each can be pushed. The Beagle Bone may just have enough horsepower to do on the fly SRC, and that would be really cool. Porting the core algorithms from SOX won't be trivial, but I'll be up for a challenge by then.
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My Beaglebone Black also arrived yesterday, jumped to try it against my RPi's for XBMC, personal file server, and web server apps I have already running on RPi's - only to discover as well I need a micro HDMI cable, not in my cable arsenal. Amazon Prime - a lifesaver .......
I have a couple of powered multiport USB 2.0 hubs that work fine with the RPi ....
Here's a concise comparison between the 2 boards ... http://www.cnx-software.com/2013/04/25/beaglebone-black-vs-raspberry-pi-features-and-price-comparison/ (http://www.cnx-software.com/2013/04/25/beaglebone-black-vs-raspberry-pi-features-and-price-comparison/)
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Monoprice is a great source for video and computer cables for not much money.
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Good stuff! In the comments I saw a clue as to why there may be connectivity and speed issues with some dacs and hi-res files -- the ethernet port on the RPi is implemented such that it is basically a usb dongle and therefore has to usse the same i/o channels to the processor as the usb host ports. Depending on how the ethernet is implemented on the BBB, it may turn out to be the preferred platform for a streamer.
Time to go order a micro hdmi cable :-)
BTW, I checked today and it does not look like the HRT HDMIStreamer dac is out yet (which may also be a way around the usb issue on the RPI).
Thanks for the link!
-- Jim
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Okay I finally got my Raspberry Pi going with my HiFiMeDIY Sabre USB DAC. Squeezelite sets it up when you install squeezeplug and the Squeezelite Music Player.
However, HOWEVER it sounds like crap. Pops, static, etc. So I found this guys web site.
http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=31241&p=270802 (http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=31241&p=270802)
Copy his code into your /etc/asound.conf file and reboot and it works PERFECTLY. Sounds awesome pumping through my Bottlehead Paramour and Foreplay system with SEXy speakers.
One other gotcha. The squeezelite installation creates some files that launch it at boot. My Raspberry Pi would boot but Squeezelite would not.
I went to the file /etc/default/squeezelite
and it was trying to call the program as:
-n Squeezelite -o [soundcard selected by the installation]
I know enough about linux that that launch would never fly so I altered it to:
squeezelite -o [soundcard selected by the installation]
Squeezelite now boots up with the RPi and is found by every Logitech Media Server in my home including iPeng on my iPhone and iPad.
I'm blown away with the sound.
Anyway buy the DAC, alter those two files like I said and it works like a champ. If I get a chance I'll throw up a little web page.
John
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John,
You're really cooking with gas there! I should give this a try as my synology NAS has LMS on it, or I can install it easy enough if it's not there already. I think that will enable DLNA access as well and therefore may be able to serve streams to the new Oppo bdp-130 in the media room system.
That could make all this way to easy :-).
I haven't looked at the raspyfi site in a couple of weeks and will go take another look -- not sure if this is a new development or not, or maybe just something I missed.
Best,
Jim
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Jim,
I'd be interested in your LMS server on your Synology NAS. Which one do you have? I think Netgear also has LMS support on some but I have to find one I can put DD-WRT or Tomato Firmware on.
Just to round things out here's a photo of my RPi and DAC. Has worked for about 24 hours now without crashing so I think it's golden now.
And as you can see I'm running it headless with just a USB wifi dongle ($10) and the HiFiMeDIY DAC. The power source is a 1.5 amp cell charger I picked up in the exchange here.
Everything is administered via web interface or from the iPhone / iPad. Would be cool to have LMS on the NAS Server though.
(https://forum.bottlehead.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.hagensieker.com%2Fdownloads%2Ffiles%2Fusbdac4.jpg&hash=b8709821bcf92cd9632e9a4b37c1cd9a6c2f0593)
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That looks very cool John EH. You mentioned possibly putting up a web page about your setup. I for one would love to see that as I'm thinking more and more about setting up a media server.
Thanks,
Randy
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I started working on it yesterday and got derailed. But I am working on one.
Mostly it boils down to this:
Buy a raspberry pi, a cell phone charger and an optional wifi dongle and of course the DAC. Wifi dongle not needed if you use ethernet.
Download squeezeplug, install the ISO image on an SD card. Put in the raspberry pi and boot.
Expand root file system at boot up, set up your wifi or ethernet reboot.
Install the media server in Squeezeplug and then install the media player.
Then the fun begins with the DAC. That's mostly what I'll focus on in my web page. Everything else is well documented on the Squeeplug home page. The keeper of that place has an awesome step by step video of installing squeezeplug but it assumes your intenet on your Pi is working.
