Let's brainstorm..Setting up MinimServer to feed a USB DAC

[simoncn]

(12-01-2014 06:28)classical11 Wrote:  I am using a Belkin 7 port powered hub:
http://www.amazon.com/Belkin-USB-2-0-7-P...rt+usb+hub

It comes with a 5V, 2.5A power supply.

This may be a red herring but I noticed that your hub's power supply can only give 1A so perhaps it's a power issue?

Do you feed power from the hub back into the Raspberry Pi (via a USB port on the hub)? Or do you power the Raspberry Pi independently? Do you have other devices plugged into your USB hub?

If the DAC is the only device and you power the Raspberry Pi independently, then this can't be it.

If you have other devices plugged into the hub maybe the DAC is not getting enough power from the hub.

I've read various reports from Raspberry Pi users complaining of system stability issues when using low powered hubs (or no hub at all).

The hub has a 2A power supply. The Pi and the hub are powered independently. The hub is also powering a mouse, a keyboard and a 2.5 inch HDD. I will try removing the other devices from the hub to see if that helps.

Quote:You can list your ALSA playback devices with "aplay -l". In my case, I get this:

Code:

pi@pi1 ~ $ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: ALSA [bcm2835 ALSA], device 0: bcm2835 ALSA [bcm2835 ALSA]
  Subdevices: 8/8
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
  Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
  Subdevice #2: subdevice #2
  Subdevice #3: subdevice #3
  Subdevice #4: subdevice #4
  Subdevice #5: subdevice #5
  Subdevice #6: subdevice #6
  Subdevice #7: subdevice #7
card 1: UD110v2 [UD110v2], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
  Subdevices: 1/1
  Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

I am using 1,0 because the card ID of the DAC is 1. It's strange that it is 0 in your case because I would expect the built in analog card to always be the first. But I would have thought that you'd get absolutely no sound at all if you used an incorrect card id.

Thanks for this information. The 0 card ID is probably because of the change I made following Pete's suggestion in this post.

[simoncn]

(12-01-2014 09:44)simoncn Wrote:  The hub has a 2A power supply. The Pi and the hub are powered independently. The hub is also powering a mouse, a keyboard and a 2.5 inch HDD. I will try removing the other devices from the hub to see if that helps.

By a process of elimination, it seems that the USB keyboard and mouse plugged into the hub are causing this problem. This is probably because these aren't native USB devices but are plugged in via a USB-to-dual-PS2 adapter which is drawing power from the USB connection.

Edit: This has happened again without the mouse and keyboard being plugged in. I'm beginning to wonder if the hub or its power supply is faulty.

[simoncn]

(10-01-2014 14:15)simoncn Wrote:  2) The mplayer.conf file must be updated with the setting

ao=alsa:device=hw=0.0

This prevents software resampling of the audio passing through mplayer.

I have discovered that a better setting is

ao=alsa:device=plughw=0.0

This allows ALSA to reformat the audio data from S24_3LE to S24_LE if necessary. This is needed when playing a 24-bit WAV stream on the Wolfson Pi card and probably on some other DACs as well.

[PeteManchester]

We have released a new version of the Java MediaPlayer, details can be found here:

http://forum1613.minimserver.com/showthr...p?tid=1428

[AntonD]

(20-04-2014 11:03)PeteManchester Wrote:  We have released a new version of the Java MediaPlayer, details can be found here:

http://forum1613.minimserver.com/showthr...p?tid=1428

Hi Pete

I read this post with great interest. You software/audio enthusiasts are amazing.

I would like to build a 2nd system in my office and currently it will go like this:

iMac>iTunes>USB>Chord Qute EX DAC>Nait 5i-2>Spendor SA1

However, I already have a Synology NAS configured with MinimServer to feed my main system downstairs. This works a treat, is rock solid and streams my Redbook, 24/96, 24/192 and DSD64. So, I would like to stream this main library to the Qute EX dac USB connection.

I want to get into DSD more and will look to get DSD128 in the future.

So, by reading this post, I think I can change the above system to the following:

Java MediaPlayer>Raspberry Pi2>USB>Chord Qute EX DAC>Nait 5i-2>Spendor SA1 (and use a control point like plug player)

Is the assumption above correct?

For the forum members utilising the Raspberry Pi USB out, are you getting very good results and is the USB from the Pi a good enough interface for audiophile quality replay?

Many thanks in advance for your help and knowledge on this subject.

Regards, Anton

[PeteManchester]

(23-03-2015 10:28)AntonD Wrote:  

(20-04-2014 11:03)PeteManchester Wrote:  We have released a new version of the Java MediaPlayer, details can be found here:

http://forum1613.minimserver.com/showthr...p?tid=1428

Hi Pete

I read this post with great interest. You software/audio enthusiasts are amazing.

I would like to build a 2nd system in my office and currently it will go like this:

iMac>iTunes>USB>Chord Qute EX DAC>Nait 5i-2>Spendor SA1

However, I already have a Synology NAS configured with MinimServer to feed my main system downstairs. This works a treat, is rock solid and streams my Redbook, 24/96, 24/192 and DSD64. So, I would like to stream this main library to the Qute EX dac USB connection.

