AudioLinux and NUC Troubleshooting and Tuning

[boneman]

As a W10/JRM for Win users, I'll keep my comments to my NUC experience.  I do have a RPi3 with an Allodigione but that making it sound good is this winter's project.

 

I bought a used NUC5PPYH with a 120 SSD and 4GB in ram plus the W10 Pro 64 OS.  It is a low powered Pentium offering and for my 192/24 flac files played without upsampling, it has more than enough horsepower.

 

My music files are on a Synology DS412 NAS which has two LAN ports, one which is hooked into my router/home network and the other which is connected directly to the NUC via CAT6 cable.  The NUC is connected to the DAC via USB.  I've considered trying a SPDIF output but to date have not gone that route.

 

I used it unchanged for a month and then I went with a Akasa fanless case.  Surprisingly the sonic change was negligible with the case change.

 

A couple of months later I built a DIY o11 LPS, outputting 18.75vdc.  This single change, about $100 for parts, made a big difference in lowering the sound floor and cleaning up the sound. 
 

 

 

 

[Middy]

I did it the other way around. I had a spare LPS S booster 13v with a quad cable Ifi DC MOD. Removing the fan made a difference to my ears. Subtle but there...

Power is the main factor and a lovely job you have done with your PSU.

Have you considered adding Linear LDOs on your outputs? Ldovr for example?

Many people seem happy with thier addition of a low noise regulator. Not all of us can afford some of the better LPS's, i wish i could make one Boneman.

Thanks for posting it here.

Dave ?

 

 

 

[boneman]

11 hours ago, Middy said:

I did it the other way around. I had a spare LPS S booster 13v with a quad cable Ifi DC MOD. Removing the fan made a difference to my ears. Subtle but there...

Power is the main factor and a lovely job you have done with your PSU.

Have you considered adding Linear LDOs on your outputs? Ldovr for example?

Many people seem happy with thier addition of a low noise regulator. Not all of us can afford some of the better LPS's, i wish i could make one Boneman.

Thanks for posting it here.

Dave ?

 

 

 

Thanks for the kind words.  I actually never thought about adding LDOs to the output.  I had built a 5V version of the o11 LPS for my RPi3 and it seemed to be tightly regulated although I never tested the consistency of the outputs.

[John769]

16 hours ago, boneman said:

I used it unchanged for a month and then I went with a Akasa fanless case.  Surprisingly the sonic change was negligible with the case change.

Thanks for the feedback boneman.  Just out of interest: What is the N3700's usage percentage during normal playback?  (task manager/performance).  Did the fan spin at all/ much with music before you changed the case over?  Thanks

[afrancois]

I have a Chromecast that's connected to my TV and I use it sometimes to display the lyrics while playing music.

This feature doesn't seem to work in AL.

Are there any firewall rules that prohibit the discovery of the Chromecast device by Roon? 

[Dutch]

@hifi25nl, a quick question if I may;

 

In general opinions are all over the place but would you advise your customers of AL to enable or disable the HPET (high precision enhanced timer) options in their BIOS’es? If you have an opinion on this, thank you in advance!

[hifi25nl]

Yes, you should enable it. Audiolinux has a special systemd service that will increase the max frequency of rtc0 and hpet

[Dutch]

3 minutes ago, hifi25nl said:

Yes, you should enable it. Audiolinux has a special systemd service that will increase the max frequency of rtc0 and hpet

 

Excellent, thank you for your quick reply Piero! 

[ray-dude]

 

On the mother thread, @Narcissus asked about Ramboot:

 

But don't you have to physically punch the "y/n" on the keyboard for entering ramroot? And then click on "Roon bridge", "HQPe" or Squeezelite whatever you're pairing up your server with?

 

It does "auto yes"  For convenience when running headless, I made the following change:

 

Edit /usr/bin/ramroot and change
LOAD_TIMEOUT_DEFAULT=15

 

to 

 

LOAD_TIMEOUT_DEFAULT=3

 

That changes the wait time at the "Y/N" prompt from 15 seconds to 3 seconds

 

 

[austinpop]

Bringing over another shuttle load of questions from the mother ship:

 

5 hours ago, yellowblue said:

I am interested in the user experience with the NUC dual setup and AL. If I want to shut down the NUCs or reboot them. How long does it take to actually get them playing music?

 

As previously answered, once you have Extreme, RamRoot, and RoonBridge enabled, just give it a few minutes. It will auto select AudiolinuxExtreme on the boot prompt, auto load to RAM, and auto start RoonBridge. I just wait until Roon shows me the device is ready.

 

5 hours ago, yellowblue said:

With a Zenith SE everyting is very comfortable. What will be the difference?

 

The key difference is that the SE boots from SSD, and has a web UI. I'm sure the latter will come with time. The advantage of the USB boot is you can remove the stick after boot, so no noisy device.

 

5 hours ago, yellowblue said:

Using extreme mode - is there a possibility to have som kind of energy saving mode while not using the NUCs?

 

I don't know if there is a way to pop in and out of Extreme mode on the fly. That is a good question for @hifi25nl. My guess is it needs a reboot.

