Now, for my next trick

[ldatlof]

I am enjoying this thread big-time!! BadAssBob, can you post some pics of your finished Pi and what it can do?

Thanks, JN

Here are some pictures of my RPi. Looks like some dusting may be in order. :sigh:

 

[ldatlof]

Listening test

Yay! That'll be $500.

Not so fast. Last night I listened to Patrica Barber's Companion and I heard some digital hash. It is not 100% like the SB receiver. Maybe I need to reboot more often or something.

Using it as just a player running raspian it is almost as good as the SB receiver though.

 

[JimmyNeutron]

Very sweet Idatlof!!! I like that a lot. Very nice setup too.

What I want to know is this, is there a way to run this little gadget as a "real" hi-end" music playback system? Hi-end as in play files up to 24/96, stream them from a NAS, have touchscreen support for an ELO monitor? You know, the same stuff I can do now with a laptop, Windows 7, and J. River. I imagine that the small footprint and low power consumption of the Pi would be ideal for music setups like this.

JN

JN

 

[ldatlof]

Very sweet Idatlof!!! I like that a lot. Very nice setup too.

Thanks for the compliment JimmyNeutron.

What I want to know is this, is there a way to run this little gadget as a "real" hi-end" music playback system? Hi-end as in play files up to 24/96, stream them from a NAS, have touchscreen support for an ELO monitor? You know, the same stuff I can do now with a laptop, Windows 7, and J. River. I imagine that the small footprint and low power consumption of the Pi would be ideal for music setups like this.

JN

JN

I think it is known as a Squeezebox Touch.

 

[anapex]

Not so fast. Last night I listened to Patrica Barber's Companion and I heard some digital hash. It is not 100% like the SB receiver. Maybe I need to reboot more often or something.
.

Really shouldn't need to reboot. Maybe just a restart of the squeezeslave service daily or something?

Are you noticing the harshness during a long session after a reboot or a day or two after you turned the Pi on?

 

[BadassBob]

Really shouldn't need to reboot. Maybe just a restart of the squeezeslave service daily or something?

Are you noticing the harshness during a long session after a reboot or a day or two after you turned the Pi on?

Good idea. Set up a cron job to restart Squeezeslave. I wonder if the choppiness could be a heat issue? Could always put a small heatsink on the CPU. On a related note...the LAN runs off of the USB bus. Between LAN, DAC, and USB hard drive...you might have to prioritize.

 

[ldatlof]

Really shouldn't need to reboot. Maybe just a restart of the squeezeslave service daily or something?

Are you noticing the harshness during a long session after a reboot or a day or two after you turned the Pi on?

So far it has only worked flawlessly with the DAC for the first hour (as both a server and player). I think it has to do with the DAC. It plays from the audio out just fine.

As a player only (running Dark Basic raspian) it has no issues with the DAC.

When I run the top command, the player and server only use about 15% of the CPU power. So I am not sure what the issue is.

 

[ldatlof]

Good idea. Set up a cron job to restart Squeezeslave. I wonder if the choppiness could be a heat issue? Could always put a small heatsink on the CPU. On a related note...the LAN runs off of the USB bus. Between LAN, DAC, and USB hard drive...you might have to prioritize.

That might be the DAC then. If I disconnect the LAN then I have no control over it.

The cron job is a good thing for me to learn about. You might get a PM.

By the way when you restart squeezeslave it starts to rescan the library which means you don't have access to the files. This cron job will have to be a late night thing. When I hit abort scan in LMS it doesn't stop the scan.

 

[anapex]

If I disconnect the LAN then I have no control over it.

If the USB HDD, LAN, and DAC are all off the same bus then disconnecting the LAN might not be a bad test. Start squeezeslave, start playing a long playlist and then disconnect the LAN. Then see if it still has the audio issue.

The cron job is a good thing for me to learn about. You might get a PM.

Might as well include it here for everyone to enjoy. You should be able to do something like the following.

crontab -e

When it brings up the editor you'll want to add a line that looks similar to this.

