AudioLinux NUC

[mmorrison55]

I have to be honest, I’m kind of scared off of SOtM based on the stories I have read here with the problems you guys are having. I’m trying to narrow down my choice of streamer, and they were on the short list but not sure now. Hopefully by the time I do pull the trigger, they will have figured out all these issues.

I am not computer illiterate, but I do not want to spend hours of troubleshooting every time a new firmware is released.

[Confused]

I have to be honest, I’m kind of scared off of SOtM based on the stories I have read here with the problems you guys are having. I’m trying to narrow down my choice of streamer, and they were on the short list but not sure now. Hopefully by the time I do pull the trigger, they will have figured out all these issues.

I am not computer illiterate, but I do not want to speak hours of troubleshooting every time a new firmware is released.

I would not read too much into my earlier post.  Yesterday I was cable swapping and switching between asynchronous and synchronous methods of playback without exiting the Eunhasu software on my PC.  Hardly normal use, and I’m pretty sure that if I’d shut everything down it would have been fine.  I have used the sMS-200ultra for many hours today, via HQPlayer, briefly with dlna/JRiver, and with AirPlay (shairport).  It has worked perfectly.  Most of the recently reported issues have been with Squeezelite.

[octaviars]

@mmorrison55 if you run Roon you will not have much problem with SOtM firmware. Up until this latest firmware I have not seen much trouble with it and as I wrote Roon runs perfectly with the latest firmware for me.

[Bartype]

@Confused 

Yes - I found that when I connected the other components back in - the sound was the same - very good. I have to say the sound quality wasn’t degraded by having, together or individually, the SOtM tXUSB and Mutec MC3 and REF-10 in the chain. And I want to be clear I have really enjoyed the SQ these components brought to my system. The surprise to me was that when I added these components with the NUC the sound quality didn’t get better. Being greedy I guess....

Low Cost - you mentioned low cost - I read about how one could check out this audiolinux approach for $30 US dollars - that definitely caught my attention. Why not eh? However, I’m not sure how that works at all - my experience is this is not accurate for those of us that need help implementing a AL NUC.

Hand Delivery - I agree that Larry is not coming to the UK to hand deliver NUCs - but I’m sure he has a post office near by.

In terms of you trying a USB direct - in the past I understood the XLR input was the best, I feel like recently Devialet have indicated that the USB is a very good input. You should give this a try - why not?

In terms of the cash windfall - I have begun selling my previous components - I do think they are great components and indeed people have been buying them. Some of the cash is going to buy the NUCs and the rest is there for the next purchase. You may not have noticed in my post but I did go from my 120 to a 1000pro a couple of years ago - kind of like 0 to 60 in a British sports car. Most damning of all though, the NUC was a bigger improvement than the move to the 1000 pro CI....sorry.

In terms of speakers - I have Magico S3 speakers.

Additionally, so far, I have been l been listening to music through ROON and not HQP - and it sounds really good. Previously my go to was listening to HQP through ROON with Convolution by Thierry. The magic I am hear now is just through ROON (up sampled to 192). No HQP. No Convolution. The NUC Server has a trial of HQP Embedded that I will try in a few days.

I have followed your posts with interests because we seem to have had similar approaches. The NUC approach is very interesting.

@midi
It is not necessary to do both an Endpoint and Server. In fact, I upgraded to the End Point for a few weeks before upgrading to the Server. I would definitely do the End Point first. There may be people providing the same products/service that NUCklehead provides near you but if not contact Larry and see if he can help you. 

Dan

This is all very interesting! I am considering to go the NUC way, building them myself. If i understand correctly, one NUC is running Roon Rock, the other Audiolinux with an usb with Roon Bridge? This second NUC is then directly connected to the Devialet with USB? Also, is it a good option to put enough storage within the Roon rock to put your music collection on, so you can leave the NAS (or other storage) out of the chain?

[Antoine]

No Roon Rock. It’s two NUC7i7DN’s both running AudioLinux Headless. One has Roon Server installed (core & output only, no GUI, most often called the ‘server’) and the other is indeed running Roon Bridge (output only often called the ‘end-point’) and outputs to USB. See: https://roonlabs.com/howroonworks.html and https://kb.roonlabs.com/Architecture for more details about this distributed architecture.

Dan has not specified where his music is stored and only mentioned the 32GB Optane storage which most likely only holds the AudioLinux OS and Roon database. It could be he’s using a NAS or an external USB drive.

I myself am using the exact same (though self-built) Akasa fanless NUC running AudioLinux Headless Roon Bridge, a fanless i7 6700T DIY machine running AudioLinux Headless+Roon Server. In my situation both run 100% from RAM including the Roon database on the server. Both boot from a SSD thumb drive which are removed after booting. I store my music on a DIY NAS PC elsewhere in my home but am looking at the best solution, there’s not much consensus though about the best place to store one’s music. My ‘control’ point is an iPad Pro 12.9”.

Currently I’m waiting for the etherREGEN to come to market before I change my server hardware. The etherREGEN switch -may- lessen the importance of the server. Also there’s not much consensus yet on what’s the best type of hardware to use for the Server part. Contrary to earlier beliefs it seems to be going in the direction of powerful multi-core CPU, big CPU cache hardware, think desktop i7 or server Xeon territory.

