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kboss

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  1. As I live in Europe, and many of the options above are 115V AC only, I just wanted to mention what I use to power my Alix board: a HQ Power (same as Velleman) PS12015 PSU. It can deliver 1.5A, fully adjustable DC output at 1.2-12V with a ripple of 2mV rms (according to their specs, I have not measured it myself). I payed ~50 euros. Which actually brings me to a question: I'm using the Alix in conjunction with a V-Link, which is powered by the USB bus of the Alix. Does the use of a linear PSU also result in a low-ripple current to my V-Link or does the Alix "mess up" the power so much that there is still a lot of ripple noise on the USB bus?
  2. Have a look at autofs. This should do exactly what you want. I have a similar setup (Alix on 24/7, and a Synology NAS that is powered off late at night and when we are at work). Just google autofs. This page should get you started: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Autofs
  3. Hi guys, Just want to chime in and share my experiences. I have been following this thread for some time and decided that I should try MPD as well. So I installed Lubuntu 11.10 alongside Lion and Snow Leopard on my (old) white MacBook. Installing went fine once I realized I should install grub in the MBR of the drive and NOT the linux partition as described in the install howto (avoiding annoying "operating system not found" messages"). (I have worked with some linux flavours ~10 years ago, so I'm not a complete novice) Anyways, I installed MPD (via synaptic package manager), edited mpd.conf to point to my Musical Fidelity V-LINK and to my NAS that shares my music via WIFI. All went peachy. I optimized the system a bit further by setting MPD to run on a single CPU core, and killing LXDE (so no graphical user interface). See https://sites.google.com/site/computeraudioorg/ on how to do these things. My impressions: 1) The stereo image is definitely wider, deeper and more holographic than what I've experienced so far on my system. Comes with a slight loss of focus (to be expected I guess), but that is less important to me as the sound is the most lifelike as of yet. This is all in comparison to my "reference" setup of OSX Snow Leopard, Pure Music in Less Is More mode and Integer mode enabled. 2) MPaD is an AWESOME remote! way more functional and more responsive than Remote for Itunes. So I'm a happy camper. I'm not going to go back to OSX soon I guess. Thanks for "challenging" me to try MPD.
  4. Wireworld Ultraviolet 1.0m to a USB hub, then again Wireworld Ultraviolet to MF V-Link (this detour allows me to use Integer mode without pops or clicks)
  5. Chord carnival silver screen with banana plugs.
  6. Audirvana rev. 0.9.1 debug information: Currently playing in Integer Mode: Non-mixable linear PCM Interleaved 24bits little endian Signed Integer, 6 bytes per frame @44.1kHz
  7. No I haven't actually. Bought the ultraviolet to use with my V-DAC before I purchased the V-LINK. Anyways, I couldn't resist and ordered another ultraviolet to replace the stock USB that now runs from hub to V-LINK. Maybe the separate power and data lines will do something for me, maybe not. I will let you know - chances are that both my ears and system are not revealing enough though ;-)
  8. The D-link I bought IS externally powered! I might have pointed to the wrong one then. Although it's a bit unclear: the detailed description does mention there's an AC adapter in the package contents. Anyways, get a powered one!
  9. (@Bixby) OK I've now got Integer Mode working without any pops or clicks! The pops and clicks appeared at regular intervals, on my "old" white MacBook, model MB402LL/A and were due to an Apple USB Core Audio bug which passes a 0 every 16384 samples (as explained to me by Damien). Damien also suggested a workaround (see his post in this thread on 05/18/2011 - 12:08): placing a powered USB hub in between the MacBook and VLINK. This did the trick! No more pops and clicks, and Integer mode is confirmed by Debug Info. I don't think it matters, but I bought this USB hub: http://d-link.com/products/?pid=152 Happy camper over here! Now I have to try to convince myself NOT to buy a second Wireworld Ultraviolet USB cable to replace the stock one that came with the powered USB hub....
  10. But a bug in Apple's USB CoreAudio prevents me from enjoying it.... Damien is not to blame! Anyways, it appears that if you have a relatively new model MacBook (mine is a pre-unibody white MacBook) the bug does not hurt you.
  11. I use a Wireworld Ultraviolet with my V-LINK, haven't compared it with a cheap cable. But it makes sense to use a better cable as the V-LINK is USB-powered.
  12. 1)(as noted by EuroChamp) Use better software that automatically sets the appropriate sample rate/ bit depth in Audio Midi. See for example Audirvana. Its free and sounds spectacular! 2) the optical output of the Mac is likely limited to a maximum of 24/96.
  13. 24/96 is the limit for both the optical and coax connection. 16/48 for the USB input. And yes, you can play 24/192, but these will be downsampled to 24/96 by your playback software.
  14. To question 1: yes, it helps very much! In two respects: you can now play 24/96 content via USB, and the sound quality improves considerably (far more stable stereo image in my case for example). Sorry but I don't have an answer to question 2. However, my music files are on a wireless NAS, and I think it's a good idea to have the V-LINK on it's own USB bus (for one: it needs power from USB), without other hardware such as USB drives. I don't have any data supporting this though, and doubt whether my system (and my ears) is resolving enough to detect the influence of another USB device or wireless vs wired.... Hope this helps, Koen
  15. Being a scientist, I like datapoints. But I would LOVE datapoints data corroborate my side of the story ;-). Anyways, as you guys are talking about FireWire-connected HDDs, it does not necessarily mean I am alone with the NAS-related issues. Haven't heard back from the Fidelia TechSupport though, not even a confirmation that they would look further into it. Let's wait a bit...
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