Audiophile Linux 1.0.2 Distro

[sspott]

Not exactly sure how this flew under the radar; but I'm grabbing the ISO now, and looking forward to throwing it in VMware later tonight. Looks like the site went up a few weeks back, anyone else given this a go?

 

Audiophile Linux

 

Audiophile Linux is the operating system optimized for high quality digital audio reproduction. Created by audiophiles for the audiophiles, AP-Linux is easily installed, user friendly, and absolutely free. Install it like any other GNU/Linux distribution and enjoy the music playback with latencies under 10ms. Audiophile Linux comes with everything you need for playing your audio and video files.

 

Audiophile Linux features:

 

• System and memory optimized for audio perfection
  
• Custom Real-Time kernel version 2.6.10
  
• Lightweight window manager
  
• Pre installed audio and video programs
  
• Lightweight OS, free of unnecessary daemons and services
  

 

Standard Linux distributions are designed for running servers or desktop usage. AP-Linux distribution is designed for high quality audio only. The unnecessary services and daemons, included in standard Linux distributions, have been removed and their negative influence on audio playback made impossible. Printing and some other network services running in background of the standard Linux distributions, use the CPU and memory and are completely useless for audio reproduction.

 

AP-Linux distribution includes the lightweight XFCE desktop environment and highly configurable and low resource demanding X11 window manager called Fluxbox. XFCE is easier to use, but the Fluxbox is faster, lighter and less demanding. I use Fluxbox window manager for more than seven years and can highly recommend it.

[Krisbee]

anyone else given this a go?

 

No, nor will I. So let me explain why. AP-Linux is promoting the idea that you need a real time kernel and jackd in order to obtain “high quality digital audio reproduction” from a computer system running Linux. To my mind, these ideas are wrong headed. They may be appropriate for someone interested in making and recording their own music, but ultra “Low-latency” etc are not necessary for straightforward audio playback on a Linux system.

 

Please read any of posts on this subject made by member “phofman” on this forum and over at diyaudio.

 

Contrary to what AP-Linux promotes, standard Linux distributions are easily capable of “bi-perfect” playback without the need for extensive “system and memory optimisation”, whatever they might be, as stated by AP-Linux. See here for a little more detail:

 

 

Bit Perfect Audio from Linux

[iago]

Not exactly sure how this flew under the radar; but I'm grabbing the ISO now, and looking forward to throwing it in VMware later tonight. Looks like the site went up a few weeks back, anyone else given this a go?

 

There is another thread on the Software subforum.

 

I was a bit shocked, when I downloaded it, by the size of the distribution. It is Linux Mint based, has an ISO size near 1.5 GB and seems to require fairly modern hardware. Not really a distribution 'optimized for audio'.

[Krisbee]

I was a bit shocked, when I downloaded it, by the size of the distribution. It is Linux Mint based, has an ISO size near 1.5 GB and seems to require fairly modern hardware. Not really a distribution 'optimized for audio'.

 

I don't think AP-Linux is a "distribution" at all. Does it have its own repositories? What's in /etc/apt/sources.d ? This looks very musch like someone's "remastersys" re-spin of Linux Mint, which is itself an Ubunutu derivitive. The 1.5GB size also points to this.

 

I'm sorry to say it, but I think it's a bit of nonsense. Any competent Linux user should be capable of configuring their system for "audiophile" playback.

[Sik_Lescinovid]

I will have to agree with Krisbee on this one, especially considering that it's apparently running Pulse Audio instead of ALSA, which might lead to digital processing of the audio if one isn't careful. In this sense Lubuntu is an equivalently simple yet better alternative as it ships by default with ALSA and is even smaller and more lightweight.

[phofman]

The website on the homepage lists all the common audiophile buzzwords. IMO it is a marketing project, the website contains a lot of ads.

[Krisbee]

Hi Phofman,

 

Good to hear from you. There's an "Official Computer Audiophile Windows 8" thread on the software forum, maybe it's time there was something for Linux. A thread in which I hope any idea of the need for RT kernels and stuff for "best" quality audio playback on Linux is shown to be unnecessary and that Linux isn't just for geeks. Your input would be most welcome.

[lkong]

That's just weird, as far as i know ap linux is based on debian which is usually 300mb-ish

[phofman]

That's just weird, as far as i know ap linux is based on debian which is usually 300mb-ish

 

It is based on linux mint debian which is a full-blown distribution.

 

If the homepage is up-to-date, the kernel 2.6.10 is more than ancient. But I doubt it is still the case.

[Sik_Lescinovid]

The website on the homepage lists all the common audiophile buzzwords. IMO it is a marketing project, the website contains a lot of ads.

 

That was my thought exactly, but the author of AP-Linux chimed in to assure me that there were no ads on the page. I'm still puzzled...

[jkorten]

Not exactly sure how this flew under the radar; but I'm grabbing the ISO now, and looking forward to throwing it in VMware later tonight. Looks like the site went up a few weeks back, anyone else given this a go?

 

Audiophile Linux

 

Audiophile Linux is the operating system optimized for high quality digital audio reproduction. Created by audiophiles for the audiophiles, AP-Linux is easily installed, user friendly, and absolutely free. Install it like any other GNU/Linux distribution and enjoy the music playback with latencies under 10ms. Audiophile Linux comes with everything you need for playing your audio and video files.

 

[...snip]

 

.

 

 

Sorry for raising a zombie thread - but worth posting for those who would try. Well I thought this "version" of linux would prove useful. I even convinced myself the reduced gui was helpful.

 

However - the wireless behavior of Mint makes this an impossible version to use headless. The wireless will suddenly pop over to another channel (without a security key) and leave you without controls. If the wireless drops and reconnects - an intervention is required by the user to reconnect.

 

I'm moving my headless back to Ubuntu, then will figure out how to get MPD running as well.

[mac_and_dac]

I'm moving my headless back to Ubuntu, then will figure out how to get MPD running as well.

 

I've got a headless version running of MPD running on RPi. The SQ is excellent for 16/44.1 but it struggles for some reason with MP3's (not that I care too much).

 

FWIW, MPD in my experience isn't super-stable, so I may end up rewriting (for myself) some parts of its error handling as I am getting tired of it falling over when there are network connection issues.