 

My plan is to just power down both the endpoint and the server between listening sessions, as the Extreme mode does run hotter.

 

5 hours ago, yellowblue said:

Thamk you for your answer, Alan! No need to activate extreme mode seperately every time? Do I need a monitor to start/reboot AL?

 

Once enabled, it's automagic. Just give it time to complete.

 

4 hours ago, mourip said:

Two questions...

 

Does anyone have a good way to clone a USB drive? Can Rufus do that? I think that my current USB drive is a USB2 and it takes a long time to boot all the way to ramroot. My ports are USB3 so I was thinking of buying a new drive to see if it would speed boot-up.

 

I've not done it, but I can't imagine how it wouldn't. At the very least, save the drive as an image, and then burn onto the new drive.

 

4 hours ago, mourip said:

Second. I have not used USB in my system for a couple of years. I have been using Dante ethernet to AES. Any suggestions for a good "bang for the buck" USB cable?

 

I've been very happy with the Lush^2 cable. 

 

2 hours ago, yellowblue said:

Many questions just today because I am just about to order a NUC: Someone who know if a NUC7i7DNH (15W) on AL extreme mode will work with a LPS 1.2?

 

Not on mine. I think @lmitche found a TDP 10W mode, which is not on my BIOS, so you may have to do it through another OS first. Plus he had to turn off a LOT of stuff. 

 

5 minutes ago, greenleo said:

 

For the users who changed the chassis of the NUC7CJYH, how did you get out the main board?  Is it by brute force?  Any tricks?

 

Check out the YouTube videos. I didn't end up having to exfiltrate the board out of a NUC enclosure myself, but had this video in my list if needed: 

 

 

[ray-dude]

@austinpop Thank you for the additional impressions. May I ask where you ended up with your end point SqueezeLite parameter settings?  (your /etc/squeezelite.conf )

 

I've just stood up my NUC7CJYH as a Roon Bridge end point, and want to experiment with the Roon Server/SqueezeLite end point configuration that you developed (alas, I confess that the myriad of SqueezeLite parameters are all still pig latin to me)

 

[yellowblue]

After contacting cirrus7 computing in Germany I got the answer that they don´t expect any i3, i5 or i7 to work with the LPS 1.2 because those CPUs have higher power peaks than Celeron and Pentium. But he expects the NUC NUC7PJYH with the Pentium J5005 to work fine with the LPS 1.2. So I am going to order this NUC instead for the NUC7CJYH from them. It´s more expensive than buying a NUC and an Akasa case and fiddling myself, but it´s worth it for me.

[John769]

38 minutes ago, austinpop said:

Not on mine. I think @lmitche found a TDP 10W mode, which is not on my BIOS, so you may have to do it through another OS first. Plus he had to turn off a LOT of stuff. 

 If in the bios you have power/primary power settings, then enabling 'low power mode' (if you have it) might reduce it to 10w?  Just a guess but probably wrong..?

[lmitche]

10 minutes ago, John769 said:

 If in the bios you have power/primary power settings, then enabling 'low power mode' (if you have it) might reduce it to 10w?  Just a guess but probably wrong..?

Yes, that's right. Also run 4gb of ram, disable every circuit you can and it may boot on the lps1.2. It's inconsistent at best here, so I'm not recommending this.

[austinpop]

3 minutes ago, ray-dude said:

@austinpop Thank you for the additional impressions. May I ask where you ended up with your end point SqueezeLite parameter settings?  (your /etc/squeezelite.conf )

 

I've just stood up my NUC7CJYH as a Roon Bridge end point, and want to experiment with the Roon Server/SqueezeLite end point configuration that you developed (alas, I confess that the myriad of SqueezeLite parameters are all still pig latin to me)

 

Yes, this is the reality of NUC-world. It's a bit wild west. 

 

As regards squeezelite, the main parameter for SQ is the -b one for preallocated buffers. I was lucky that my first experiment with AL was on a Zenith SE that already used squeezelite as its internal player. I was able to duplicate the settings in the existing conf file.

 

Other than that it's trial and error and forums! I can try and help out, but no guarantees. First, get me a few key things:

• install squeezelite (not R2) from the AL guide
• amount of RAM on your NUC?
• Run squeezelite -l and tell me your output
• Do you care about DSD? Does your DAC require DoP?

We'll go from there.

[davide256]

10 minutes ago, lmitche said:

Yes, that's right. Also run 4gb of ram, disable every circuit you can and it may boot on the lps1.2. It's inconsistent at best here, so I'm not recommending this.

mmm. Received  NUC7PJYH  last nite, straight forward to configure it for USB boot, disable unused peripherals, and get AL headless up and running in RAM as Roonbridge.

But not finding it to be an improvement from overclocked Pi3b+/AL/LPS 1.2 so far; sounds like an improved version of microRendu for detail but tone colors and dynamics

don't "pop" like they do with RPI3. Ran it off 19/12V for HDplex, but could not get it to complete  boot on 12V/ LPS 1.2. Appreciate suggestions above, would really like to

see if  better PS solves.

