DIY-Linux-Audio-Wiki

Changelog

11-07-08 Revised complete wiki

I. Linux Audio the way to go!

I.I. Preface

Why do I write a Wiki over here at DIY-Audio?

Because I believe that the sound improvements I achieved over the past year by using the PC and Linux as source, are nothing
less then great. There is non MS Windows setup I came across, and I tried a lot incl. professional software, delivering better
sound.

This wiki shall give the ambitioned DIY "fanatic" an option to tweak his PC for best audio performance.

I won't get into "What player is the best? or How can I play my MP3 files?

My goal was to get a PCM stream out of the PC, by limiting the induced distortions to a minimum.

The results will differ depending on the DAC used. The worse the DAC interface ( e.g. PCM270x) the more you will gain
from tweaking your PC. However even Reference DACs such as Benchmark DAC1 will benefit from tweaking your PC environment.
For now my setup has been proven to deliver great results on several reference installations using USB DACs.
However I think other DACs or soundcards should also benefit from below tweaks.

I also wanted to find a solution for the best software based volume control.
brutefir with its 64bit processing capabilities and dithering delivers IMO the
best solution I could find. It just outclassed my earlier used S&B TX102 transformer based
pot.

Since I am using brutefir as the audio engine now, I got plenty of more options to develop.
Crossovers and other eq filters to name some. But before I start this I want to make sure that
I squeezed most out of a classical stereo setup.


This wiki gets you some guidance to set your system up by yourself. I try to support you as good as I can
via the Linux-Audio-To-Go thread.

I am not a super programmer, nor I am religious Linux fanatic. I am just looking after the best sound.
The mentioned tweaks you might call hacks -- which they actually are.
Time constraints are limiting my involvement in a more professional manner.

I hope this wiki will find some ambitious readers and lead to some nice sounding Linux-PCs within our community.
-- Challenging anything else out there! --

You're all invited to contribute to this Wiki that it improves over time.

Quite some findings are not new for the Linux freaks around here, that's for sure.

I am just putting them all together and add mine on top.


I am doing all of this without any commercial interest. Linux is and hopefully stays open-source and free to the public, following to a large extent
the "real DIY" spirit.

I.2. If you are totally new to Linux...

...start off by [reading this], and follow that up by plenty of searching and reading. There are plenty of nice tutorials targeted at newcomers out there, so there is no point of going through the basics again here. However, just to get a feel of the operating system, download the latest standard [Ubuntu], which includes what's called a [Live CD].

I.3. Ready to get started?

Distributions are a good place to start for a Linux first-timer -- they be downloaded and burned to an install CD or DVD, and are about as straightforward to install as Windows.

Linux developers are constantly releasing new distributions, or fully-functional packages, to meet different user needs. The distribution that provides a nice, simple starting point for audio purposes, and should be OK for newcomers, is [Ubuntu Studio]. This features a special low-latency realtime kernel by default. The .iso file which you need to burn as image on a DVD can be downloaded [here].

Plenty of initial help is on hand too, such as [this very nice install guide]. There is also a [very active and helpful ubuntu forum], and good [documentation].

Once your distribution of choice is all installed and running....

Before you start make sure that your soundcard is supported - check this out: https://www.alsa-project.org/alsa-doc/

For now I assume that you got an Ubuntu derivate (Ubunutu/Ubuntu-studio/Kubuntu/Xubuntu) installed. That should not be too difficult to accomplish.

Anyhow - Some comments:

MAKE A BACKUP FIRST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Download the ubuntu .iso image to your Windows partition and burn it as .iso image to disk.
For ubuntu-studio you'll need a DVD, for the other derivates you might get along with CDs.

Defrag your Windows disk. 4GB of free space will be sufficiant, however 20GB wouldn't be bad either.

Boot your Ubunutu-Studio DVD and run the installation as described in above reference.

The most tricky part is the manual partitioning during the installation process . (Make sure you don't overwrite your complete HD)

You have to configure a 4GB (or bigger) partition.

Once finished reboot.

Play around with Ubuntu to get used to it. Google will answer all your questions, there are always more than you around there facing the same os similar issues.

Just drop me a mail ( click on my soundcheck-logo in the forum) if you want to get in touch with me.


Give it a try. Enjoy.

Cheers
Soundcheck

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