I had to boot into X (starts) to set my WiFi dongle up with a program called WPA_GUI because it just wouldn't install on the setup screens.
John
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John,
Thanks for the pic, but I do need to tell you that I'm blind so I can't see it. The NAS is the Synology DS 212+ with a couple of 3tb enterprise grade hitachi drives in it and the LMS is actually an installable package from Synology. I don't know much more about it than that at this point as I just haven't been able to muck about with it very much.
As you're doing with your posts and upcoming web site, I hope we can put together a set of recipes for different boards, players and configurations that will allow non-linux folks to be able to setup a system likke this for their own use. The mac mini is great but with the prices of decent dacs now coming way down, the mac solution won't make all that much sense for somebody with a less expensive dac and system.
You've got me a bit concerned about the wireless dongle -- I'm assuming its the little ETI (spelling?) device that's a bit larger than a nickel and supports up to the dual band wirelesss N for up to 150 mbps data rates? When I first felt that thing I thought it was an cable adaptor of some kind. Hopefully there will be a way to configure it from the console.
-- Jim
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Jim,
It is a Logitech wifi dongle. Bought it locally here in Japan for about $10. It is a 150 N.
It flashes all night and is kind of annoying to me and my gf so I bought a bit white 300 N which I believe is an Elecom. Little did I know it has a bigger and more blue flashing light inside.
My goal at the end of this will be to make some dummy proof instructions for non linux folks as you stated but they'd have to be very specific to my exact setup.
I also managed to set the Samba Server up and put a hard drive on my USB port on my router and copied my personal music folder there. My RPi Squeezeplug sees my music library across the network and it shows up on my Logitech Media Server front end programs. Mostly I stream from Pandora or MOG though.
I have one last lingering "problem" It seems to disconnect and the squeezelite server shuts down. I think it has to do with the Autodiscovery settings I selected during installation of the Squeezelite player. I'll toy around with some other settings and I haven't ruled out that the program iPeng on my phone may be crashing it.
A reboot fixes the problem easily but I want it to be a set and forget appliance. I don't want to EVER reboot it.
John
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Here's a down and dirty webpage just to get started. I literally threw it together in 30 minutes. It's lacking and I know it. I'll go through later and add some screencaptures to make it more understandable later. Just wanted something out there.
But if you install squeezeplug and then edit those two files you'll have a functioning device.
John
http://www.hagensieker.com/styled-9/index.html (http://www.hagensieker.com/styled-9/index.html)
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John,
Thanks for the webpage. I can't wait to give it a try now that you have the step by step setup. Also, I can't wait to see how the beaglebone turns out.
Brad
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Hey guys, I have some 20+ years experience with Unix/Linux. Let me know if I can help.
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Thanks John,
Think I'll give this a try. Off to order the RPi!!
Cheers,
Geary
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I've cleaned up the page with some screenshots and tried to be a tad more concise about a couple of things. Anyway it is more information than I had initially and it's kinda all in one place now. I should add that it is specific to that HiFiMeDIY Sabre DAC and Logitech Media Server and Squeezelite Player. Go another route and you're on your own.
John
http://www.hagensieker.com/styled-9/index.html
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Couple more lessons I learned throughout all this.
Once you get squeezeplug installed the latest and greatest Raspberry Pi Firmware. It resides on the SD Card so it follows the card and doesn't actually change anything on the board.
Anyway at a command prompt run
rpi-update
Let it do its thing. Should help if you have any stability issues.
Last gotcha I had was I had two cheap wireless dongles that I was running. Both were based on the Realtek rt2800 chipset.
I've been having nightly crashes. After poking around on Google for a couple days I found a couple pages that basically say "Oh my God, don't use rt2800 chipset on Raspberry Pi, it works but crashes, etc, etc, etc.
Seems one of the more stable chipsets is the RT8192cu
The Edimax EW-7811Un 150 is one such wireless dongle. I went down to the local electronics store in Japan and no Edimax here but I found a Planex that has the same chipset.
Go to a prompt and type this:
/etc/modprobe.d/8192cu.conf
You'll see nothing as it's a new file. Paste this in and save it:
options 8192cu rtw_power_mgnt=0 rtw_enusbss=0
Reboot.
That file turns off the power management of the wifi dongle so it doesn't sleep on you.
The last part of the command turns off usb auto suspend.
This should keep you rock solid.
John
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Found out my HiFiMeDiy Dac wasn't playing in 24 bit 96000 and found I had to alter the program launch command a bit. It's all on my website now works like a champ.
