ronalde

For easier reference; a year ago I moved the project to: https://gitlab.com/sonida/mpd-monitor And updated the screencast to: https://asciinema.org/a/266672

Dear fellow audio enthusiast, Today I published a first draft of mpd-monitor, a minimal load and realtime monitor of an audiostream as handled by mpd. A screencast says it all: Details and documentation are available at the gitlab repository: https://gitlab.com/ronalde/mpd-monitor/. When you experience bugs or issues, which will be the case, please submit those in the gitlab project. I would like to hear your thoughts. Happy listening and monitoring, Ronald

Sorry Keeske, Didn't catch your question until now. You can download the script from https://gitlab.com/ronalde/mpd-configure. Regards, Ronald

Dear manser, Although that hasn't happened for the last 14 years, of course it (theoretically) could. Right again. That can happen, too, theoretically. Like it could be that the instructions you are providing are somehow not genuine or "nefarious", for example because this website got hacked beacuse it runs on unpatched PHP libraries. The script is intended for people who are not familiair with audio on linux, and system management in general (eg do not know what you mean when you instruct them to "run something as root"). That's a much bigger security concern (for those users) then the stuff you're warning against. As is running closed or binary firmware. Those that are familiair with such things, probably first download and inspect the script, or scan the internet for its origin. So again, I understand your primary concern and thank you for expressing that. But the script and my instruction to run it are just meant to help you, Adam, Joel and others to get to the important stuff (in this case getting an overview of device support in alsa) a bit quicker. Regards, Ronald

Thanks for stipulating the importance of secure behaviour when it comes to dealing with 'things from the net'. However, I've complete control over the source and distribution, and the `alsa-capabilities` script itself really does nothing else than a lot of string manipulation. So even in the case of a partial download, that would lead to (cryptic) errors, but would cause no harm. Observe the difference to my instructions for (securely) getting and running the parent script, `mpd-configure`.

Hi, music playback on any linux system has nothing to do with ASIO, and everything with alsa, which is the linux equivalent of all kinds of other 'direct to hardware low level' approaches found on Windows (like ADIO) and OSX. The music player software (like HQPlayer) sits on the highest level, taking files from storage, reading its PCM or DSD stream (using alsa libraries) and feeds it (hopefully without alterations) to the alsa kernel module (=driver) in use. To get bit-perfect results, the music player has to be configured to use the 'hardware address' (in the form of `hw:x,y`) of the alsa interface. Currently, the alsa library (version 1.1.0) supports unsigned little and big endian encodings using 8, 16 and 32 bits. On the kernel module (=driver) side, things look grimm. Have a look at sound/usb/quirks.c to see which devices are currently supported in current linux kernels. If DSD for a DSD-capable UAC DAC is not (yet) supported, you could check https://github.com/lintweaker/xmos-native-dsd (contains kernel patches for XMOS based USB receivers). To list the formats and sample rates each of your devices supports, you could copy and paste the following in a terminal and press ENTER: bash <(wget -q -O - "http://lacocina.nl/alsa-capabilities") -s See alsa-capabilities shows which digital audio formats your USB DA-converter supports Regards, Ronald

Sorry for reacting so late. For the kind of info needed on page 1 of this thread, I created the `alsa-capabilities` script, which --with a single command-- shows what formats and sample rates each alsa device supports. All you have to do is copy and paste the following in a terminal and press ENTER: bash <(wget -q -O - "http://lacocina.nl/alsa-capabilities") -s More information can be found on: blog describing the script and its purposes github page for development and issue tracking Regards, Ronald

Hi, For your convenience (and mine) I've created the `alsa-capabilities` script, which shows the available alsa interfaces for audio playback in (or connected to) your linux computer, including USB DAC's, and the digital audio formats and sample rates each sound card or external USB DAC supports. You can run it straight from the web, by copying and pasting the following command in a terminal screen: bash <(wget -q -O - "https://lacocina.nl/alsa-capabilities") ## or bash <(curl -s "https://lacocina.nl/alsa-capabilities") Or, you can first download it and run it from your local file system: wget "https://lacocina.nl/alsa-capabilities" && bash alsa-capabilities To display the sample rates each interface supports, add the -s (or --samplerates) option. CAUTION: be sure to mute the audio outputs because sample rate detection plays (pseudo) random noise on each interface, except USB Audio Class (UAC) devices. bash <(wget -q -O - "https://lacocina.nl/alsa-capabilities") -s ## or bash alsa-capabilities -s More information can be found on: blog describing the script and its purposes github page for development and issue tracking I hope you enjoy it! Regards, Ronald

