CamillaDSP - Cross-platform IIR and FIR engine for crossovers, room correction etc.

Its been a while but after nearly 4 months (thank you China Post) my DIYINHK ES9016/XMOS boards arrived, its a relatively cheap multi-channel DAC as I already had a case and power supplies.
While waiting I played with CamillaDSP and transposed the crossover/EQ etc setting from my miniSHARC. Easily enough done and confident they give me the same result in terms of frequency response.
I started with CamillaDSP on an RPi4 using Michael's excellent tutorial then discovered some cheap "thin client" processors. I bought an HP T630 then more recently found some cheap Wyse 5060 boxes costing NZ$20 (about US$12) each. These have around 2-3 times the processing power of the RPi4 at about 1/5 the cost. They come with 4gb ram and 8gb SSD which is adequate for Ubuntu/Camilla/squeezelite with 2.5gb to spare (if you uncheck the LVM option) tho the SSD can be upgraded. Using the Linux "top" command the RPi was using around 25% CPU running with my config and the 5060 about 3-5% so not exactly pushing it.
After installing Ubuntu server 22.04 I then installed alsa-utils and pulseaudio. From there I pick up Michael's tutorial at the point of the CamillaDSP install changing the Camilla version to "amd64", simple enough and having done this 3 or 4 times now everything runs straight out of the box.
All running well now tho I did have some interesting issues with the ES9016 that I have sorted or circumvented. Confident using it but still a little nervous having had to replace a Scanspeak 15W8530k00 Revelator midrange damaged while fixing one of the issues on the DAC.
Still looking at getting an Ultralite Mk5 but that will be months away I think - one store says mid Sept availability.
 

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Its been a while but after nearly 4 months (thank you China Post) my DIYINHK ES9016/XMOS boards arrived, its a relatively cheap multi-channel DAC as I already had a case and power supplies.
While waiting I played with CamillaDSP and transposed the crossover/EQ etc setting from my miniSHARC. Easily enough done and confident they give me the same result in terms of frequency response.
I started with CamillaDSP on an RPi4 using Michael's excellent tutorial then discovered some cheap "thin client" processors. I bought an HP T630 then more recently found some cheap Wyse 5060 boxes costing NZ$20 (about US$12) each. These have around 2-3 times the processing power of the RPi4 at about 1/5 the cost. They come with 4gb ram and 8gb SSD which is adequate for Ubuntu/Camilla/squeezelite with 2.5gb to spare (if you uncheck the LVM option) tho the SSD can be upgraded. Using the Linux "top" command the RPi was using around 25% CPU running with my config and the 5060 about 3-5% so not exactly pushing it.
After installing Ubuntu server 22.04 I then installed alsa-utils and pulseaudio. From there I pick up Michael's tutorial at the point of the CamillaDSP install changing the Camilla version to "amd64", simple enough and having done this 3 or 4 times now everything runs straight out of the box.
All running well now tho I did have some interesting issues with the ES9016 that I have sorted or circumvented. Confident using it but still a little nervous having had to replace a Scanspeak 15W8530k00 Revelator midrange damaged while fixing one of the issues on the DAC.
Still looking at getting an Ultralite Mk5 but that will be months away I think - one store says mid Sept availability.
Interested to hear about your issues with the ES9016, it also took out woofer for me although a significantly less expensive one than your Scanspeak.

Michael
 
Interested to hear about your issues with the ES9016, it also took out woofer for me although a significantly less expensive one than your Scanspeak.

Michael
First I am avoiding power no/off noise using appropriate on/off sequences with the power amps, something I have always done as most of my earlier DIY DACS had some sort of power on noise.

1. During early testing using a headphone amp I found that the DAC went into mute if playing music while the amp was turned on. Not really an issue as in normal use I wouldn't be doing that.
2. I originally ran LMS on the same thin client as Camilla so it ran 24x7. If, with Camilla already running, I turned the DAC on and then the amp I got a loud pop/crack which repeated every second or so. Strangely if I played some music briefly before switching on the amp there was no pop. Decided to separate LMS so the processor with Camilla was only switched on when needed. The sequence was to power on the DAC then thin client with Camilla. After the squeezelite client showed in LMS (around 30secs) power on amp - all OK with that sequence.
3. Then I rebuilt Ubuntu/Camilla on the 5060 I had just bought. The pop/crack every second returned. Found I had regressed a setting in the config and Camilla wasn't starting properly. Seemed Camilla restarting was sending something to the DAC, presumably to determine it matched the config, and that caused the pop/crack. With config fixed all OK.

To prevent recurrence of the 3rd issue I changed the Camilladsp service to Restart=no and commented out RestartSec. All has been good since that. I also added series caps to the output of the channels that have amps with no input cap to stop any DC spikes.

Coincidentally the amp that damaged the Scanspeak was a Hypex (500W in this case).
 
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Oh, forgot possibly the strangest issue I had.

After fitting caps to the the midrange output of the DAC I tested with amps powered on and music played for 3-10 seconds and then the DAC muted. This happened consistently, I eventually determined it was the bass amp that was causing this, played OK if I didn't power up that amp. As a final test I connected the bass amp to the channel with the output caps (hadn't put caps on the bass channel as that amp has inter stage caps so thought it safe) and music played OK. So added caps to the bass channel as well as the mid and all has been well since. Some weird signal coming from the amp back to DAC? Possibly related to my no. 1 problem above? Nearly gave up when this one happened but all fine with the caps in place.
 
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In the Sound configuration you will have Camiladsp. If not, you need to check the step 6 - part Pulseaudio. It creates "virtual pulseaudio sound card", which plays to ALSA loopback. Camilla reads this loopback.
https://github.com/HEnquist/camilladsp-config/blob/master/default.pa



Yes, config to module is /etc/modules-load.d/aloop.conf,
That was the last brick.
I hade to reinstall Pulseaudio and did Step 6. Now are CamillaDSP running as service.
What is left on the to-do list are to configure the filters etc, this will be the fun part :)