CuBox Project X

[Kunter]

I've noticed that the voyage.hk web site is unavailable at the moment. Does anyone know what the reason is?

It is on and off... you are right.
Now its on...

Cheers

[ogs]

I've noticed that the voyage.hk web site is unavailable at the moment. Does anyone know what the reason is?

It is on and off... you are right.
Now its on...

Cheers

Yes I noticed. I use the ordinary Voyage distro on my Intel NUC. Needed to update and apt could not connect. Even with no rt kernel the sound is wonderful. And I am using LMS with BrutefirDrc and squeezelite.

[Kunter]

Hi all...
Here comes another update on the Cubox quest...

I tried Volumio the other day. Although it is easier to manage and it adds the possibility of Internet Radio, I did not like the overall sound. Midrange and soundstage is great (better than Mubox) but the bass and treble extension suffered... In went the Mubox...

I am using two battery supplies, one for Cubox and one for the external SSD. Yesterday I installed "coupling capacitors" in parallel to the cable powering Cubox, and it made a huge effect to the sound quality. Much more depth, detail, presence. I think this is due to the fact that, the power supply to Cubox is also powering the USB input of Devialet, through Cubox.

I have PPA dual headed USB cable on order, which should arrive in a couple of weeks. When I have it, I will try powering the USB input with a better cleaner power supply and will report back if I hear anything.

Cheers.

Kunter

[Antoine]

Hi guys, I'm selling my Cubox i4-Pro, see this topic: http://devialetchat.com/Thread-Cubox-i4-...-powerbank

[Kunter]

A small (but very significant) update...

I am now using the new Volumio 1.5 for Cubox.

Much better sound quality overall and 2 very interesting functionalities:

I now have Spotify premium, and Airplay...

Still working on some improvements so more soon...

I love this device...

Kunter

[Rufus McDufus]

Interesting Kunter. I have Antoine's Cubox now and just got it playing with Voyage MPD. Sounding good. Initially not a huge difference over my old Eee PC with the same OS image. but smoother and possibly a tiny bit more detail. Running on battery.
I will have to try Volumio.

[Kunter]

Rufus,

Right now I am back to the standard power supply on the Cubox. Battery for the SSD. Somehow, I could not get consistent performance on battery with Cubox. Will have a different power solution soon...

USB cable made a serious difference. I am using PPA Studio cable now.

When you put Volumio in, make sure you turn off every option. Mpad or the likes work nicely so do not use the web browser library option.. Just drop me a line if you need help

Cheers.

[Kunter]

edit: tip for Kunter and any future owners of the Cubox. The real time tuning settings (http://mubox.voyage.hk/realtime_kernel_cuboxi) are not persistent and thus lost after a reboot. I created a script and call that from rc.local to reapply these settings after every reboot.

Code:

for IRQ in /proc/irq/* ; do echo 1 > $IRQ/smp_affinity ; done
for PID in $(pgrep ci_hdrc) ; do taskset -pc 1 $PID ; done
echo 2 > /proc/irq/72/smp_affinity
echo 2 > /proc/irq/75/smp_affinity
taskset -pca 2,3 $(pgrep mpd)
chrt -f -p 49 $(pgrep cifsd)
ps -eLo pid,group,lwp,rtprio,priority,time,cmd | egrep "cifsd"

For those who are interested...

the above set of tricks work (mostly) for Volumio as well... Volumio does not have a real time kernel, however you can still assign MPD and USB to specific cores. And it helps with the sound a lot. A LOT.

the useful commands to be executed are:

echo 2 > /proc/irq/72/smp_affinity
echo 2 > /proc/irq/75/smp_affinity
taskset -pca 2,3 $(pidof mpd)

run these at your convenience (as suggested above) and you will be in audio heaven.

Cheers

Kunter

[Rufus McDufus]

Sorry for lack of updates. I haven't tried the kernel settings above - may try them today Kunter! I'm progresssing veeeery slowly as I'm spending more time listening to the actual music than playing!

I'm using Volumio 1.5, Anker 2nd Gen Astro E4 13000mAh battery, and a cheapo USB printer cable at the moment. I've been switching between cheapo Toslink and cheapo USB. The Cubox is irritating in that it needs a small Toslink plug to fit due to the case surrounding the plug. Initially I preferred the Toslink but with modifications to Volumio I'm more inclined towards the cheapo USB, so am looking for a better USB cable solution, ideally a cheap one.

With Volumio I find 'Best Sinc Interpolator' is a big improvement on the default 'Fastest Sinc Interpolator'. Also set mixer type to 'disabled'. I can't really tell a difference between this and 'Hardware'.

[Rufus McDufus]

Definite improvements with setting process affinity for the mpd procs. Funnily, I played the same album today that I played yesterday - The Zombies 'Odessey & Oracle', which isn't a great recording and quite treble-y. Two of my cats who were in the same room yesterday suddenly seemed to be hearing all sorts of things going on. One started running around a lot and the other was clearly distracted too! I think they're hearing some high-frequency information that is confusing them! I'll have to start using them more and more for listening tests!