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Building an open embedded audio applicance.

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G

Goto

Member
Joined 2006
Hi Russ

Having wrestled with pc-based playback for several years with mixed results, I saw you open this topic and thought "Ok, time to try something a little different". So I bought the RPI downloaded Volumio and went at it.

Took a little ******** to get Volumio beta 1.1 to play ball, but got there. I just wired the little bit of silicon fruit into my Buffalo2, replacing a WaveIO interface, plugged in a USB drive with lotsamusic on it, scanned it into MPD and hit play.

After ten minutes of shuffling through a few tunes, I concur - this is very very good. More dynamic, musical, engaging, detailed, sweet and punchy.

Back to work for an hour or two now, then I suspect an evening is about to fly by with a great soundtrack!

Thanks to you for sharing this experience, thanks to Michelangelo and the Volumio guys - nice approach, sweet UI and even the wireless works. Now I probably need to look at a NAS for library duties.

Can't wait for the evolution of this!
 
S

syklab

Member
Joined 2009
Goto said:
Hi Russ

Having wrestled with pc-based playback for several years with mixed results, I saw you open this topic and thought "Ok, time to try something a little different". So I bought the RPI downloaded Volumio and went at it.

Took a little ******** to get Volumio beta 1.1 to play ball, but got there. I just wired the little bit of silicon fruit into my Buffalo2, replacing a WaveIO interface, plugged in a USB drive with lotsamusic on it, scanned it into MPD and hit play.

After ten minutes of shuffling through a few tunes, I concur - this is very very good. More dynamic, musical, engaging, detailed, sweet and punchy.

Back to work for an hour or two now, then I suspect an evening is about to fly by with a great soundtrack!

Thanks to you for sharing this experience, thanks to Michelangelo and the Volumio guys - nice approach, sweet UI and even the wireless works. Now I probably need to look at a NAS for library duties.

Can't wait for the evolution of this!
Click to expand...

Hi,
Does Volumio supports play back via I2S sound device on the RPI B?
 
F

fred_com

Member
Joined 2009
Hi guys,

I bought Raspberry too, and connected it to my dual-mono BIIISEs, by using pinout provided by Russ in original post. Although getting to hear actual music was a bit hard.

First I've tried to test headphone output and check different bitrates. I've had a result opposite from Russ (but my NAS share was no doubt slower than his), where if playing 192kHz files from file share on my main PC resulted in stuttering, while when playing these same files from USB flash or HDD drive resulted in perfect playback.

I've supplied 5V via P5 connector, and tested for power consumption: Raspberry eats up something about 400-450 mA with only network cable plugged in. And when USB 3.0 HDD is added to the mix - it rises up to 950-1020mA on spin-up and seek operations (I've used 1Tb WD MyPassport).

Now for the software part: it seems that Volumio 1.1 has a bug with I2S support, as stated in this topic - Volumio . So I connected to the Raspberry via telnet and run following commands
Code: 
sudo apt-get update 
sudo apt-get install git-core
sudo apt-get install binutils - there was an error in original post on volumio forum
sudo rpi-update
sudo reboot
after that modified /etc/modules according to instructions by Russ in original post, and activated I2S via WebUI.

And after all this I now have music! One thing to note is that lock light on BIII will light up only when there is music (unlike USB-I2S solutions, where it was lit all the time).

In my subjective opinion it sounds better than PC+Amanero. Noise floor is definitely lower.

Now we only need a local UI and a touch-enabled LCD to completely untether from PC :)

Sorry for my English. :)

Thanks,
Fedor
 
Last edited:
Russ White

Russ White

Member
Joined 2005
twistedpearaudio.com
Goto said:
Hi Russ

Back to work for an hour or two now, then I suspect an evening is about to fly by with a great soundtrack!

Thanks to you for sharing this experience, thanks to Michelangelo and the Volumio guys - nice approach, sweet UI and even the wireless works. Now I probably need to look at a NAS for library duties.

Can't wait for the evolution of this!
Click to expand...

Awesome! Glad to share. I am working along with some others to take this even further.

I have actually changed (for a while anyway) my setup a bit, going back to vanilla Raspbian and using Mopidy instead of MPD. Mopidy is really cool! It has extensions that support google Play Music (making it look like a part of your library, and streaming from it), and even running as a UPnP media appliance.

There are many mpd client apps for iOS, Android, Mac, Windows etc... You don't have to use the included web app.
 
Russ White

Russ White

Member
Joined 2005
twistedpearaudio.com
fred_com said:
Now we only need a local UI and a touch-enabled LCD to completely untether from PC :)

Sorry for my English. :)

Thanks,
Fedor
Click to expand...

Very pleased you have it working! You - like some others I am sure - ran into the issue where your firmware needed an update.

BTW you can already use your phone or tablet as a UI! There are many MPD clients for iOS and Andriod.
 
Russ White

Russ White

Member
Joined 2005
twistedpearaudio.com
For instance I have been using MPRemote - which works great.

Along with my BLE app to actually control the DAC. :)
 

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L

linuxfan

Member
Joined 2007
Russ White said:
mpd runs on the pi. :) It is using a NAS mount directly. There is no other server.
Click to expand...
vdi_nenna said:
This might be confusing to some. Can't be directly attached, if using Network Attached Storage (NAS).
Click to expand...
Let me clarify: Russ meant direct network connection not direct physical connection
ie. the media server on the rPi directly accesses music files from the network file server,
as opposed to my alternative configuration where a music server accesses files from the NAS, then streams them to a rendering device.

A direct physical connection between rPi and storage device is certainly possible, but this is what Russ said about it -
Russ White said:
I found using USB storage did not work well, even with an SSD.
Click to expand...
 
Russ White

Russ White

Member
Joined 2005
twistedpearaudio.com
Yes - I have used two mounts, one NFS to another Intel NUC linux box (8TB of music) as well as CIFS mount on the router. The NUC is physical Gb ethernet to the router.

The both seem to work the same. No complaints. :)

Still (after being educated by some folks) I do believe the BBB is much better hardware, and I will probably refocus my effort there.
 
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L

linuxfan

Member
Joined 2007
DQ828 said:
Is it possible to directly connect a SATA HD (not USB) to the BBB?
Click to expand...
No. For native SATA you would need something like the CuBox-i2Ultra or UDOO Quad.
But it sounds like the strength of the system outlined in this thread is that the music server/output device is free from having to control a mass storage device (that task is handled by a separate network file server) regardless of the storage device's interface-type; USB, SATA, IDE, SCSI, FireWire, Thunderbolt, ... whatever.
 
Russ White

Russ White

Member
Joined 2005
twistedpearaudio.com
Linuxfan nailed it. I am not looking to build a file server - that job is probably better handled outside the media renderer. :) Also - because we are using a daemon and a playback buffer and everything is handled in RAM, as long as there are no system bottlenecks NAS is an excellent solution. Part of the problem with the rpi is that it's hardware is lacking in terms of IO. I have been studying the engineering behind the BBB and I find myself liking it more and more. Still there are lots of embedded systems that would make excellent candidates for a project like this.
 
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