59 23 * * * <command to restart squeezeslave>

If I remember right crontab uses vi so to save and exit enter :wq!

What that does is run whatever the squeezeslave restart command is every night at 11:59pm

By the way when you restart squeezeslave it starts to rescan the library which means you don't have access to the files. This cron job will have to be a late night thing. When I hit abort scan in LMS it doesn't stop the scan.

With cron you can have it run whenever you'd like.

So I thought of another test as well. Since heat was mentioned try running it with the case off.

 

[ldatlof]

If the USB HDD, LAN, and DAC are all off the same bus then disconnecting the LAN might not be a bad test. Start squeezeslave, start playing a long playlist and then disconnect the LAN. Then see if it still has the audio issue.

It made no difference. I am used to perfection with the SB Duet, so I already went back to using it as player only running Dark Basic's version of Raspian. It plays perfectly even with the DAC. The Raspian OS takes advantage of the floating point hardware, whereas the Squeeze OS doesn't. Maybe that is the problem.

Might as well include it here for everyone to enjoy. You should be able to do something like the following.

crontab -e

When it brings up the editor you'll want to add a line that looks similar to this.

59 23 * * * <command to restart squeezeslave>

If I remember right crontab uses vi so to save and exit enter :wq!

What that does is run whatever the squeezeslave restart command is every night at 11:59pm



With cron you can have it run whenever you'd like.

Thank you! :yes:

The command is: service squeezeslave restart

I couldn't figure out whether you run it from the file crontab opens or whether you write a seperate file and have crontab execute it.

 

[anapex]

So it's been a couple days. Is it still running well?

 

[ldatlof]

I started listening to some Jazz and I could hear digital hash on the quiet parts so I went back to the SB Duet for now.

The problem could be that the DAC and the Pi do not play well together. I don't have another DAC to test it with.

 

[DCinDC]

Mouser has a similar board

http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail...NO-MICRO/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMt9rZLnhhqRzzqJGKVNXike

 

[ldatlof]

Seems like this thread is dying out. Anyway I tried to connect the Pi to my wireless network and was successful. However, the wireless USB adapter I had turns itself off every once in a while and it did this too with the Pi. I need a new wireless adapter.

I tried to get sound out of the HDMI output but not successful. I didn't try that hard though because of the aforementioned wireless problem.

Has anyone got the Pi to run as well as a squeezebox?

 

[Boomer543]

Mine's due on Tuesday. Been reading everything I possibly can, including this thread. Really want to see if I can use the Pi to stream like my Touch. Especially Pandora, which I listen to all the time. With wireless Internet, it'd be a slick set up with a DAC for a vintage amp set up. Would be great for my office

Jack

 

[Boomer543]

Going to try this tonight. I didn't understand the need for the Putty installation and session. Can't I just do it all from the Pi itself?

Jack

 

[BadassBob]

Going to try this tonight. I didn't understand the need for the Putty installation and session. Can't I just do it all from the Pi itself?

Jack

Sure you can, but Putty allows you to SSH into the Pi remotely.

 

[Boomer543]

I saw that when I watched the video. Guess I'll try it his way. I'd like to use it with a wifi adapter but not sure it will work with his OS. I'll stick to ethernet first and see if I can get it working.

Any idea whether any of the apps in the Squeezebox will work once you install the squeezeslave? I'd love to be able to stream Pandora through the Pi.

Thanks for being on the bleeding edge!!

Jack

 

[BadassBob]

I saw that when I watched the video. Guess I'll try it his way. I'd like to use it with a wifi adapter but not sure it will work with his OS. I'll stick to ethernet first and see if I can get it working.

Any idea whether any of the apps in the Squeezebox will work once you install the squeezeslave? I'd love to be able to stream Pandora through the Pi.

Thanks for being on the bleeding edge!!

Jack

All of the apps are run server-side, the Pi with Squeezeslave will just play what the server tells it to

 

[Boomer543]

Is the German guy's password "nosoupforyou"? That's what I hear him say but it doesn't work when I try to log in as root.