Seemed unless you call the program and tell it to start in 24_3 it will try to start in 24LE and fail and downsample back to 16 bit. 48000. I was all happy at 16 bit 48000 until I found out I wasn't running at 24 bit and set out on a mission to make it work.
It's working great and I'm enjoying it so much I ordered two more of those DAC's. One for downstairs at home and one to build up a system at work.
John
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Hey JohnEH,
Thank you for the website - that's a huge help.
At the risk of exposing quite a bit of ignorance, a couple of questions:
-I'm lost on the system topology...is the RPi just sitting on the network, or is there an RPi connected to the music file NAS, or is there one at each place one wants to listen to music from the network?
-Likewise, is there a DAC at each RPi?
Judging from the picture, it appears you've got an RPi and DAC connected as a source in a listening area.
If there were more than one RPi on the network, would all RPi's on the network be playing the same music at the same time? I had gotten a Squeezebox Touch and wanted to be able to have the same Pandora stream playing throughout the house on a few different systems.
If someone could describe the system topology, I could take a crack at making a block diagram to post (for other dunderheads like me who need a USA Today Infographic to understand anything more complex than a reel mower).
Oddly, I was just finding some pieces in the garage I'd gathered to build a cheap NAS a few years ago, and was thinking of ditching them...sounds like they might be useful to make a music serving NAS, though.
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The RPi just sits on the network. Because it is running Linux you can use Samba file sharing (included in Squeezeplug and easy to set up) to talk to your network shares. I have an external hard drive on my router which I just copied my iTunes Library over to.
I have thee systems in my house now. UpSqueeze and DownSqueeze which are Raspberry Pi's and I have a Squeezebox Radio.
There is a DAC on each Raspberry Pi. Both of mine are on the same wireless network and both can see the iTunes library on my routers external hard drive via Samba.
You can indeed synchronize your players so that they play the same music and I have had the same music playing out of all three at the same time. But you do not have to synchronize them. They can play independently as well. I listen to one thing upstairs and the gf can listen to whatever she wants to downstairs.
I have to say that if your intention is to build a bulletproof "Squeezebox" that Raspberry Pi may not be the way to go. You might be better off to get a small computer that has passive cooling so you have no fan noise and put Linux on it.
I've been having a blast with my Raspberry Pi as you can see on my web page I have also had to issue about a million commands and write scripts and cron jobs to keep it going. I had a heck of a time getting rid of the pops and clicks and distortion on the DAC and a heck of a time with it crashing daily. I seem to have it all worked out and it seems rock solid now with an experimental firmware I found. I think if you follow my web page with the Raspberry Pi and do EVERYTHING I did it is pretty stable and sounds great. If you discard a few of my steps it's likely to be a crashing nightmare. if you like to tinker like I do it's no problem but if you want something that is 100% set and forget build a proper Linux box or get another Squeezebox Touch.
Having said that I think it really sounds amazing. The HiFiMeDIY DAC is AWESOME, and made all that much more awesome because it is $30 to $40 depending on where you buy it from. I'd say my RPi squeezeboxes sound better than my Tube CD player, my iMod iPod with a Brown Burr DAC modified to use the headphone jack as a true Line Out, and better than any CD, DVD player I've had on the system.
Plus having basically every album and every artist available at the touch of my iPhone is awesome. I have Pandora and MOG and if I had to do it all over again I'd just get MOG.
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Thanks again, John EH.
Between your posts, your helpful website and the Squeezeplug site, it is becoming a lot clearer.
I think I'll start with a fanless computer and put Linux on it. In fact, I found (while searching for a cheap SBC in a box) an Atom-based netbook (refurb'ed ASUS eeePC 901) for about $99 that should run Linux fine...makes it hard to go for the Squeezebox Touch at MSRP, much less current prices, and even the RPi seems a questionable bargain (apart from its compactness and tweak-fetishist attraction, I think) with that option in mind.
Once I've learned to get things streaming on the netbook, I will add more nodes to the music network, either via netbook if I can find another cheap one, compact computer or RPi...hard to resist trying the RPi, though, to see what all the fuss is about.
I take it the HiFiMeDIY DAC isn't a source of any instability and is two thumbs way up as you see it? I have some other USB DACs around the house that I can resurrect to connect before I need to start trying others...if I can find them...though again, the HiFiMeDIY DAC is hard to resist trying...particularly if I end up using it on the bedroom setup...how can I pass up a chance to say "...hey baby, wanna come upstairs and see my dongle?"
