Ahh, yes, an excellent question. I could cop out by saying the diy is in applying my long experience in selecting and assembling the system, but I won't ;-)
To be honest, I've had my share of building preamps and power amps and speakers over the last 50+ years (yes, really!).
My interest is now in instrumentation, like the autoranger and my current project, a floating, fully differential high voltage probe.
And of course my eternal project to design a direct drive amp for electrostatic speakers.
Jan
To be honest, I've had my share of building preamps and power amps and speakers over the last 50+ years (yes, really!).
My interest is now in instrumentation, like the autoranger and my current project, a floating, fully differential high voltage probe.
And of course my eternal project to design a direct drive amp for electrostatic speakers.
Jan
For the last week, the Zen streamer has been degrading in reliability. Unable to connect, unable to re-install, then all of a sudden playing for a few minutes (with the 'connected' light showing 'no connection'!). Its a mess.
I decided to send this one back too, and exchange for a Volumio Primo. One of these guys should get it right!
One factor to decide: the Volumio is a 2 year old design so hopefully the most glaring issues have been solved. Also, this has a proper user guide rather than a half-page picture card like the Zen, that inspires a bit more confidence. And if I don't like it I will send it back too!
BTW guys, a lot of these units are based on an RPi so that's no guarantee for reliability.
Jan
I decided to send this one back too, and exchange for a Volumio Primo. One of these guys should get it right!
One factor to decide: the Volumio is a 2 year old design so hopefully the most glaring issues have been solved. Also, this has a proper user guide rather than a half-page picture card like the Zen, that inspires a bit more confidence. And if I don't like it I will send it back too!
BTW guys, a lot of these units are based on an RPi so that's no guarantee for reliability.
Jan
That is very disappointing. I take you did exclude the possible causes like your router having unreliable wireless (often occurring)? The Zen Stream having modern wireless hardware and the router being quite old?! That you tested with reliable ethernet?
The Primo has high jitter via SPDIF so use it USB only. Just like the Zen Stream it is not based on RPi and I don't see the connection to unreliability. RPi are also not unreliable. Choosing wireless over wired is a choice asking for issues.
The Primo has high jitter via SPDIF so use it USB only. Just like the Zen Stream it is not based on RPi and I don't see the connection to unreliability. RPi are also not unreliable. Choosing wireless over wired is a choice asking for issues.
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My PC, Laptop, Lab computer, Android TV, Philips Hue, Google nest all work reliably on my WiFi without a hitch.
And audio is a very low requirement data-wise.
Jan
And audio is a very low requirement data-wise.
Jan
That is NOT the way to troubleshoot technical issues. The iFi Zen Stream being most recent device with 802.11AC which may be not your routers cup of tea etc. In such a case various settings can be tried out like excusing older standards or exactly the opposite. You know, finding out what is happening like techs generally do.
You should have tried out ethernet if only to exclude the Zen Stream wireless card.
You should have tried out ethernet if only to exclude the Zen Stream wireless card.
I am not interested in trouble shooting. I reserve that for my own designs, not free of charge to some unknown company.
I pays my money, I wants a product that works.
This is the 2nd unit I had. If both have a wifi card issue, it's even worse than I thought.
Lets face it, these things suck.
Jan
I pays my money, I wants a product that works.
This is the 2nd unit I had. If both have a wifi card issue, it's even worse than I thought.
Lets face it, these things suck.
Jan
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This is nonsense. Time goes on and issues may occur because of devices having different standards and settings, certainly with wireless (a choice asking for issues) devices of various generations. This is unfortunately something that happens. If you find out the "why" when things can be solved. It would help to check settings of the router and also to update firmware if available. If one adjusts all wireless devices to the same protocol things can work quite OK.
First thing would have been to check if things work OK via ethernet. If the device works OK via ethernet then the window of causes will be narrower. Recently I had this with a LG OLED TV. It is a new 2021 model but it had severe wireless issues that ended up in a total failure which is very disappointing for a brand new 1500 Euro TV. Ethernet worked OK. In this case it turned out to be a series issues in all those TV's and the card was replaced and a firmware update was necessary. Solved.
Assuming things should always work out and also assuming the device being unreliable is not a pragmatic way nor is it pinpointing what goes wrong. The first unit being defective was a clearly a user error. Sorry.
First thing would have been to check if things work OK via ethernet. If the device works OK via ethernet then the window of causes will be narrower. Recently I had this with a LG OLED TV. It is a new 2021 model but it had severe wireless issues that ended up in a total failure which is very disappointing for a brand new 1500 Euro TV. Ethernet worked OK. In this case it turned out to be a series issues in all those TV's and the card was replaced and a firmware update was necessary. Solved.
Assuming things should always work out and also assuming the device being unreliable is not a pragmatic way nor is it pinpointing what goes wrong. The first unit being defective was a clearly a user error. Sorry.
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I am not interested in trouble shooting. I reserve that for my own designs, not free of charge to some unknown company.
I pays my money, I wants a product that works. And I know enough of software f*ck-ups to know it is not a wifi card issue.
This is the 2nd unit I had. If both have a wifi card issue, it's even worse than I thought.
Lets face it, these things suck.
