minktoast
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Fantastic information - many thanks for sharing. I'll be ordering a board soon and have a go myself (familiar with Debian).
Originally Posted by ephrank /img/forum/go_quote.gif AFAIK, ALSA is the default sound driver for the Linux kernel so your Trends UD-10 is likely to be controlled by the ALSA USB sound module (snd-usb-audio) |
Originally Posted by Brewmaster /img/forum/go_quote.gif For the ultimate in low power it would be great to pair up one of these systems with an external USB drive for the media storage, and then use a MPD client on your phone to control the device. It would probably have a pretty good payback in an area where power is expensive. |
Originally Posted by nyc_paramedic /img/forum/go_quote.gif You know, I thought about that but decided against it for several reasons: 1. I wanted to avoid one more LED in my usually dimmed listening room. 2. I usually rip new CD's on my bedroom desktop (where the 750GB disk is setup as NFS), and copying them over to the NFS disk would be much easier than having to unplug the USB drive constantly. Editing tags is easier this way too. 3. The possibility of hearing the 750GB disk (seek noise, platter spin) during quiet passages. The ALIX with compact flash is dead silent. 4. I didn't want any other devices on the ALIX's USB port possibly contributing to sound degradation. 5. I might buy another ALIX connected to a small amp to play music in the kitchen. Having the NFS disk on the desktop makes it a lot easier to administer this type of network. With the GMPC client on one device, you can have different profiles for different MPD servers and label them accordingly, i.e., bedroom, kitchen , basement. Each ALIX in a different room of the house being it's own MPD server, and each one fetching different music from the same NFS or NAS server. This being open source software, Linux is supremely flexible. I'm sure my setup isn't the only way to set up MPD; just works for me. |
Originally Posted by Brewmaster /img/forum/go_quote.gif I hear you on the ambient noise issue of having a hard drive in the room. Perhaps a little NAS hard drive located elsewhere in the house. I just love this concept. Having small, low cost computer boards certainly opens up a lot of interesting ideas. |
Originally Posted by nyc_paramedic /img/forum/go_quote.gif My desktop machine is a dual-core Athlon X2 4800+ & 2 GB RAM running Debian with a minimal GUI: Openbox window manager and a couple of X terminals. It's more than enough to handle being and NFS server. |
Originally Posted by nyc_paramedic /img/forum/go_quote.gif Yes. You are correct. I was oversimplifying for the sake of some of the non-Linux techies here. |
Originally Posted by ephrank /img/forum/go_quote.gif So, have u tested if it is bit-perfect? |
Originally Posted by nyc_paramedic /img/forum/go_quote.gif How does one test for this bit perfectness most of you here so incessantly focus on? I'm not being sarcastic; I'll honestly admit when I don't know something. If you do know more more about the inner workings of ALSA, then please share. I'll tell you this: This setup sounds much better than my Theta Data Basic transport ever did. And that was a result that I was NOT expecting. I was going the USB computer route out of mere convenience. From what I understand, when you give ALSA a hardware address for the audio device --in my case "hw: 0,0", then the audio stream is passed along unadulterated. |
[left]pcm.!default { type hw card 0 } ctl.!default { type hw card 0 }[/left]
Originally Posted by Octoploid /img/forum/go_quote.gif Yes, hw is bit perfect. Basically you just use the following /etc/asound.conf file and everything should work for any USB-DAC: Code:
Code:
With these settings, you could play only one sound at a time and no mixing is used. |
Originally Posted by eehouse /img/forum/go_quote.gif The ALIX 3c2 has analog audio-out in addition to USB. Any idea if it's of adequate quality to drive a stereo? It'd be nice to skip the USB DAC if possible (for those of us who don't already own the gear.) |