I want to get into DSD more and will look to get DSD128 in the future.

So, by reading this post, I think I can change the above system to the following:

Java MediaPlayer>Raspberry Pi2>USB>Chord Qute EX DAC>Nait 5i-2>Spendor SA1 (and use a control point like plug player)

Is the assumption above correct?

For the forum members utilising the Raspberry Pi USB out, are you getting very good results and is the USB from the Pi a good enough interface for audiophile quality replay?

Many thanks in advance for your help and knowledge on this subject.

Regards, Anton

Hi Anton,

The Java MediaPlayer>Raspberry Pi2>USB>

will certainly work, I'm not sure if your Chord Qute EX DAC is compatible with the Raspberry Pi, I've not heard of anyone else using one of these, I've also had a quick look around but can't see if it is compatible with the Pi.

In terms of audio quality, for me it is good enough, I have a few different DACs such as a HifiMeDIY Sabre DAC, UD110, and the Wolfson Pi DAC. To me all three sound good, but probably best to let other people comment on the audio quality.

Thanks,

Pete.

[AntonD]

(23-03-2015 18:38)PeteManchester Wrote:  

(23-03-2015 10:28)AntonD Wrote:  

(20-04-2014 11:03)PeteManchester Wrote:  We have released a new version of the Java MediaPlayer, details can be found here:

http://forum1613.minimserver.com/showthr...p?tid=1428

Hi Pete

I read this post with great interest. You software/audio enthusiasts are amazing.

I would like to build a 2nd system in my office and currently it will go like this:

iMac>iTunes>USB>Chord Qute EX DAC>Nait 5i-2>Spendor SA1

However, I already have a Synology NAS configured with MinimServer to feed my main system downstairs. This works a treat, is rock solid and streams my Redbook, 24/96, 24/192 and DSD64. So, I would like to stream this main library to the Qute EX dac USB connection.

I want to get into DSD more and will look to get DSD128 in the future.

So, by reading this post, I think I can change the above system to the following:

Java MediaPlayer>Raspberry Pi2>USB>Chord Qute EX DAC>Nait 5i-2>Spendor SA1 (and use a control point like plug player)

Is the assumption above correct?

For the forum members utilising the Raspberry Pi USB out, are you getting very good results and is the USB from the Pi a good enough interface for audiophile quality replay?

Many thanks in advance for your help and knowledge on this subject.

Regards, Anton

Hi Anton,

The Java MediaPlayer>Raspberry Pi2>USB>

will certainly work, I'm not sure if your Chord Qute EX DAC is compatible with the Raspberry Pi, I've not heard of anyone else using one of these, I've also had a quick look around but can't see if it is compatible with the Pi.

In terms of audio quality, for me it is good enough, I have a few different DACs such as a HifiMeDIY Sabre DAC, UD110, and the Wolfson Pi DAC. To me all three sound good, but probably best to let other people comment on the audio quality.

Thanks,

Pete.

Hi
Ah, I think I see. Would it be related to USB drivers and the Chord not seeing the information correctly?

Hmm, maybe I can try Pi>Digi+>Optical>Chord EX

I know not related to this post but I want to make use of my MinimServer library

Thanks Pete. This Raspberry Pi device for audio is very interesting.

Let's see what happens, all the best

Anton

[simoncn]

(23-03-2015 18:38)PeteManchester Wrote:  In terms of audio quality, for me it is good enough, I have a few different DACs such as a HifiMeDIY Sabre DAC, UD110, and the Wolfson Pi DAC. To me all three sound good, but probably best to let other people comment on the audio quality.

I have tried the UD110v2 and the Wolfson Pi card. The UD110v2 is much simpler to use (it just plugs into a USB slot with no need for special drivers) but I don't find the audio quality good enough for enjoyable listening. I think the audio quality from the Wolfson is much better but it needs a custom build of the Linux kernel (not yet available for the Pi2) to make it work.

[Peter StreamMagic]

(24-03-2015 08:52)simoncn Wrote:  

(23-03-2015 18:38)PeteManchester Wrote:  In terms of audio quality, for me it is good enough, I have a few different DACs such as a HifiMeDIY Sabre DAC, UD110, and the Wolfson Pi DAC. To me all three sound good, but probably best to let other people comment on the audio quality.

I have tried the UD110v2 and the Wolfson Pi card. The UD110v2 is much simpler to use (it just plugs into a USB slot with no need for special drivers) but I don't find the audio quality good enough for enjoyable listening. I think the audio quality from the Wolfson is much better but it needs a custom build of the Linux kernel (not yet available for the Pi2) to make it work.

At this moment I am using a Raspberry Pi B+ (Volumio) on my StreamMagic 6 for a trial.
USB compatible without extra drivers installed (basically now a Cambridge Audio DAC magic + without a renderer).
There is a slight difference in sound, haven't decided yet which is best.
Strange idea though using a 35 Euro renderer on a 1000 Euro streamer.
It is openhome now and works fine with the Lumin app.

Peter.

[audio_elf]

Hope this post is acceptible and not a duplicate, but Chris over on Computer Audiophile recently wrote about http://www.computeraudiophile.com/conten...-less-100/

This should work as a renderer for Minimserver.