24/192 on Raspberry Pi 3 over wifi - lots of crackle

[jerico]

Hi all -

 

Just picked up a Raspberry Pi 3 to use in my bedroom system, strictly over wifi. I find that I can cleanly stream 16/44 via mpd and Roon with no issue. When I get to 24/192 though, Roon tends to handle it well (some network slowness, but I can typically play the files cleanly). mpd chokes though. I'm playing with the buffering settings there without success so far, but this is an unexpected situation re: mpd. I'e got a Beaglebone Black in my main rig and it runs 24/192 flawlessly, though it uses Ethernet and applies the performance governor.

 

I've tried changing the governor on the Pi as well, but that seems to cause major throttling (I've got some heat sinks en route to test out). But since Roon is generally OK, this seems more like a wifi throughput issue - or mpd buffering issue - than a CPU issue.

 

Happy to hear any thoughts.

 

Pi is running headless, removed all traces of X server. I do keep Roon Bridge running though.

 

Thanks all!

 

Justin

[Man in a van]

Hi all -

 

Just picked up a Raspberry Pi 3 to use in my bedroom system, strictly over wifi. I find that I can cleanly stream 16/44 via mpd and Roon with no issue. When I get to 24/192 though, Roon tends to handle it well (some network slowness, but I can typically play the files cleanly). mpd chokes though. I'm playing with the buffering settings there without success so far, but this is an unexpected situation re: mpd. I'e got a Beaglebone Black in my main rig and it runs 24/192 flawlessly, though it uses Ethernet and applies the performance governor.

 

I've tried changing the governor on the Pi as well, but that seems to cause major throttling (I've got some heat sinks en route to test out). But since Roon is generally OK, this seems more like a wifi throughput issue - or mpd buffering issue - than a CPU issue.

 

Happy to hear any thoughts.

 

Pi is running headless, removed all traces of X server. I do keep Roon Bridge running though.

 

Thanks all!

 

Justin

 

 

The answer is "channel 10".

 

No, seriously, you say you are running a 'pi headless.

 

Which OS and what output on the pi?

 

More info required

[jerico]

Sorry, yes you're right. OS is Raspian lite, though I also tried Arch with the same result (static on anything greater than 16/44 over mpd, while Roon handles things well). Strangely, the music isn't skipping, it just has random souding crackle, again only with mpd.

 

I'm running USB out to a Schitt Gumby. Standard power supply on Pi3, wifi only, HD stored on a NAS mounted via Samba.

[plissken]

Does it work hard wired?

[Man in a van]

Justin

 

i would suggest three things.

try a wifi dongle if using the inbuilt pi wifi

try lms

 

TUTORIAL: Stand alone Squeezebox server and player for BBQ | Squeezing a Raspberry Pi

 

or try (also lms)

 

Announce: piCorePlayer 3.10

 

try Moode player

 

moodeaudio.org

or try channel 10 (Check your wifi channels for best reception, something like wi-fi analyser)

 

Ronnie

[franz159]

OP reporting with wifi is "somehow" consistent with my experience over wifi.

 

In my case however, both Roon or Moode fail streaming either 24/192 or DSD 64/128 over wifi or even wired over ethernet when i fetch my music from a network connected storage, but things do work when I fetch my music from a USB disk locally attached to my raspberry pi3.

When playing up to 24/96 I have no problem whatsoever either wired or wifi.

[Lebouwsky]

I would suggest trying lan first in exact same system, so you can determin the problem is WiFi or something else.

[jerico]

So I plugged the Pi3 into my main rig solely with Ethernet, USB to a Schiit Yggy, after bringing down the wifi interface (and commenting out my wifi config in wpa_supplicant.conf). And I still get the static with MPD on HD material.

 

Now, in my main rig I usually use a Beaglebone Black, and that plays HD over mpd perfectly (exact same mpd.conf). So it appears to be an issue with the Pi and/or mpd on the Pi. I do remember when I first got the BBB, it would also crackle on HD unless it was set to the performance governor (using cpufrequtils). I've tried doing that on the Pi but it gets very laggy. I also tried removing cpufrequtils on the Pi and enabling turbo mode, but that also makes the box very laggy.

 

The next test will be to install some heatsinks on the Pi and try the governor/turbo config again, to see if heat-based throttling is an issue.

 

Step by step here...

[Lebouwsky]

The heatsink might help, but if its an underpowered cpu you'll need a faster sbc like a hummingboard. Never had any issues with mine upsampling to 192. I have one spair....

[franz159]

The heatsink might help, but if its an underpowered cpu you'll need a faster sbc like a hummingboard. Never had any issues with mine upsampling to 192. I have one spair....

Curious to know, which music library management are u using on top of mpd?

Also, which kind of output are you using to the dac? (coax, USB)

And, finally, are you playing DSD too?

[Lebouwsky]

Curious to know, which music library management are u using on top of mpd?

Also, which kind of output are you using to the dac? (coax, USB)

And, finally, are you playing DSD too?

 

The music is on a synology nas (dsm) without any separate library management. In mpd mode volumio displays artist, album, song and cd front picture.

 

The hummingboard is (actually was) connected to the schiit gungnir dac by USB, in combination with the uptone regen. The Supra USB made quite a difference in my system.

 

The gungnir dac is uncapable of reading dsd and I am not planning to upgrade it in the near future. The next step is probably replacing the nas by an i7 nuc, operating as a Roon/ hqplayer server and the sms200 as a NAA (which is also possible with a hummingboard by the way)

[franz159]

The music is on a synology nas (dsm) without any separate library management. In mpd mode volumio displays artist, album, song and cd front picture.

 

The hummingboard is (actually was) connected to the schiit gungnir dac by USB, in combination with the uptone regen. The Supra USB made quite a difference in my system.

 

The gungnir dac is uncapable of reading dsd and I am not planning to upgrade it in the near future. The next step is probably replacing the nas by an i7 nuc, operating as a Roon/ hqplayer server and the sms200 as a NAA (which is also possible with a hummingboard by the way)

Thanks, so you are using the Volumio cubox-i distribution on the hummingboard?

And which of the many hummingboard models?

Thanks again!

[Lebouwsky]

Yes I use the cubox-i version, although the "old" 1.5 volumio worked as a charm and the 2.0 didn't. Don't know if there are updates being made since the last time (november) I tryed to make it work.

 

Mine is a hummingboard edge with quad core Imx6 processor and 2gb memory. It's quite overkill for just upsampling to PCM 192, with a dual core and less memory you'll probably be fine.

[jerico]

I flashed Volumio and now everything works very cleanly. MPD playing HD over wifi without issue, and Roon Bridge also functioning. Nice solution.