"Audiophile Optimizer"....fish oil...?

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I mean this... Whatever it is playing back the music.

Download Precise Puppy, precise-5.7.iso
Download Deadbeef, deadbeef-0.6.1.3-precise.pet

Burn precise-5.7.iso in a botable CD or use Rufus to make a bootable USB drive (prefered, see note below)
Boot from CD or USB drive, let Precise load
Install Deadbeef, plug your DAC, open Deadbeef.
Click on the "Edit" menu, then "Preferences".
Under "Sound" tab > "Output plugin" select "ALSA"
"Output device" = "Your Sound Device" "IEC958, S/PDIF"
In the same Preferences window select > Plugins
In the left column select "Alsa Output Plugin" and then click "Configure".
In the configuration window make sure that ALSA resampling is unchecked and that you place a check in box "Release device when stopped".
Exit Preferences, drag'n'drop some music. Enjoy Bit perfect audio.
 
Does this use a "front end"?
Why not a bit of googling?

Puppy linux is a fully working linux system running a simple JWM desktop environment.

https://www.google.cz/images?q=puppy+linux

Audio player konstantin likes:

DeaDBeeF - Ultimate Music Player For GNU/Linux

DeaDBeeF - Screenshots


I run a highly modified Xonar to a pair of Mono amps, using the PC as my pre as well. Does this have a volume control at least, or is it strictly digital , SP/DIF output?

It will use whatever audio output of your hardware you choose. Of course it offers volume control, unless you choose to disable it. You can choose between SW digital volume control, volume control provided by your soundcard (i.e. again digital volume control for most cases), or if you want to play - even volume control provided by another device, such as Arcam AVR controlled by a serial port line https://github.com/Themaister/alsa-plugins-rsound/blob/master/doc/README-arcam-av . My audio player (voyage + MPD + $55 9" android tablet) controls volume by sending appropriate commands to my Harman Kardon AVR via serial port. A bit geeky, I admit :)

Options are only limited by how far you want to go.
 
New kid on the block

There seems to be a new Puppy.
Tahrpup 6.0 CE
tahr-6.0-CE_PAE.iso for older 32bit systems and
tahr-6.0-CE_noPAE.iso for "modern" 64bit systems
It even comes with the latest version of Deadbeef 6.2 pre-installed, also Asunder CD ripper/player and an Audio encoder/converter.
Download a suitable version for your hardware and use Rufus to make a bootable USB drive, boot from it and just configure Deadbeef.
Tested it last night, works like a treat and sounds wonderful, really "point and shoot", it can't be done simpler than that.
 
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Tested out the OS on a stick in my netbook... Pretty cool.
If there were a way to sleep/resume the image, and control the media remotely (android app?) I'd love it...
I might still fire it up on my HTPC for some testing....

There is a way, on first shut-down follow the on screen instructions to save your preferences (create a save file) in the same USB stick drive and not in some local Hard Disk Drive.
This way you can load it with your preferences and personal "adlustements" in virtually every PC without the need to re-configure it every time it's loading.
For a remote application you need to install MPD (Music Player Daemon) and GMPC (Gnome Music Player Client), both are included in the Puppy Package Manager (Setup>Puppy Package Manager), GMPC can be installed in any machine, Android or Linux or Windows.
Here is guide how to configure MPD.
 
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If there were a way to sleep/resume the image

Fast startup of an audio player device is important. Suspending to RAM requires just calling a single command - pm-suspend. Before putting your device to suspend, this command executes all files in a specific directory. That way the device can perform additional tasks before suspend - e.g. turning off the amplifier via a relay powered by a simple circuit hooked to parallel port. The same holds for resume.

Resuming - the device power button or remotely via wake-on-lan.

My audio player is activated by tapping on an icon on the controlling tablet desktop. The icon is hooked to Tasker task - calling wake-on-lan with MAC of the player. Delay between tapping and music is about four seconds, half of that due to MPD buffering internet radio streams.

Halting the player - again tasker icon calling http plugin sending GET command to my player - http://player?command=suspend

A simple PHP script (just a few lines) running on the player calls the pm-suspend command. Simple and flexible.

Even easier is calling Tasker ssh plugin, connecting to the player and running the pm-suspend command - no need for the web/PHP layer. I use the http get way because it reacts a bit faster without the SSH login overhead (I control my AVR volume also by desktop icons and need fast response).
 
You can always start simple and add these nice-to-haves later on, if you find to like it.

First using a local GUI and a local player - such as deadbeef. Learning remote administration via SSH. Trying MPD with tablet MPD client.

Some people prefer squeezebox technology to MPD. Once you learn a bit, you can install the packages (just a single command in most linux distributions), configure it, fire tablet app and compare with the MPD chain.

You can go any direction you wish. But I can assure you - it will not be any trial/error way. In every step you will know what you are doing and why - what the expected result is. I hate not being in control of my systems and having to resort to trial/error tweaking of black boxes. That is a major waste of time for me.
 
What features specifically do you need?

VST is a proprietary format and not many linux audio projects support it. Since they are compiled for windows/OSX, they have to be run under wine emulation - e.g. 0.4:Working with VSTs - LMMS Wiki Take a look at e.g. http://linux-sound.org/plugins.html for options - LADSPA, DSSI.

Nevertheless the key question is why you need them for an audio player. Very likely the functionality you are looking for can be provided in some other way.
 
We might have reading comprehension issues, but someone has Linux hating issues. :)

FWIW, there are difficult and fiddly flavours of Linux out there. For example, I tried VoyageMPD and Audiophile Linux and could not get either to work. Audiophile Linux has the worst install procedure of any OS or software I have ever seen in my entire life. VoyageMPD simply didn't support my network card and I gave up figuring out how to add a driver for it.
I have been a Windows user ever since it replaced MS-DOS. But last week for some crazy reason I decided to explore Linux. I chose Audiophile Linux as my objective is to build the best computer to go with my new USBtoI2S board. Anyway, it took about 10 min to install AP Linux. Install was very simple!! The hard part was getting it to make music ... It took 2 nights to figure out MPD and Cantata and when I did - wow! Subjective testing only, no A-B comparisons or anything but it whipped anything I've heard on Windows. Note that this was playing DSD files. They sounded almost analog. But AP Linuix will not convert PCM to DSD. And my USB board only plays DSD. So I have put Linux away for the moment. So - the question is - can we configure Windows to sound as good as Linux?
 
You can always start simple and add these nice-to-haves later on, if you find to like it.

First using a local GUI and a local player - such as deadbeef. Learning remote administration via SSH. Trying MPD with tablet MPD client.

Some people prefer squeezebox technology to MPD. Once you learn a bit, you can install the packages (just a single command in most linux distributions), configure it, fire tablet app and compare with the MPD chain.

You can go any direction you wish. But I can assure you - it will not be any trial/error way. In every step you will know what you are doing and why - what the expected result is. I hate not being in control of my systems and having to resort to trial/error tweaking of black boxes. That is a major waste of time for me.
Hi, do you know any Linux programs that convert PCM to DSD on the fly? HQ Player can do this but costs $$$. Foobar can do it but its Windows only. I can play DSD files in Cantata to my USB board, but cant play PCM files.
 
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