zerung Posted December 18, 2012 Share Posted December 18, 2012 Has any one tried the Cubox?? CuBox Qnap NAS (LPS) >UA ETHER REGEN (BG7TBL Master Clock) > Grimm MU1 > Mola Mola Tambaqui /Meridian 808.3> Wavac EC300B >Tannoy Canterbury SE HP Rig ++ >Woo WES/ > Stax SR-009, Audeze LCD2 Link to comment
astromo Posted December 18, 2012 Share Posted December 18, 2012 I don't know? At $140, that's a bit exxy. Not sure whether my budget would go that far. Link to comment
lintweaker Posted December 23, 2012 Share Posted December 23, 2012 I've tinkered with one. It is a nice little machine. Unfortunately the SPDIF only goes to 96k. Using USB for connecting to a DAC works OK but there is the occasional hickup when playing hi-res. Link to comment
wappinghigh Posted December 31, 2012 Share Posted December 31, 2012 ^ Could you please elaborate? What's the limiting factor here? Queue Miska. Could this be a suitable player for signalyst setup? New simplified setup: STEREO- Primary listening Area: Cullen Circuits Mod ZP90> Benchmark DAC1>RotelRKB250 Power amp>KEF Q Series. Secondary listening areas: 1/ QNAP 119P II(running MinimServer)>UPnP>Linn Majik DSI>Linn Majik 140's. 2/ (Source awaiting)>Invicta DAC>RotelRKB2100 Power amp>Rega's. Tertiary multiroom areas: Same QNAP>SMB>Sonos>Various. MULTICHANNEL- MacMini>A+(Standalone mode)>Exasound e28 >5.1 analog out>Yamaha Avantage Receiver>Pre-outs>Linn Chakra power amps>Linn Katan front and sides. Linn Trikan Centre. Velodyne SPL1000 Ultra Link to comment
Miska Posted December 31, 2012 Share Posted December 31, 2012 Queue Miska. Could this be a suitable player for signalyst setup? Interesting little device. Technically it is probably suitable, gigabit ethernet and 802.11n WLAN sounds promising. I'd need to get my hands on one to be sure, I'll add it to my shopping list. At least the price isn't bad. Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers Link to comment
lintweaker Posted December 31, 2012 Share Posted December 31, 2012 ^ Could you please elaborate? What's the limiting factor here? Queue Miska. Could this be a suitable player for signalyst setup? SPDIF maxing out at 96k is a hardware limitation of the SoC. The occasional USB hickup @ higher rates could be a driver issue. Link to comment
lintweaker Posted December 31, 2012 Share Posted December 31, 2012 Interesting little device. Technically it is probably suitable, gigabit ethernet and 802.11n WLAN sounds promising. I'd need to get my hands on one to be sure, I'll add it to my shopping list. At least the price isn't bad. Sorry, Wlan is not included. Link to comment
Miska Posted December 31, 2012 Share Posted December 31, 2012 Sorry, Wlan is not included. OK, it just says "USB wifi", so it was just about using any compatible WLAN dongle... Been reading too hastily... Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers Link to comment
wappinghigh Posted January 1, 2013 Share Posted January 1, 2013 What about the USB side? This going to support 24/192? Support asynchronous usb? New simplified setup: STEREO- Primary listening Area: Cullen Circuits Mod ZP90> Benchmark DAC1>RotelRKB250 Power amp>KEF Q Series. Secondary listening areas: 1/ QNAP 119P II(running MinimServer)>UPnP>Linn Majik DSI>Linn Majik 140's. 2/ (Source awaiting)>Invicta DAC>RotelRKB2100 Power amp>Rega's. Tertiary multiroom areas: Same QNAP>SMB>Sonos>Various. MULTICHANNEL- MacMini>A+(Standalone mode)>Exasound e28 >5.1 analog out>Yamaha Avantage Receiver>Pre-outs>Linn Chakra power amps>Linn Katan front and sides. Linn Trikan Centre. Velodyne SPL1000 Ultra Link to comment
Miska Posted January 1, 2013 Share Posted January 1, 2013 What about the USB side? This going to support 24/192? Support asynchronous usb? If it has proper hi-speed USB 2.0 ports, then yes. But it needs some testing to see how much bandwidth it is really capable of and if the ethernet is USB connected or not. Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers Link to comment
wappinghigh Posted January 1, 2013 Share Posted January 1, 2013 ^ Miska. PM sent New simplified setup: STEREO- Primary listening Area: Cullen Circuits Mod ZP90> Benchmark DAC1>RotelRKB250 Power amp>KEF Q Series. Secondary listening areas: 1/ QNAP 119P II(running MinimServer)>UPnP>Linn Majik DSI>Linn Majik 140's. 2/ (Source awaiting)>Invicta DAC>RotelRKB2100 Power amp>Rega's. Tertiary multiroom areas: Same QNAP>SMB>Sonos>Various. MULTICHANNEL- MacMini>A+(Standalone mode)>Exasound e28 >5.1 analog out>Yamaha Avantage Receiver>Pre-outs>Linn Chakra power amps>Linn Katan front and sides. Linn Trikan Centre. Velodyne SPL1000 Ultra Link to comment
