XMMS
Soundcheck,
Interested to hear your positive results with dynebolic - I too have been playing with it recently, it is one of the few distributions that has a well maintained audio kernel, optimised for slower processors and could be booted off of flash. It also seems to be relatively simple to install any other software.
Did you make a comparsion between xmms and amarok? (the two included players) The live cd runs too slow for my 700mhz cyrix iii, but I have now read that the 2.6 kernel can have problems with this processor so a hardrive install may not help.
If you want to try a master clock in the DAC slaving the PC, the maudio audiophile pci card is relatively inexpensive and the manual suggests that it will sync to an external spdif signal (although it is not an advertised feature). There was a thread here fairly recently discussing clock distribution for such a scheme.
I had been thinking of this for a silent psu solution which would allow me to diy an optimised external 12v supply, but I am unsure of whether DC/DC conversion noise would be any better than the switching noise of a normal PSU. This would certainly work with something like a cyrix iii, but would not have enough juice for newer processors.
Cheers,
Ross
Soundcheck,
Interested to hear your positive results with dynebolic - I too have been playing with it recently, it is one of the few distributions that has a well maintained audio kernel, optimised for slower processors and could be booted off of flash. It also seems to be relatively simple to install any other software.
Did you make a comparsion between xmms and amarok? (the two included players) The live cd runs too slow for my 700mhz cyrix iii, but I have now read that the 2.6 kernel can have problems with this processor so a hardrive install may not help.
If you want to try a master clock in the DAC slaving the PC, the maudio audiophile pci card is relatively inexpensive and the manual suggests that it will sync to an external spdif signal (although it is not an advertised feature). There was a thread here fairly recently discussing clock distribution for such a scheme.
I had been thinking of this for a silent psu solution which would allow me to diy an optimised external 12v supply, but I am unsure of whether DC/DC conversion noise would be any better than the switching noise of a normal PSU. This would certainly work with something like a cyrix iii, but would not have enough juice for newer processors.
Cheers,
Ross
Hi Ross.
Since I don't need the Amarok overhead for pure audio playback. I get along with
XMMS quite well. ( The XMMS UI is IMO not really highly sophisticated.)
AMAROK is using the XINE-audio engine, which then turns back to ALSA.
For pure PCM playback you actually need to look at ALSA only.
In my case, having a USB soundcard, even Jack refers back to the ALSA module.
( For non UNIX folks: ALSA, Jack and OSS (outdated) are Unix audio processing layers)
In the end you just need an application delivering you the most flexible ALSA interface, if you intend to get the PCM stream, as pure as it is, out of the PC.
XMMS offers more parameters to play with.
XMMS you can also run realtime as root!
I prefer currently, based on my limited knowledge, XMMS.
Do you, or any others around here, have a clue if XMMS outputs 48kHz material as 48kHz stream?
Aplay - command line player, IMO delivers the best ALSA interface.
You can set all ALSA parameters such as I/O buffer etc.
Though - It doesn't come with an internal volume control.
I still don't have a clue how to get all ALSA parameters properly configured.
Somehow the discussed applications (except aplay) do have limited parameter configurations incoorporated into their applications.
You need a real DIY heart, and IT background to get Linux up'n running at its best! That's for sure!
However - Running off-the-shelve Ubuntu 6.10 with XMMS
is IMO soundwise already as good as any MS setup!
BTW - Audacity is a real good choice as single track-player. Though what I read
is that it uses OSS for audio output, which is, AFAIK, only capable delivereing 44,1kHz PCM streams)
I'd appreciate, if somebody could comment on this!?
I think it'll be good to start a LINUX Audio thread (What I'll do later on).
I think it's worth to share the difficulties and potential solutions around it!
Cheers
Klaus
Since I don't need the Amarok overhead for pure audio playback. I get along with
XMMS quite well. ( The XMMS UI is IMO not really highly sophisticated.)
AMAROK is using the XINE-audio engine, which then turns back to ALSA.
For pure PCM playback you actually need to look at ALSA only.
In my case, having a USB soundcard, even Jack refers back to the ALSA module.
( For non UNIX folks: ALSA, Jack and OSS (outdated) are Unix audio processing layers)
In the end you just need an application delivering you the most flexible ALSA interface, if you intend to get the PCM stream, as pure as it is, out of the PC.
XMMS offers more parameters to play with.
XMMS you can also run realtime as root!
I prefer currently, based on my limited knowledge, XMMS.
Do you, or any others around here, have a clue if XMMS outputs 48kHz material as 48kHz stream?
Aplay - command line player, IMO delivers the best ALSA interface.
You can set all ALSA parameters such as I/O buffer etc.
Though - It doesn't come with an internal volume control.
I still don't have a clue how to get all ALSA parameters properly configured.
Somehow the discussed applications (except aplay) do have limited parameter configurations incoorporated into their applications.
You need a real DIY heart, and IT background to get Linux up'n running at its best! That's for sure!