 

Also 2 simple questions

1) does it matter which USB port is used for boot?

2) does it matter which port is used for asynch USB connection?

.

[LTG2010]

1 hour ago, davide256 said:

1) does it matter which USB port is used for boot?

2) does it matter which port is used for asynch USB connection?

I'd use the rear ports for output (not sure if the front ports are connected via cables).

I would disconnect the fan, If no luck check if there's a low power setting in bios.

[davide256]

46 minutes ago, LTG2010 said:

I'd use the rear ports for output (not sure if the front ports are connected via cables).

I would disconnect the fan, If no luck check if there's a low power setting in bios.

Was able to get it to boot and play with LPS 1.2 using BIOS power settings... set sustained power limit to 10 watts and burst to 12 watts.  Believe this uses Intel Speed Step to

throttle CPU's, suspect it would sound better if this wasn't needed/used. But it does sound better  now that I can use LPS 1.2, dynamics are improved, still evaluating bass.

[mourip]

When in headless mode and I run alconf and chose option #1 "Save system (If in ram mode)" does this mean that if I run that script it will save my settings if my USB drive is still in place?

 

So what happens if I am in ram mode, pull the USB drive and then make a change? Is that something that basically only affects that session and is gone when I reboot?

 

I assume that if I am not in ram mode and I make a change it will always be saved to my USB drive for the next boot?

[ray-dude]

1 minute ago, mourip said:

When in headless mode and I run alconf and chose option #1 "Save system (If in ram mode)" does this mean that if I run that script it will save my settings if my USB drive is still in place?

 

So what happens if I am in ram mode, pull the USB drive and then make a change? Is that something that basically only affects that session and is gone when I reboot?

 

I assume that if I am not in ram mode and I make a change it will always be saved to my USB drive for the next boot?

 

I was playing with this last night.  the alconf option 1 invokes a script to copy things back to the USB.  If you are in RAM mode and the USB is removed, the script basically errors out.  If the USB is inserted and you're in RAM mode, the changed files will be copied back to the USB while you continue to run out of RAM.

 

If you're not in RAM mode, the changes you're making are direct to the USB and available for the next reboot

 

 

[lwr]

I have installed the new 3.0 version of Audiolinux  and am very pleased with the SQ improvement over the previous version.  I'm using a NUC7PJYH with the latest BIOS upgrade, recommended BIOS settings (including HPET), with 2 sticks of 8 GB RAM (both showing active in BIOS settings). 

 

My problem is: In the older version of lqxt, I used to get a prompt before the completion of the start up program loading that would enable me to load the operating system into RAM by entering "Y."  In the new program, that prompt doesn't appear, and when I select "RAMROOT enable" in Expert Settings, nothing happens ( eg no dialog box pops up to confirm that RAMBOOT is enabled).  I click on "SAVE" and it grays (indicating that it is processing the script).  Eventually the greyed SAVE icon regains it's coloring (meaning that it has completed it's script), and I reboot the system.  Still, I get no option during the next start up program loading that would enable me to load the operating system into RAM, and if I later remove the USB operating system stick, the system locks up and must be rebooted from scratch all over again.

 

What do I need to be doing differently?    

[boneman]

8 hours ago, John769 said:

Thanks for the feedback boneman.  Just out of interest: What is the N3700's usage percentage during normal playback?  (task manager/performance).  Did the fan spin at all/ much with music before you changed the case over?  Thanks

 

Again, this is with JRMedia and Win10, CPU utilization is generally under 3% except when the album to be played is selected at which time it goes up to 20% before subsiding back.

 

Fan was on low setting via the BIOS.  It did come on, not sure there is a totally passive mode in the default settings.

[Middy]

@greenleo

 

Hi mate, it is a little brute force but controlled in my case. It was pushing Mobo away left and pulling the case away to the right. Fingers on both hands together 

 

I pushed the mobo back against the where connectors protrudes.

Pull the plastic and metal side away from the mobo. This starts to give some space to tease it out.. 

Take a picture of connectors and ensure they are all undone.

Its really a 3 hand job...  i should have made a little tool. A small piece of wire with a little 'L, so it can go into a mother board screw hole in the pcb to help lift it out.

My board was fiddly, just have a little patients, try and judge reaction. Check try again... 

Good luck  mate hope it helps a little..?

 

@austinpop i saw your case much better the Celeron. It looks machined from solid and anodised in the video.

Space for some little cable mods from stock, shielding probabilities

. Apologies if i worried anyone, i post for the cluless just to give basic advice, As in the main so am i..More as early posts mentioned scary heat from extreme mode.

Just happy you're  happy my friend. That's the main thing on here.

A nice early xmass gift..??????⌨??

[LTG2010]

1 hour ago, lwr said:

What do I need to be doing differently?    

Go into the console, type alconf there's a list of settings there.

[greenleo]

6 hours ago, lmitche said:

Yes, that's right. Also run 4gb of ram, disable every circuit you can and it may boot on the lps1.2. It's inconsistent at best here, so I'm not recommending th

Inconsistent in terms of can/cannot boot up or SQ good/bad?