Linux Audio the way to go!?

[soundcheck]

People who tried "ecasx" based on ecasound are reporting good results.

[1audio]

Originally posted by LinuksGuru


Sounds nice but how about Lunux drivers ??? People often wrongly assume if there is a hardware there are fully working drivers for Linux. Yes, nVidia have Linux drivers which are closed-source and known to have regular problems. So far I prefer Intel, at least I can be (almost) sure it will work. Yesterday I have updated my system and GUI have gone with message "Cannot open or move log file /var/log/x.org.log.xxx".

nVidia drivers are pain in the ***, but I have no other choice for video card, ATI card have even worse support for Linux.

The uATX options would be met with this:
M2N68-VM and even though the Nvidia drivers for Linux are marginal they do work. An earlier version of this was used for the LinuxMCE media player platform.

However my interest now is a much lighter weight platform (no fans or other moving parts) for audio only. For AV I would use the Popcorn Hour since it does everything and is an almost open Linux Platform.

[phofman]

Originally posted by soundcheck
People who tried "ecasx" based on ecasound are reporting good results.

Glad to hear that, but how does it relate to sonical comparison of MPD and ecasound? Does ecasx have a switch bypassing ecasound and people report they prefer the switch off, i.e. with ecasound instead of MPD directly? I have not noticed that.

[jackpipe]

there are multiple asynchronous (buffered) steps between data in memory and serial audio data out, eg device memory via dma, shift register parallel->serial and so on. Unless your system is so slow that it just can't keep up with a 44.1 or 192khz data out, causing buffer under-runs, then jitter etc here is not an issue, IMHO.
Also, I would think having a cpu frequently go into sleep mode, and then wake up, which radically changes it's power consumption, and clock speed, would generate quite a bit of (RF, psu) noise.

[soundcheck]

Originally posted by 1audio


The uATX options would be met with this:
M2N68-VM and even though the Nvidia drivers for Linux are marginal they do work. An earlier version of this was used for the LinuxMCE media player platform.

However my interest now is a much lighter weight platform (no fans or other moving parts) for audio only. For AV I would use the Popcorn Hour since it does everything and is an almost open Linux Platform.

Interesting board! THX Would be nice to hear if HDMI-AUDIO - 8*Multichannel LPCM also works with this board.

[uli.brueggemann]

Would be nice to hear if HDMI-AUDIO - 8*Multichannel LPCM also works with this board

I wonder. IIRC up to now there is no Linux driver for HDMI-audio multichannel. Does someone know more?

[soundcheck]

Hi there.

FYI:

I just learned that after 1.5 years of neglecting a focused maintenance ( was more a sporadic look into it thing) of the realtime kernel patch Th.Gleixner and Ingo Molnar ( the kernel scheduler gurus) sat down to port the linux-rt patch properly to 2.6.29.

http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/3/25/480

Let see. I am just trying to get the 2.6.29-rt1 kernel compiled.

That'll mean of course that even Ubuntu Jaunty (2.6.28) won't show up with this kernel.

Cheers

[udovdh]

Also for ATI we have the radeonhd driver now. Open source!
Works very well, awaiting 3D support.

[LinuksGuru]

Hi,

You can find how to convert APE files on Linux on my web page dedicated to Linux tips and tricks. In short - use K3B.

http://www.starlett.com/~web5_macgur...nd_tricks.html

If you have any other question(s) regarding Linux - please let me know.

[ewildgoose]

Originally posted by soundcheck
Hi phofman.

I do not say you're wrong with your theories. You are the software specialist around here. I am working on a kind of "admin" level.
I do understand what you're saying and referring to. And the readers should listen about what you're saying.

However, reading all your explanations I do miss one point:
You're just not explaining the origin of the sound differences! That's the whole story.

Cheers

I do find these conspiracy theories and suggestions that the PC might be altering your sound behind your back to be quite dull

It should not be too hard to use the digital output on your card and to literally record the output from your two ways of playing back your audio. I would *expect* you to find that the two digital streams are identical (you may need to trim and offset them if you don't have a bit perfect record/playback synchronisation method)

If you don't find this then you need to analyse the PC software side until you find out why the digital data is getting altered.

If you find that the digital data is *identical* (which I would expect) then your problem boils down to good old fashioned "my DAC is cr*p" - and for some reason your DAC is behaving differently when fed the same bitstream in. Plenty of good reasons why this might be so, but the point is that it's not a "PC issue", it's a "I need a more robust DAC" issue

Good luck

Ed W

P.S I have used a Jack + Brutefir setup very successfully for nearly 5 years now. Resampling (only for 48Khz tv output) is done using libsamplerate, which in it's latest iteration appears to be very near top of the tree in resampling performance. The jack chain always runs at 44Khz, so no resampling done for typical CD playback. Output is via RME9632 to a passive pre-amp, then on to some Hypex amps. Read more at http://www.duffroomcorrection.com