Linux Audio the way to go!?

[soundcheck]

Originally Posted by Onvinyl

done

It worked. Though the handling seems to be a bit .

[Onvinyl]

Hi,
I wasn't able to hear a difference between this ecasound player and my normal mpd -> alsa playback scheme. Perhaps a *very* slight better bass reproduction. This with an ancient ATX-board based PC and an PCI-Soundcard from RME (Digi96 8 PST) for analog out and a slightly dated kernel (2.6.24-23-rt). Yes, I will try an battery fired mini-PC and external DAC someday...

Rüdiger

[ackcheng]

Thanks Soundcheck,

I will try to set it up. I am not sure if I can dual boot from my Mac though.....

[soundcheck]

Originally Posted by Onvinyl

Hi,
I wasn't able to hear a difference between this ecasound player and my normal mpd -> alsa playback scheme. Perhaps a *very* slight better bass reproduction. This with an ancient ATX-board based PC and an PCI-Soundcard from RME (Digi96 8 PST) for analog out and a slightly dated kernel (2.6.24-23-rt). Yes, I will try an battery fired mini-PC and external DAC someday...

Rüdiger

Hi Rüdiger.

Good to see that you got your rt-permissions settled.

Some comments:

1. You just tried the alias, not the entire WIKI ( see prerequistes).
One day you should upgrade your system.
2. I guess you didn't run in recovery mode either.
3. The low-end improvements are typically what people realize first.
It gets better the lower the distortions are. The upper end improves
usually in a similar way. Makes sense, doesn't it.
The upper-end improvements do have a harder time to get through the
other bottlenecks in the chain.

THX for now.

[soundcheck]

Originally Posted by ackcheng

Thanks Soundcheck,

I will try to set it up. I am not sure if I can dual boot from my Mac though.....

Yep. Many really satisfied people run Ubuntu with Bootcamp on their MACs.

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/MacBook

[phofman]

Originally Posted by Onvinyl

Hi,
I wasn't able to hear a difference between this ecasound player and my normal mpd -> alsa playback scheme. Perhaps a *very* slight better bass reproduction.
Rüdiger

There is no reason to hear a difference, unless you spun down your HDD while playing to keep the power lines cleaner. In both cases the PCI card receives the same data on time.

[soundcheck]

Originally Posted by phofman

There is no reason to hear a difference, unless you spun down your HDD while playing to keep the power lines cleaner. In both cases the PCI card receives the same data on time.

I knew it was coming.

There are endless reasons. Do you want me to repeat them again?

I thought that maybe my RME would be immune. It's not.

Meanwhile you'll find a huge community with quite resolving systems on AA confirming all this. Most of them doesn't have the hindering IT background
to get biased. They just play something and listen to the result.

Even some commercial SW providers realized, that there is more behind "we all use the same API -- sound can't be different".
You're just leaving out in your judgement a lot of obvious side effects by thinking that narrow minded.

I'll soon put some stuff - the way I look at it - in the Wiki.

Anyhow - the best solution is to stay out of a PC! But that's not always an option.

Cheers

[phofman]

Originally Posted by soundcheck

I knew it was coming.

There are endless reasons. Do you want me to repeat them again? Cheers

Yes please. You have never given me a single one apart of the cleaner power lines for RAM playback which I accept.

[Onvinyl]

Originally Posted by soundcheck

1. You just tried the alias, not the entire WIKI ( see prerequistes).

I don't know what you mean. The wiki is empty apart from that player guide.

I installed the very latest alsa, mpd and ecasound software some months ago and left it with that.

Honestly, I don't intend to setup a system that needs updating every two weeks or so. Once I'm done, it shall work as it is, or as long as I don't need or want additional functionality (aka room correction or something like that).

Anyway, your input is very much appreciated and I learned something so far already.

Rüdiger

[soundcheck]

Originally Posted by Onvinyl

I don't know what you mean. The wiki is empty apart from that player guide.

I installed the very latest alsa, mpd and ecasound software some months ago and left it with that.

Honestly, I don't intend to setup a system that needs updating every two weeks or so. Once I'm done, it shall work as it is, or as long as I don't need or want additional functionality (aka room correction or something like that).

Anyway, your input is very much appreciated and I learned something so far already.

Rüdiger

Rüdiger.

Don't take my points wrong. Don't regard it as critism.
I am just saying there is no way, we can compare your setup with the one I described in the Wiki. I am referring to that particular Commandline player Wiki article only.

You are using a pretty outdated kernel. A lot has changed recently.
In line with your pretty old Ubuntu revision are coming pretty old
libraries and applications. E.g. No idea what ecasound revision you
are using, if you install it from that old repo.
Just installing a new Alsa only won't be sufficiant. You would at least need to compile a new ecasound (2.7.1) on that new Alsa.

There'll be 100dreds of potential bottlenecks, even a single problem or a single parameter shift "might" be sufficient, to get you away from the result I'm talking about.
For example as we've seen last night. You had that crucial rtprio parameter wrong. With this setting you never really were able to apply rt
priorities to any process since two years - assuming you did this config during the installation process of your 2.6.24-rt kernel. MPD on it's own wouldn't notice that rt-kernel anyhow - it is not optimised for rt operation. You could have run any other kernel without noticing any difference.

What you could do now for a valid comparison, you could pipe one MPD output to a new ecasound. This way you can very simple check the differences. This of course requires the newest MPD - what you need to compile manually. Your old MPD wouldn't support output to pipe.

When it comes to updating a system, I really prefer to run the latest stuff.
If I compare my Mint Helena to anything else I had before - I must say it is ways better. By doing this you'll always face much less incompatbilties with well maintained applications - such as ecasound.

You must be two years back by now - don't you?

It takes me two hours to setup a complete new system, with my latest configurations/customizations.
To be able to do that I need to write down all my customizations I've done over time. ( Many of these infos you'll find in the Wiki.) I do understand that if you don't do that, you'll have a hard time to step up your system regularly.

Anyhow - for me it was sufficient that you told us to experience a slightly tighter bass now. Looks like we're heading into the right direction.

And Thx again for checking out the Wiki at least partially. It seems to be functionally working so far.

Cheers