Jan
I pays my money, I wants a product that works. And I know enough of software f*ck-ups to know it is not a wifi card issue.
This is the 2nd unit I had. If both have a wifi card issue, it's even worse than I thought.
Lets face it, these things suck.
Jan
"Yeah, let's throw this on the market and let the stupid users work out the issues for us".
JP you sound like Zen support: 'please update to the latest firmware and try again'.
'Scuse me? Is the device defect unless it has the latest firmware? And then a new firmware comes along and it is defect unless it gets that update? We're being taken, I tell you!
Jan
JP you sound like Zen support: 'please update to the latest firmware and try again'.
'Scuse me? Is the device defect unless it has the latest firmware? And then a new firmware comes along and it is defect unless it gets that update? We're being taken, I tell you!
Jan
Strange way of looking at matters. You assume both units had wireless card issues but the first unit was a user error leading to a bricked unit. The second unit having a defective WiFi card is again an assumption. Worse is the assumption that it is the unit and not the environment. Sorry. Secondly iFi is not that unknown. No connection at all but what I read about the products is not negative. Also you are not troubleshooting for them, it is them needing to solve your issues but they will need detailed information to be able to. Any technical orientated person knows the typical customer with "it does not work" remarks not even trying to point out what exactly is wrong.
Anyway, with the rapid development of today's hardware and software one can expect needing to update software and firmware once in a while. Certainly when the device is recently launched. It solves issues or prevents issues. Since developments go fast issues occur when the product is already at the new owner. The market sometimes also forces things to be changed. With todays congestion in the 2.4 GHz band one could take a look at that etc.
Since I like to solve such issues for those that choose convenience 😀 I have the habit to regularly check firmware updates and also notice that devices that have a few years between them may suffer from incompatibility when not being updated (or not caring to check the settings). It sounds strange to laymen but being an early adopter makes you the one that has most issues 🙂
Anyway, with the rapid development of today's hardware and software one can expect needing to update software and firmware once in a while. Certainly when the device is recently launched. It solves issues or prevents issues. Since developments go fast issues occur when the product is already at the new owner. The market sometimes also forces things to be changed. With todays congestion in the 2.4 GHz band one could take a look at that etc.
Since I like to solve such issues for those that choose convenience 😀 I have the habit to regularly check firmware updates and also notice that devices that have a few years between them may suffer from incompatibility when not being updated (or not caring to check the settings). It sounds strange to laymen but being an early adopter makes you the one that has most issues 🙂
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Spending 500EUR for a small computer with volumio pre-installed to use just the USB slot...
IMO it is not a good deal for this use case.
IMO it is not a good deal for this use case.
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FWIW I test this one today again since I was alarmed about USB/kernel issues but till now I haven't experienced any glitch nor did I experience any issue at all via USB to the FDA. Cheap, reliable, looks OK, low power and CPU power and RAM in abundance.
Wired ethernet of course. To my surprise a new Volumio version with recent kernel is offered:
Volumio 2 for Cuboxi - Cubox-i - Volumio
Wired ethernet of course. To my surprise a new Volumio version with recent kernel is offered:
Volumio 2 for Cuboxi - Cubox-i - Volumio
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IME wireless for a reliable communication is a problem quite often. While audio is not data intensive, it requires low dropouts, unless large caching at the input is used, resulting in large initial delay. Wifi clients hardware differs widely, quality of drivers as well.
My motto:"those that want or demand convenience often choose the most inconvenient solutions" 🙂
The version volumio-2.916-2021-10-02-cuboxi.img from Oct 2 has kernel 4.14.90. While certainly many patches have been backported to this Android 9+ kernel, the vanilla version is 4 years old.
Code:
ls -l /media/pavel/BOOT/
total 9390
-rw-r--r-- 1 pavel pavel 163188 Oct 2 04:12 config-4.14.90-cubox
drwxr-xr-x 2 pavel pavel 14336 Oct 2 04:12 dtb-4.14.90-cubox
-rw-r--r-- 1 pavel pavel 36808 Oct 2 04:12 imx6dl-cubox-i.dtb
-rw-r--r-- 1 pavel pavel 38548 Oct 2 04:12 imx6dl-hummingboard.dtb
-rw-r--r-- 1 pavel pavel 37846 Oct 2 04:12 imx6q-cubox-i.dtb
-rw-r--r-- 1 pavel pavel 39586 Oct 2 04:12 imx6q-hummingboard.dtb
-rw-r--r-- 1 pavel pavel 0 Oct 2 04:14 resize-volumio-datapart
-rw-r--r-- 1 pavel pavel 226 Oct 2 04:12 uEnv.txt
-rw-r--r-- 1 pavel pavel 3692230 Oct 2 04:15 uInitrd
-rw-r--r-- 1 pavel pavel 5586328 Oct 2 04:12 zImageBeing busy now with writing that one on a SD card. The older version with vanilla kernel with supposedly applied patches posed not a single issue either so I take this one will be OK too. If things work OK I don't troubleshoot. I troubleshoot only when there are issues. I don't care if a supposedly old kernel is used as it works without issues. Not everything that works OK needs to be replaced/changed. Now I would troubleshoot a brand new device with new software that has issues if only to find out the "why".
Agreed?
Agreed?
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