edbk Posted January 17, 2013 Share Posted January 17, 2013 I have one although Im currently not actively using it. It's nice in that it has a seperate ethernetcontroller where most other boxes have ethernet running off the usb hub, it also has DDR3 memory. It got it to do 24/192 over usb to a wavio xmos card. I dont remember having any issues with hickups! It runs fine on say a 5V@500mA superreg. Miska I may be willing to lend you mine. European shipping should be cheap for this little box. Link to comment
wappinghigh Posted January 19, 2013 Share Posted January 19, 2013 There is now a "pro" version avail for pre-order with double the ram. Would this help playing high rez via async USB? I am totally serious about getting one of these and trying it with HQplayer into the new TEAC DSD (if I can get my hands on one).... The cubox comes preloaded with Ubuntu .... and has an esata port for connection of say an SSD for a music library. Or you could stream via the Ethernet. The q/ is will it handle every track thrown at it via USB? I'd just like to know first before committing ... New simplified setup: STEREO- Primary listening Area: Cullen Circuits Mod ZP90> Benchmark DAC1>RotelRKB250 Power amp>KEF Q Series. Secondary listening areas: 1/ QNAP 119P II(running MinimServer)>UPnP>Linn Majik DSI>Linn Majik 140's. 2/ (Source awaiting)>Invicta DAC>RotelRKB2100 Power amp>Rega's. Tertiary multiroom areas: Same QNAP>SMB>Sonos>Various. MULTICHANNEL- MacMini>A+(Standalone mode)>Exasound e28 >5.1 analog out>Yamaha Avantage Receiver>Pre-outs>Linn Chakra power amps>Linn Katan front and sides. Linn Trikan Centre. Velodyne SPL1000 Ultra Link to comment
Miska Posted January 19, 2013 Share Posted January 19, 2013 I have mine on the way here, I'm hoping it to arrive next week... Even the standard one has plenty of RAM for NAA purposes (I've been successfully running NAA on a 64 MB 400 MHz ARM9 (ARMv5 instruction set)). Pro could be useful for running full player, but let's see how things work out with the standard one. Price difference is minimal anyway. Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers Link to comment
wappinghigh Posted January 19, 2013 Share Posted January 19, 2013 ^ cool. Very cool. Look forward to finding out how you get on! Please post results on this thread New simplified setup: STEREO- Primary listening Area: Cullen Circuits Mod ZP90> Benchmark DAC1>RotelRKB250 Power amp>KEF Q Series. Secondary listening areas: 1/ QNAP 119P II(running MinimServer)>UPnP>Linn Majik DSI>Linn Majik 140's. 2/ (Source awaiting)>Invicta DAC>RotelRKB2100 Power amp>Rega's. Tertiary multiroom areas: Same QNAP>SMB>Sonos>Various. MULTICHANNEL- MacMini>A+(Standalone mode)>Exasound e28 >5.1 analog out>Yamaha Avantage Receiver>Pre-outs>Linn Chakra power amps>Linn Katan front and sides. Linn Trikan Centre. Velodyne SPL1000 Ultra Link to comment
Miska Posted February 4, 2013 Share Posted February 4, 2013 OK, now I have some things done... Installed Debian Wheezy on the CuBox Built networkaudiod package for the Debian Wheezy "armhf" architecture (also available online now) Built full custom OS image for NAA use (just 260 MB uncompressed) At the moment I'm listening David Gilmour's Live in Gdansk Shipyard through Wheezy+networkaudiod @24/192. Seems to work just fine. Since the CuBox has a gigabit ethernet interface, there's at least theoretically quite a lot of network bandwidth. CPU load is most of the time <5%. I guess next would be to check how well a full player would run there. I don't want to be over optimistic, since the CPU lacks ARM NEON, but at least it has VFPv3-D16. P.S. The pre-installed Ubuntu 10.04 is ancient and the default desktop is heavy, so I didn't bother with it... Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers Link to comment
wappinghigh Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 ^This is very cool. VERY cool.. What do you mean a "full" player? Do you mean your HQSignalyst player? New simplified setup: STEREO- Primary listening Area: Cullen Circuits Mod ZP90> Benchmark DAC1>RotelRKB250 Power amp>KEF Q Series. Secondary listening areas: 1/ QNAP 119P II(running MinimServer)>UPnP>Linn Majik DSI>Linn Majik 140's. 2/ (Source awaiting)>Invicta DAC>RotelRKB2100 Power amp>Rega's. Tertiary multiroom areas: Same QNAP>SMB>Sonos>Various. MULTICHANNEL- MacMini>A+(Standalone mode)>Exasound e28 >5.1 analog out>Yamaha Avantage Receiver>Pre-outs>Linn Chakra power amps>Linn Katan front and sides. Linn Trikan Centre. Velodyne SPL1000 Ultra Link to comment
