I'm building a linux-based server that is probably somewhere between the Topanga and the Lagoon. In the first iteration, I'm using S/PDIF out of the motherboard. This resulted in decent sound; however it was not as full compared to my CD player's sound (I ripped the CD to lossless files). The second iteration (happening as soon as I receive the parts) is going to involve a USB card (not Sotm) feeding into an asynchronous USB DAC. A couple of notes:
- Instead of 64G mSata drive, I'm using a 240G drive from the same mushkin family.
- The LED light actually works. The connections in the pictures for the Topanga and the Lagoon of the LED header are incorrect (reversed). When connected that way, the LED does not light up.
People may be interested in the Linux set up I'm using. Ubuntu 13.04 (latest version) installed with no issues and recognized all the hardware. More details that can be useful to someone trying Linux:
- The default Ubuntu window manager is too heavy for the hardware (too much unnecessary flare). I'm using the fluxbox window manager instead.
- Startup time from pressing the button to fluxbox being up is 10-14 seconds.
- I'm using Deadbeef player. I set it up to use ALSA, auto sample rate detection (i.e. don't force a single sample rate), and no ALSA re-sampling.
- I had to unmute SPDIF in ALSA (using alsamixer). The default is muted, and hopefully this line will save the next person the hour it took me to figure this out.
- I'm using x11vnc on the server. If you don't care about a secure connection to the server, then you can have it startup when fluxbox starts. Otherwise, you can use ssh tunneling (which is what I'm doing right now. I can share the command if someone's interested).
Once I switch to USB, I will have to update the ALSA settings in Deadbeef. I also removed some unnecessary applications that are auto installed with Ubuntu (office-like stuff... there are many others that I'd like to get rid of). I may also uninstall PulseAudio so that ALSA is the only audio output option. Finally, installing Ubuntu from a USB stick was real easy.