However - Running off-the-shelve Ubuntu 6.10 with XMMSis IMO soundwise already as good as any MS setup!
BTW - Audacity is a real good choice as single track-player. Though what I read
is that it uses OSS for audio output, which is, AFAIK, only capable delivereing 44,1kHz PCM streams)
I'd appreciate, if somebody could comment on this!?
I think it'll be good to start a LINUX Audio thread (What I'll do later on).
I think it's worth to share the difficulties and potential solutions around it!
Cheers
Klaus
OK, the things are firing up
Ross, that suply looks very nice. I wonder if it's possible to use 2 or three of them. Anyway, it's a good ideea. Maybe an intel celeron or an amd sempron (or, why not, some mobile cpu version) could do with this psu.
About the unix configuration, well, although I had some experience with mepis and vector linux... i'm afraid that's all. I still think that an external dac it's must, although I consider BlackCatSound advices...
Ross, that suply looks very nice. I wonder if it's possible to use 2 or three of them. Anyway, it's a good ideea. Maybe an intel celeron or an amd sempron (or, why not, some mobile cpu version) could do with this psu.
About the unix configuration, well, although I had some experience with mepis and vector linux... i'm afraid that's all. I still think that an external dac it's must, although I consider BlackCatSound advices...
soundcheck said:
Laptops still have many SMPS in them, the batteries only supply 1 voltage and the PSU in the laptop needs to generate volts for the HDD, screen, CPU etc.. ans generally laptop PSUs are only just capable of doing the job, no headroom.
soundcheck , your worried about clocking yet use the PCM2707 which slaves its clock over the USB from the PC. Not a good solution.
rossco_50, you're better off using the master clock on the audiophile 192 card itself. Syncing to an external clock via SPDIF is just silly IMO as you will gain all the nastyness that comes with SPDIF.
Internal DAC all the way for me. Having an external DAC just adds an extra layer of fudge factor.
USB, SPDIF etc.. are all very poor ways to move audio IMO. I2C is not for long distances.
PSU noise is by far the easiest thing to overcome.
Put a good FIXED stable clock right next to the DAC.
PCI to I2C bridge with a small FIFO with the I2C side slaved from the fixed DAC clock.
Low interrupt latency motherboard (ie nothing by Via) to ensure the FIFO is kept full.
The rest is all in the digital domain so noise, jitter, whatever become instantly irrelevant.
USB, SPDIF etc.. are all very poor ways to move audio IMO. I2C is not for long distances.
PSU noise is by far the easiest thing to overcome.
Put a good FIXED stable clock right next to the DAC.
PCI to I2C bridge with a small FIFO with the I2C side slaved from the fixed DAC clock.
Low interrupt latency motherboard (ie nothing by Via) to ensure the FIFO is kept full.
The rest is all in the digital domain so noise, jitter, whatever become instantly irrelevant.
something like this maybe?
"An integrated MPEG1-Layer2 audio decoder allows the direct output of digital Audio, which simply has to be converted into analog signals by any usual I2S-compatible D/A converter. "
Could this board alow the use of the i2s output for a player and not only through the MPEG1-Layer2 audio decoder... Although.. I don't think so...
"An integrated MPEG1-Layer2 audio decoder allows the direct output of digital Audio, which simply has to be converted into analog signals by any usual I2S-compatible D/A converter. "
Could this board alow the use of the i2s output for a player and not only through the MPEG1-Layer2 audio decoder... Although.. I don't think so...
BlackCatSound said:
1. My well configured battery driven notebook (Thinkpad T60P) performs better than driven through mains and also performing better than a regular desktop machine. This is a fact!
Perhaps there are other reasons than PSU related reasons behind the sound differences.
2. First of all. The PCM2707 is not slaving anything.
As I wrote, I am well aware of the deficiencies of the isynchrounous or adaptive clocking.
However, the sound result is just amazing, especially when driven with 48kHz material. The better the source signal the better the result delivered by the
2707. ( To be clocked with Tent clocks or similar!)
Better sound would need much more effort, and would most probably introduce other potenial sources messing around with the data-stream!!
However. This interface discussion has been taken in several other threads, we shouldn't spent to much time discussing this issue.
3. Even if you are still in the digital domain, you can mess up the timing and noise heavily,
Especially on setups with a PCM2707.
That might be different with other soundcards.
Most of the tweaks I introduced have shown clear sound improvements.
Klaus
SunRa said:
Something similar like that, which delivers the PCM stream straight to I2S would be a great solution. I think there are some folks, who tweaked their soundcards to get
I2S out of it.
Still, the DAC precision clock would have to slave the PC-card clock, unless the high precision clock would be sitting on this PCI card.
You may want to read the PCM2707 datasheet.
Its slaved to the PC.
http://focus.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/pcm2707.pdf
Page 8 has the block diagram.
Its slaved to the PC.
http://focus.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/pcm2707.pdf
Page 8 has the block diagram.
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