Miska Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 What do you mean a "full" player? Do you mean your HQSignalyst player? Yes, the normal desktop version, I've got number of requests for ARM build. I'm interested to see how it runs and since it is not a big task to compile and try it out, why not... My hand written assembly optimizations would make sense to write for NEON, but not so much for VFP. And that would be a bigger task already. Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers Link to comment
wappinghigh Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 ^ Well what (if any) bot computers have a CPU that has ARM Neon? New simplified setup: STEREO- Primary listening Area: Cullen Circuits Mod ZP90> Benchmark DAC1>RotelRKB250 Power amp>KEF Q Series. Secondary listening areas: 1/ QNAP 119P II(running MinimServer)>UPnP>Linn Majik DSI>Linn Majik 140's. 2/ (Source awaiting)>Invicta DAC>RotelRKB2100 Power amp>Rega's. Tertiary multiroom areas: Same QNAP>SMB>Sonos>Various. MULTICHANNEL- MacMini>A+(Standalone mode)>Exasound e28 >5.1 analog out>Yamaha Avantage Receiver>Pre-outs>Linn Chakra power amps>Linn Katan front and sides. Linn Trikan Centre. Velodyne SPL1000 Ultra Link to comment
Miska Posted February 5, 2013 Share Posted February 5, 2013 ^ Well what (if any) bot computers have a CPU that has ARM Neon? Practically all that are based on ARM Cortex-A series of processors. Best option now would be one with Cortex-A15. Here's list of current and upcoming SoCs with A15: ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia I guess this is the first option on the market for A15 boards: ArndaleBoard.org Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers Link to comment
Miska Posted February 15, 2013 Share Posted February 15, 2013 A bit of update... I've built the full HQPlayer for CuBox (Debian Wheezy). I changed the processing pipeline to use 32-bit floating point instead of the normal 64-bit floating point to reduce memory bandwidth load to half (measuring any difference in DAC output won't be easy). Upsampling to 2x rates works with most filters. Upsampling to 4x rates works with light weight filters like "minringFIR". Upsampling RedBook to DSD is too much to ask as of now... Package is available on my web server for those who want to try it out... Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers Link to comment
wappinghigh Posted April 7, 2013 Share Posted April 7, 2013 I'd love to try this out. I'll get a CuBox Pro.. When you say "package is available.." you mean the HQPlayer firmware has been upgraded right? New simplified setup: STEREO- Primary listening Area: Cullen Circuits Mod ZP90> Benchmark DAC1>RotelRKB250 Power amp>KEF Q Series. Secondary listening areas: 1/ QNAP 119P II(running MinimServer)>UPnP>Linn Majik DSI>Linn Majik 140's. 2/ (Source awaiting)>Invicta DAC>RotelRKB2100 Power amp>Rega's. Tertiary multiroom areas: Same QNAP>SMB>Sonos>Various. MULTICHANNEL- MacMini>A+(Standalone mode)>Exasound e28 >5.1 analog out>Yamaha Avantage Receiver>Pre-outs>Linn Chakra power amps>Linn Katan front and sides. Linn Trikan Centre. Velodyne SPL1000 Ultra Link to comment
Miska Posted April 7, 2013 Share Posted April 7, 2013 I'd love to try this out. I'll get a CuBox Pro.. When you say "package is available.." you mean the HQPlayer firmware has been upgraded right? I mean a .deb package built specifically for CuBox hardware is available for Debian Wheezy OS. So once you have the OS installed you can install the software package. It's a bit like .dmg packages for OS X or .msi packages for Windows. Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers Link to comment
chhanthony Posted April 12, 2013 Share Posted April 12, 2013 I replaced my Squeezebox Touch with the cubox (ubuntu with MPD) connected to my Benchmark DAC2 HGC. Very good sound. Link to comment
Miska Posted April 13, 2013 Share Posted April 13, 2013 I've dedicated my CuBox to serve as a network audio adapter with minimal OS. Streaming PCM/DSD audio from player and CuBox just adding a network interface to the DAC. No USB problems or anything with hires audio. Just a tiny box sitting behind my DAC. When I get my hiFace DAC I will try it out too for 32/384. Signalyst - Developer of HQPlayer Pulse & Fidelity - Software Defined Amplifiers Link to comment
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