Right now I am testing voyage-mpd on small FS Futro S400 (for 10 EUR + 5 EUR S/H from ebay) with a decent PCI soundcard SQ210a powered by external +12V/-12V DIY linear PSU. It looks quite promising. The filesystem is read-only by default, easy to unlock by a provided script for adding new packages/upgrades/reconfiguration.
Underclocked down to 666MHz, MPD takes about 4% playing 44.1/48kHz internet radios. It has enough power to resample on the fly using libsoxr, but why bother, the soundcard supports all common samplerates natively.
Underclocked down to 666MHz, MPD takes about 4% playing 44.1/48kHz internet radios. It has enough power to resample on the fly using libsoxr, but why bother, the soundcard supports all common samplerates natively.
Now I am thinking of some older netbook that has a good audio performance plus the 2 Vrms on headphones out (?!) - swap HD by SSD 64GB, install some medium weight distro like CentOS GNOME or Mint GNOME, add mp3 and NTFS-3g (in the case of CentOS), plus, maybe something like Clementine. Boot time would be acceptable with a SSD, I think.
Netbooks generally have a small CPU fan which gets rather noisy in time. I have been using netbooks since their arrival and would not want such noisy beast for audio playback.
I have always had EeePCs (at least 5 different models) running dedicated eeepc linux distributions and their internal soundcard was always surprisingly bad. Sometimes it even produces (I am still using one) audible cracks when fed no signal (bad solder joint?)
Just my experience.
I have always had EeePCs (at least 5 different models) running dedicated eeepc linux distributions and their internal soundcard was always surprisingly bad. Sometimes it even produces (I am still using one) audible cracks when fed no signal (bad solder joint?)
Just my experience.
@phofman: the eepc is what I am thinking of as it is cheap on the second hand market - so no big loss even if I am not satisfied.
Our experience here was that we could not hear any difference between the EEPC's output via headphone and the Focusrite Scarlett on USB using the same headphone, but the office evironment is a bit noisy.
Our experience here was that we could not hear any difference between the EEPC's output via headphone and the Focusrite Scarlett on USB using the same headphone, but the office evironment is a bit noisy.
Ah, OK!
True, but it is pretty rare, as most class D amps are efficient enough that the heat dissipation isn't a major issue.
I am now working on a laptop LG W1-Pro computer with CentOS, having installed mplayer. CentOS is the only one system that can deal with my SPDIF interface on laptop docking station at all, Mint and KWheezy are silent. (Don't know why?)
My goal: To play mp3s. Audio only. Don't even dare to look into the 100s of video options that can be in a master config file, a user specified config file, or added by command line (which line I could not find with the gnome player, but I could find the command option menu in the Mplayer X on my OS X - why?) It is really incredible how much confusion there is about the different volume settings with software volume, mixer volume -softvol-max=... setting etc., app volume, master volume, WHEN ALL I NEED IS 1:1 TRANSFER OF THE BITS TO THE SOUNDCARD. I really dont see: Why all this confusion, since all active speakers plus all USB sound interfaces have HW volume control!! Is there no app to just occupy the soundcard, send the bits, give an error message to all other apps that want to play sound at the same time including system sounds and other BS, set the sample rate to the file's rate and just play 1:1. If the sound card / audio interface doesn't support the file's sample rate, ask what other possible rate to convert into (ask quality level too, +ask if all other files should be treated the same so no more asking the next time.)PERIOD. Why all this confusion, distributed over 100s of pages /forums in the internet? WHY WHY WHY?
My goal: To play mp3s. Audio only. Don't even dare to look into the 100s of video options that can be in a master config file, a user specified config file, or added by command line (which line I could not find with the gnome player, but I could find the command option menu in the Mplayer X on my OS X - why?) It is really incredible how much confusion there is about the different volume settings with software volume, mixer volume -softvol-max=... setting etc., app volume, master volume, WHEN ALL I NEED IS 1:1 TRANSFER OF THE BITS TO THE SOUNDCARD. I really dont see: Why all this confusion, since all active speakers plus all USB sound interfaces have HW volume control!! Is there no app to just occupy the soundcard, send the bits, give an error message to all other apps that want to play sound at the same time including system sounds and other BS, set the sample rate to the file's rate and just play 1:1. If the sound card / audio interface doesn't support the file's sample rate, ask what other possible rate to convert into (ask quality level too, +ask if all other files should be treated the same so no more asking the next time.)PERIOD. Why all this confusion, distributed over 100s of pages /forums in the internet? WHY WHY WHY?
1. Why did you pick one of the most customizable video players on earth for playing MP3s to SPDIF? E.g. -softvol-max - I cannot praise it more when playing very silent stereo movies improperly transcoded from 5.1 originals - with softvol-max=1000 mplayer offers 10 times volume amplification - suddenly the movie is watchable OK.
Or being able to pick which mixer control (card and specific control element) controls my volume - some people use multichannel soundcards for multiroom/different targets. You want to tell the player which of the volume controls your sound card offers should be operated by the volume facility.
2. That brings us to this - being in power over your hardware requires options. Your hardware offers many options, in linux you have them all available. In proprietary OSes very often you have no idea what your hardware offers, you have available only controls which authors of the driver decided to put into the graphical screens of their driver setup utilities.