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The HiFiMeDIY DAC is solid in my opinion. Works like a champ although it took a little tweaking to get it working in Raspian and Squeezeplug.
The list of DAC's that work in Linux is I think a fairly short list
Here is a list of supported DAC's and may or may not be all inclusive
http://www.raspyfi.com/raspberry-pi-usb-dac-and-raspyfi-supported-dacs/ (http://www.raspyfi.com/raspberry-pi-usb-dac-and-raspyfi-supported-dacs/)
For $40 I think you'll be surprised.
John
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John,
That list looks much longer and more inclusive than last time. If you lookk at the dac chips and reciever chips supported, than for the most part it is fairly reasonable to assume that other dacs with the same chips/receivers should work as well. Example, with both the older hiface interfaces supported, then dacs like the metrums and jkenny should also work. If the TAS1020b in asynch mode (HRT) works, than many of the other devices based on this should work, including AQ dragonfly, the majority of the HRT family, etc. Interesting that one 24.384 dac works -- they must have fixed the usb issues or that would not likely work.
Does the dac it you got require any SMT soldering?
Thanks,
Jim
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John,
That list looks much longer and more inclusive than last time. If you lookk at the dac chips and reciever chips supported, than for the most part it is fairly reasonable to assume that other dacs with the same chips/receivers should work as well. Example, with both the older hiface interfaces supported, then dacs like the metrums and jkenny should also work. If the TAS1020b in asynch mode (HRT) works, than many of the other devices based on this should work, including AQ dragonfly, the majority of the HRT family, etc. Interesting that one 24.384 dac works -- they must have fixed the usb issues or that would not likely work.
Does the dac it you got require any SMT soldering?
Thanks,
Jim
Jim,
No SMT soldering required by me. Just plug and play.
I think your assumption that other DAC's with the same chips would probably work is correct.
Check my webpage about the USB issues. Somebody has an experimental firmware that's working great for me. I have 3 days and 9 hours of current uptime. If the USB issue isn't fixed it's a lot better than it was. Before that firmware I'd only stay up 9-12 hours at a time.
John
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If anybody is interested I ordered the HiFiMeDIY Sabre Tiny USB DAC by mistake. It has the PCM2706+ES9023 Dac Chip.
I can confirm it works just as the non tiny HiFiMeDIY Sabre USB DAC does albeit in 16/48.
I was going to send it back for an exchange but I have a system I only stream from that pulls down 16/41 on the best station so no need to go all the way.
I may be "wrong" in saying this but I swear it sounds better than its big brother.
John
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Today I was in Hiroshima at the big time high end audio shop and picked up a Nuforce Udac2 for about $135. I can confirm it works perfectly with Raspberry Pi and Squeezelite.
For my money though, so far, the HiFiMeDIY Sabre USB DAC's sound better. I'll give it a little time to break in.
It's a keeper for sure and if I don't like it too much as much I'll just take it to work and put it in the office system.
John
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John EH,
Thanks so much for the great write up. It really helped me set this up on my RP. I love it. Makes me want to set one up in each room.
I did find that the volume was a bit low at first. I adjusted it using alsamixer from the SSH client. It was only at 40% to start off with. I would suggest that this step be added to your write up.
Thanks again,
ice9mike
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Thanks Mike. I'm on the Alsamixer thing. I had to goose mine up as well on all my systems. Good catch.
John
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Just finished off 2 music source projects with the Raspberry Pi - very happy with both:
1) Raspyfi - MPD server drawing music from my network. Used a distribution available at: http://www.raspyfi.com - these guys stripped out most things not needed for music, added the bits necessary to solve the USB audio issues and set it up so that it runs an MPD server daemon on boot. I've got it connected to a Behringer DAC (which seems to sound pretty good) and connected into my Stereomour amp. At the other end of the wifi network is currently about 32GB of music on a flash drive shoved into a port on my router (later, I want to set up a real NAS, with lossless rips from my CDs). The nice thing is that this runs headless & is controlled by an MPD client (I've got one on an iPad, another on an Android phone and a 3rd on my Mac). This works really well, sounds great & wasn't too hard to set up (most of the issues were my stupic mistakes with Linux).
2) Pandora Player - from an Adafruit Tutorial - http://learn.adafruit.com/pi-wifi-radio - another headless Raspberry Pi, but with a 2 line LCD + some buttons attached for control. When turned on, this thing connects to my Pandora account & starts playing. You can control volume, Pandora "Station", Play/pause and skip via the buttons. For this, I'm using the audio output on the Pi (figuring that with Pandora over the internet, it probably doesn't matter that much).
Both of these sound great & weren't too tough to get running (and taught me a lot in the process)...