Hi there, All those new (and maybe even older) to music player daemon (mpd), linux and alsa, I've published a free script which with a single command generates a configuration file for mpd, which turns it in to an bit perfect music streamer. The only requirement is that you have a working linux installation with mpd installed. After opening up a terminal screen, paste the following commands to generate and display a mpd configuration. When multiple audio cards (including USB DACs) are found, the script will ask you which one you want to use: ## make the directory where you want to download the script mkdir /tmp/mpd-configure ## change to that directory cd /tmp/mpd-configure ## download and unpack the script and other files needed wget http://lacocina.nl/mpd-configure -O - | tar --strip-components=1 -zxf - ## run the script (the resulting configuration file will be displayed on the screen bash mpd-configure The script can be used in a fully automated fashion, by setting command line parameters and/or environment variables. In the following example, the result is saved to the system wide mpd configuration file `/etc/mpd.conf`, uses the first available USB Audio Class interface, sets the `music_directory` to `/srv/media/music` and the mpd 'home' directory (including its 'database') to `/var/lib/mpd`. In the case `/etc/mpd.conf` already exists, the script will make a backup of it: ## become root if neccessary [[ $EUID -eq 0 ]] || sudo su ## set the paths to the music and mpd data directories and run the script, ## saving the output to `/etc/mpd.conf` while creating a backup of that file ## in case it exists: CONF_MPD_MUSICDIR="/srv/media/music" CONF_MPD_HOMEDIR="/var/lib/mpd" \ bash ./mpd-configure --limit usb --noprompts --output "/etc/mpd.conf" ## restart mpd to use the new file systemctl restart mpd ## done (press ENTER) Some background information: blog describing the script and its purpose github development pages and issue tracker Regards and enjoy the music, Ronald

(Sorry, mist your update until now) Though it's sounds like checking if the lamp switches of when you close the door of your fridge, it actually is rather easy: driverquery [/s <System> [/u [<Domain>\]<Username> [/p <Password>]]] [/fo {table | list | csv}] [/nh] [/v | /si] For example, when the ip address of the host you want to check is 192.168.1.2 which has a computername of MYPC, with an administrator password of 'S3cr3t', open a command window (cmd.exe) and execute: driverquery /s 192.168.1.2 /u MYPC\Administrator /p S3cr3t /fo table (source: MS Technet - Driverquery)

It's really hard (for a consumer) to perform thorough blind tests with different computers/servers because one should have an equal number of equal DAC's and be able to use the same network, files etc. Furthermore, a broad comparisson of custom vs commercial computers seems nearly impossible because even changing a motherboard in your custom computer can change its sound (quality?). In general, I noted when building my custom sound PC's, that the less load is on the system (CPU, RAM, pheripherals and busses), the better the sound quality. My current system therefore is fanless, uses a intel core i5, uses but 2GB RAM, has no local storage apart from a small (16GB) msata drive for loading the linux kernel image (initrd) and after that runs fully in RAM (OS+mpd in bit-perfect mode) and has no pheripherals apart from the USB-DAC and the network. It sounds better than anything I've built before, but my marks above do apply of course. I don't think (but haven't listended them) that all-in-one NAS-ripper-player "servers" can achieve such results. I perform ripping and file and metadata management on my desktop PC and my music files are stored on the NAS (using NFS). Good luck, Ronald

I see. I use mpd on a dedicated fanless computer, which supports bit-perfect gapless playback of PCM and DSD files from your local network. On the client/usability side things are a bit more complicated. While the default smartphone mpd client apps won't let you use tags or metadata like composer, there are native (Linux, Mac and Windows) clients (like gmpc) that do support such features. Such a client could be run on devices like (the "screen portion" of a convertable) laptop or a (rooted) tablet. Good luck, Ronald

I too listen to both digital and analog sources. In fact I bought my (high quality) Kuzma turntable for the sole purpose of being able to listen to some kind of analog "absolute standard" in relation to the many differences in sound quality between various digital formats/releases and my digital equipment, which is of equal quality as the analog playback equipment. I would like to add to gmgraves' note that I would describe vinyl, in general, being more "emotional accurate" than digital. On the other hand, a beautiful creation like Kind of Blue is simply unobtainable for me as a (good quality) LP, while the 192/24 digital version of hdtracks is as "emotional accurate" as I can imagine. The same goes for vinyl, I've bought some €1 LP-treasures which easily surpass their modern high res equivalents in terms of sound quality and enjoyment. A growing problem for me is the fact that there is no such thing as a second hand market for digital downloads, nor will there ever be one. Coupled to the ever shifting format wars I'm getting a bit tired of buying, and especially rebuying, digital downloads, while LP's are fun to shop for and trade while they keep their value. Regards, Ronald

If you'd be willing to give up the third requirement, ie the minimserver on the nas, and would be able to install mpd on the nas (for example inside a debian chroot), maybe upmpdcli could serve your upnp-renderer needs. Just out of curiosity, which upnp control point(s) do you use, or what other reasons do you have for wanting to stick to a complete upnp stack? Regards, Ronald

You could try Musicbrainz Picard, which uses acoustic fingerprints. You just drag a number of audio files or folders containg audio files from the file tree on the left and drop them in the middle pane, select them all and choose 'Scan' from the toolbar. Each recognized track shows up in the right pane underneath an album the software thinks the track belongs to. Right-clicking on an album lets you select others versions of the same album. The disadvantage is that proper coding of your music library for the first time can be (very) time consuming. On the other hand, the advantages are great. Not only can you repeat the process indefinitely, but each time you repeat the steps above, the results get better, meaning more automatic and better matching and each time you repeat it, all updated upstream metadata is applied to yours. Therefore, musicbrainz works like a sort of personal database backup including the acoustic fingerprints of your tracks. Last but not least, others benefit from your work as well. If you're familiar with python you might try beets, a command line tool to "fetch or calculate all the metadata you could possibly need, like album art, lyrics, genres, tempos, ReplayGain levels, or acoustic fingerprints" and "gets its metadata from MusicBrainz, Discogs, or Beatport, or guess metadata using songs' filenames or their acoustic fingerprints." Good luck, Ronald