Controls - Type amixer -c X contents where X is name (or index) of your card as listed in aplay -l. You will see long list of controls, many of them unknown to you. Yet they all are provided by your card driver. I personally use lots of them and am happy they are available to me.
Sound devices - your cards often offer several playback devices (analog, spdif, hdmi, stereo, multichannel, etc.). They are available too and you are the one who picks which device you want to use. It requires options, again.
If you spend one hour learning how the sound part of linux works, you will understand enough to pick between these options correctly. It is all about learning.
CentOS is a server distribution with older kernels (= potentially less supported hardware). Kwheezy is a mix of old kernel and old desktop. Mint 17 is desktop distribution with newer kernel (= more drivers for latest hardware).
Your SPDIF output could be silent for several reasons:
* you specified wrong alsa output device
* the output spdif switch was muted (yes, most soundcards offer output spdif switch - see amixer/alsamixer)
It could have been very simple to troubleshoot had you posted your issue here. Unexperienced distro hopping leads to nowhere. Linux is not about blind trial/error, reinstallation to fix, etc. It is about analyzing and configuring.
Or being able to pick which mixer control (card and specific control element) controls my volume - some people use multichannel soundcards for multiroom/different targets. You want to tell the player which of the volume controls your sound card offers should be operated by the volume facility.
2. That brings us to this - being in power over your hardware requires options. Your hardware offers many options, in linux you have them all available. In proprietary OSes very often you have no idea what your hardware offers, you have available only controls which authors of the driver decided to put into the graphical screens of their driver setup utilities.
Controls - Type amixer -c X contents where X is name (or index) of your card as listed in aplay -l. You will see long list of controls, many of them unknown to you. Yet they all are provided by your card driver. I personally use lots of them and am happy they are available to me.
Sound devices - your cards often offer several playback devices (analog, spdif, hdmi, stereo, multichannel, etc.). They are available too and you are the one who picks which device you want to use. It requires options, again.
If you spend one hour learning how the sound part of linux works, you will understand enough to pick between these options correctly. It is all about learning.
CentOS is a server distribution with older kernels (= potentially less supported hardware). Kwheezy is a mix of old kernel and old desktop. Mint 17 is desktop distribution with newer kernel (= more drivers for latest hardware).
Your SPDIF output could be silent for several reasons:
* you specified wrong alsa output device
* the output spdif switch was muted (yes, most soundcards offer output spdif switch - see amixer/alsamixer)
It could have been very simple to troubleshoot had you posted your issue here. Unexperienced distro hopping leads to nowhere. Linux is not about blind trial/error, reinstallation to fix, etc. It is about analyzing and configuring.
i chose mplayer because vlc has inherent distortion and yum install clementine did not work because some error message.
my hardware on this laptop was assembled in 2006 so no need for latest drivers.
i do not do distrohopping but distrolearning. having several distros in the grub boot menu on several partitions. life is much about learning by doing. centos happened to be the only one to recognize the sound interface. i must admit that i did not yet investigate into the driver issue at the other 2 distros.
but i most like centos over the other two because mint is based on unstable linux and kwheezy is actually unstable since i had 2 incidents of frozen kde screen on wheezy but not on mint so i Think it is kde what is no good. i hate coming back after hours to the computer with several apps and files open only to recognize that the mouse is frozen.
the centos's gnome is much faster and less overloaded compared to kde. up to now i had no stability issues on centos.
Maybe Win XP would be a good choice for mp3 playback.
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/pc-based/264424-how-guide-turn-windows-xp-pc-into-music-server.html
What do you think Linux vs Win XP?
http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/pc-based/264424-how-guide-turn-windows-xp-pc-into-music-server.html
What do you think Linux vs Win XP?
2Vrms is way above any line-level specifications. IMO most soundcards have max. 2V peak.
https://www.kfs.oeaw.ac.at/stx/manual/html/461.htm
Line level - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
If you need more power, get a headphone amplifier.
https://www.kfs.oeaw.ac.at/stx/manual/html/461.htm
Line level - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
If you need more power, get a headphone amplifier.
I am writing this post on eeepc. It has a regular line-out output. Suitable for high-impedance headphones. Nothing more, standard.
You are looking for parameters which do not exist on standard PC devices. Get an amplifier if you need more power/voltage (the same measure for fixed resistance load). E.g. USB-powered if you need only a bit more power. E.g. usb powered amplifier - Free Shipping - DX or lots of other alternatives.
You are looking for parameters which do not exist on standard PC devices. Get an amplifier if you need more power/voltage (the same measure for fixed resistance load). E.g. USB-powered if you need only a bit more power. E.g. usb powered amplifier - Free Shipping - DX or lots of other alternatives.
ok thanks but i cant buy something out of the internet because you never know how good / bad the sound q is and what about the drivers....
think i would need something like a good usb interface with unbalanced outputs hm maybe some behringer or the like....
on my studio system, i have the focus scarlett which is balanced out and high end sound q.almost like zero noise compared to my jbl monitors own noise level... i hate noise..
think i would need something like a good usb interface with unbalanced outputs hm maybe some behringer or the like....
on my studio system, i have the focus scarlett which is balanced out and high end sound q.almost like zero noise compared to my jbl monitors own noise level... i hate noise..
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