Rich
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2) Pandora Player - from an Adafruit Tutorial - http://learn.adafruit.com/pi-wifi-radio - another headless Raspberry Pi, but with a 2 line LCD + some buttons attached for control. When turned on, this thing connects to my Pandora account & starts playing. You can control volume, Pandora "Station", Play/pause and skip via the buttons. For this, I'm using the audio output on the Pi (figuring that with Pandora over the internet, it probably doesn't matter that much).
I went the same route. I talked about it in this thread http://www.bottlehead.com/smf/index.php/topic,2742.30.html (http://www.bottlehead.com/smf/index.php/topic,2742.30.html) I can say without hesitation that using an external DAC does in fact make a difference. At first I didn't think it would either, until I tried it. From what I've read the DAC that's embedded in the Pi's Broadcom chip is only 12 bit. I'm using a relatively inexpensive 16 bit USB DAC and the difference is pretty dramatic even when streaming Pandora.
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I missed that thread - thanks for the pointer. So I'm not confused, are you running the DAC off of the Pi - or is it connected to another computer (I got a little mixed up following).
If on the Pi, did you have any USB issues (I'm using the Adafruit Occidentalis 0.2 distro)?
I may try to use a DAC - but have to spend a little time figuring out how to get the sound to come out the USB port, when I did the other project (Raspyfi) it was already set up to use the USB port if a DAC was connected.
Rich
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I missed that thread - thanks for the pointer. So I'm not confused, are you running the DAC off of the Pi - or is it connected to another computer (I got a little mixed up following).
If on the Pi, did you have any USB issues (I'm using the Adafruit Occidentalis 0.2 distro)?
I may try to use a DAC - but have to spend a little time figuring out how to get the sound to come out the USB port, when I did the other project (Raspyfi) it was already set up to use the USB port if a DAC was connected.
Rich
I have more than one DAC and was discussing two different systems. Yes, the WiFi radio project running pianobar and the piplate display has a USB DAC connected. To make it the default audio output you do the following.
cd /etc/modprobe.d $
sudo nano alsa-base.conf
options snd-usb-audio index=0 nrpacks=1
This changes the USB sound DAC to be the first device (Default).
I did have problems with clicks and pops at first but then I ran # rpi-update and all was good after that.
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Thanks. I'll try that when I get a chance.
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Took me a little while to get to this (travel & day job got in the way). Modified the config file & did the update - switched to a DAC (in this case, an inexpensive Behringer). Quite a bit nicer.
Thanks for the help...
Rich
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I haven't been following this read very closely, but my interest is peaked.
I use J.River MC and am not likely to switch. But I'd like some small, convenient network players with J.River installed that would be able to output to a DAC. I'm prett sure J.River can be installed on a Linux platform. These Raspberry Pi devices are pretty cheap, right? Is this the solution for me?
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Probably not going to work - I just did a little googling & found: "MC doesn't run under Linux yet and if it did, its not going to run on a Raspberry Pi until its compiled to run on it. And even then, I don't expect it will run due to memory and cpu constrains. I think its a safe to say it will probably never happen."
I think there was a lot incorrect in the post (you don't have to compile special for the Raspberry Pi - having a linux executable is all that you need - but it seems to imply that there isn't one.
The Pi is only about $35 - if you have some familiarity with linux, it might be worthwhile to pick one up & play around with it...
Rich
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Bummer. It seems that cheap network players that do everything right (lossless, flac, gapless, etc.) are basically non-existent. So that means getting a cheap computer to do it. Alas.
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I think the issue is that most of the SW is targeted for more "mainstream" OS's (Windows, OSx). Linux doesn't have the marketshare, so no ports. The smaller, cheaper boards tend to run linux (for lots of reasons).
Rich
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Check this distro out:
http://www.raspyfi.com/
Read about this earlier this week, which prompted me to finally purchase a Raspberry Pi.
I've got it up and working at home with a 1TB NTFS USB drive and Audioengine D1 and so far, it's doing a good job.
My plans are to move this setup to my office and connect my Aune T1. I'm wanting the put this into place so as to not lug my notebook back and forth.
Don
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Here's what looks like a plug in (or plug on) DAC for the Pi
http://www.hifiberry.com/
I wonder if anyone's tried one?
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Here's what looks like a plug in (or plug on) DAC for the Pi
http://www.hifiberry.com/
I wonder if anyone's tried one?
Just found a thread on these, might be of interest to you..
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-source/244271-my-dac-raspberry-pi.html (http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/digital-source/244271-my-dac-raspberry-pi.html)