Yes my original modi didn't have it's own power supply so used the USB line for power which could be what @botrytis was saying about weak pc ps's. I bought the Schiit wyrd which has it's own ps and it really helped these issues but the buzz was still there but quieter, more muffled. That's about the time jriver came out with the ID for the RPi3 and I went with that. The original modi won't work with the RPi3 because the ps on that doesn't Have enough watts to spare so the wyrd came in handy. Shortly after I bought the modi multibit ( which has its own ps). Anyway whatever was the issue before with win machine, it's all good and rock solid now with the new combo RPi3 and modi MB.
Is the lack of a DAC in my system my weakest link?
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None of the solutions you tried has provided a full isolation from your noisy PC. The Eitr should have.
The Ethernet cable is it's only connection with the PC as well as a half dozen other devices, printers weatherstation etc. Now the only thing the PC does with the music is to tell the RPi3 what the next track to pull from the nas. It's dead quiet although not all "noise" is heard I suspect. Still there are bigger fish to fry now. Maybe later I will upgrade the DAC.
imral3
Enjoy the musics!!
The Ethernet cable breaks the ground connection, which is where I suspect the noise was coming from. There is nothing magical about the RPi, it is also a computer and it can be noisy depending on the implementation and the PSU. Yours is not, congrats.
ldatlof
We are all steak
I am using an original Modi plugged into the USB port of a Pogoplug V4 which uses Arch Linux as its OS and runs squeezelite as its player. It connects to LMS, which runs on a separate computer, via WiFi. I have never had any of the issues that @Alobar lists in post #43.
The same is true with my main system which uses a netbook running Linux Mint. The OS and squeezelite barely tax the system's resources so the fan never even comes on. I think a lot of the problems people have are caused by Windows, especially if using an older computer.
The same is true with my main system which uses a netbook running Linux Mint. The OS and squeezelite barely tax the system's resources so the fan never even comes on. I think a lot of the problems people have are caused by Windows, especially if using an older computer.
I use a MacBook Pro for streaming movies and TV. For music I have a headless PC running Daphile. I used to have the Mac connected directly to the Tape input on my receiver while the Daphile PC ran to a Modi 2 connected to the Aux input.
When the Aux on my 40 year old receiver crapped out on me I was left with only one functioning input (currently down to zero and using a temporary class T amp with one input). I ordered a cheap USB switch and longer-than-recommended USB cable from Monoprice to route both computers through the Modi and into Tape. Even this budget setup made a remarkable improvement to the sound coming out of the Mac.
I don't really invest in the sound quality for my movie watching; any upgrades I consider are for the music side of things and I just run movie sound through the same 2.1 setup I use for music. But the improvement was immediately noticeable and much preferred.
I'm about to pull the trigger on a USB Disruptor to see if that might improve things further.
When the Aux on my 40 year old receiver crapped out on me I was left with only one functioning input (currently down to zero and using a temporary class T amp with one input). I ordered a cheap USB switch and longer-than-recommended USB cable from Monoprice to route both computers through the Modi and into Tape. Even this budget setup made a remarkable improvement to the sound coming out of the Mac.
I don't really invest in the sound quality for my movie watching; any upgrades I consider are for the music side of things and I just run movie sound through the same 2.1 setup I use for music. But the improvement was immediately noticeable and much preferred.
I'm about to pull the trigger on a USB Disruptor to see if that might improve things further.
Well I am no expert, but I assumed that the lack of a spinning drive, cooling fans, and a CPU that is multitasking a bunch of other crap, from wireless everything to printing doc's to running updates on the AV in the background while at the same time serving up and playing music was what gives the Rpi a leg up. Yes I know it is a computer, I am not a complete noob!
But I also think that not having all the other business always running something in the USB of a typical PC is an important step. Probably some PC's are better capable of multi tasking and running music at the same time. Mine isn't and while I could have went shopping for one that is I would never be sure the new one I bought would be any better. The RPi3 for $50 was a real bargain, and because it is in a real sense isolated from everything else I now feel the music stream coming off its USB is pure. I can say that because that is what I hear, with both cans, and my JBL speakers.That may be and admittedly you have me at a disadvantage as computer science is not something I aspire to.
Here are some of the issues I dealt with when I was playing music streamed direct from my PC before I owned the RPi.
While the computer was in high performance mode there was a buzzing sound that was timed to the light flickering on the PC (I believe it is the drive being accessed). When in power saver mode the buzzing went away.
The rapid skipping, cutting out, or playing slightly too fast as mentioned in one of my above posts wasn't related to what performance level the computer was set to. This occurred more or less after the computer had been on for a few days and the only way to get it to function properly again was a reboot of the computer (happened about 3 or more times per week). After reboot, things played normally for a time but since I only put my computer to sleep at night and not shut it down it seemed I thought like as other processes were used it increased the likelihood of another reboot to fix the audio.
If this were a grounding issue, why wouldn't it be always happening? How does rebooting a computer fix a mechanical thing such as a ground issue?
Hard to say exactly what was happening, maybe in high-performance mode the increased current draw by CPU and other components caused more noise on the power lines as the voltage was sagging under load. Perhaps a marginal power supply was at fault. This has little to do with computer science btw, just good old electric circuit design.
You keep saying that, just a ground issue. I am an electrician by trade, and I have dealt with a fair number of ground issues, but wouldn't have a clue where to fix a USB ground. The power supply explanation makes sense as to the buzzing but still a mystery as to the other stuff.. In the end it really doesn't matter, I was not likely to fix it with my computer troubleshooting skills, and the RPi3b did, whether it was just blind luck of the draw is neither here nor there.
I never said it was a ground issue, as it's a problem with equipment ground. The USB ground isn't necessarily at the same potential as equipment ground. Ideally USB ground should be constant voltage relative to the Earth (possibly 0V) but because of various issues HF noise leaks into it and it is no longer constant oscillating at HF, this messes up circuits downstream of the PC in the chain as you discovered. All I'm saying that the RPi isn't necessarily a silver bullet, if it worked for you - great. But so could other solutions that isolate USB devices from PC power.
Sure, and I never said the RPi was the only solution either. In fact I am sure if I would have gotten an isolator for the USB on my PC that would have fixed it as well. Wouldn't that be the same thing though as I was saying that noise from the PC was the cause (by way of a poorly grounded USB)? The RPi's I know are all made by the same people so it isn't like PC's were there are so many different configurations, designs, CPU's manufacturers etc. I don't think the Raspberry would have had such a great following for audiophiles had it been a luck of the draw type of thing. It is a clean design, obviously with a properly grounded USB, and without moving parts of any kind.
I did as you suggested and got a few hits. I see there are problems, but some of the hits were dated back many years (2012).
Of the most recent here is one from 2017 that would seem to be a Rpi fault until I started reading through it where it almost started to look like to me to be his DAC which is downstream from the RPi..
https://community.roonlabs.com/t/internal-circuitry-noise-on-rpi3-usb-dac/27794
Another claiming "ethernet noise" from his RPi setup, again, possibly not the RPi's fault..
https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=22280
Honestly tho I didn't find a lot of issues posted like you would expect from a compromised audio grade computer. What I did see were what might have been described as setup errors, or bad cables, locations near obvious interference, or the biggest taboo, plugging in a USB powered DAC direct into a RPi. They simply don't have the power to spare, and there are many reports of issues that way. HDMI may have been an issue with some, but again many hits were dated back a long ways..