High quality power is extremely important in this solution. The better the PSU’s the better the solution will sound. The good thing is that the NUC’s are low power so with a Paul Hynes SR4 for example you have a sufficiently powerful and high quality PSU. The Celeron and Pentium NUC’s I mentioned earlier can even run on a Uptone LPS-1/1.2. But there’s also people who are using the (lesser quality) SOtm SPS500 or HDPlex PSU’s.

Most recently the SOtM TX-USBultra’s have been re-introduced into the systems of the people who (jointly) found/developped this solution. These are now (after internal upgrades and modifications done by SOtM) reclocking the USB output of the NUC end-point -and- replacing the on-board clocks in that NUC.

I haven’t commented much on the SQ yet because of multiple reasons detailed elsewhere but I can say it’s now better sounding than anything I have heard in my system by a large margin.

Do build this if you like a DIY solution, experimenting and don’t mind that the solution as deployed by others will change often. What’s new today will be old tomorrow, it’s a moving target!

[Axel]

No Roon Rock. It’s two NUC7i7DN’s both running AudioLinux Headless. One has Roon Server installed (core & output only, no GUI, most often called the ‘server’) and the other is indeed running Roon Bridge (output only often called the ‘end-point’) and outputs to USB. See: https://roonlabs.com/howroonworks.html and https://kb.roonlabs.com/Architecture for more details about this distributed architecture.

Dan has not specified where his music is stored and only mentioned the 32GB Optane storage which most likely only holds the AudioLinux OS and Roon database. It could be he’s using a NAS or an external USB drive.

I myself am using the exact same (though self-built) Akasa fanless NUC running AudioLinux Headless Roon Bridge, a fanless i7 6700T DIY machine running AudioLinux Headless+Roon Server. In my situation both run 100% from RAM including the Roon database on the server. Both boot from a SSD thumb drive which are removed after booting. I store my music on a DIY NAS PC elsewhere in my home but am looking at the best solution, there’s not much consensus though about the best place to store one’s music. My ‘control’ point is an iPad Pro 12.9”.

Currently I’m waiting for the etherREGEN to come to market before I change my server hardware. The etherREGEN switch -may- lessen the importance of the server. Also there’s not much consensus yet on what’s the best type of hardware to use for the Server part. Contrary to earlier beliefs it seems to be going in the direction of powerful multi-core CPU, big CPU cache hardware, think desktop i7 or server Xeon territory.

High quality power is extremely important in this solution. The better the PSU’s the better the solution will sound. The good thing is that the NUC’s are low power so with a Paul Hynes SR4 for example you have a sufficiently powerful and high quality PSU. The Celeron and Pentium NUC’s I mentioned earlier can even run on a Uptone LPS-1/1.2. But there’s also people who are using the (lesser quality) SOtm SPS500 or HDPlex PSU’s.

Most recently the SOtM TX-USBultra’s have been re-introduced into the systems of the people who (jointly) found/developped this solution. These are now (after internal upgrades and modifications done by SOtM) reclocking the USB output of the NUC end-point -and- replacing the on-board clocks in that NUC.

I haven’t commented much on the SQ yet because of multiple reasons detailed elsewhere but I can say it’s now better sounding than anything I have heard in my system by a large margin.

Do build this if you like a DIY solution, experimenting and don’t mind that the solution as deployed by others will change often. What’s new today will be old tomorrow, it’s a moving target!

Is there a reason why you prefer Audiolinux over Roon Rock? As I think I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’m considering building the server side of the two box solution and am trying to glean as much information as possible.

[tategoi]

So with the 2-box solution you neither deliver it via Devialet Air nor RAAT?

[Antoine]

Is there a reason why you prefer Audiolinux over Roon Rock? As I think I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’m considering building the server side of the two box solution and am trying to glean as much information as possible.

Well I first have to say first I have never used Rock. Like AudioLinux it's a purpose built Linux distribution. The focus for both is being 'lightweight', lean and mean so to speak. Rock is solely targeted at Roon. AudioLinux is solely targeted at getting the best sound quality but supports not just Roon but most of the popular (in audiophile circles) music playback software. It's a 'for audiophiles, by audiophiles' product. Roon targets Rock to a very wide audience so it has to be 'turn key'.

Audiolinux runs a real time Linux kernel (lowering latency),it can run 100% from RAM and allows one to prioritise IRQ's ('hardware') and processes ('software') so one can tune it further for ones own purposes.

Others, including people I trust, who did use or compare say Audio Linux sounds way better. I myself come from a Windows Server 2012R2/Audiophile Optimizer setup. As always there's people who like the Windows setup better than the AudioLinux setup and vice versa.


No one has asked yet but I don't go to the 'why does it matter' questions for something like running your OS from memory as I believe it's not yet fully understood. You can imagine the heated discussions that spark elsewhere and rarely go anywhere so I rarely join (or start them )

It's a really terrible website but I'm linking to it anyway as it is the 'home page' of one of the products being discussed: https://www.audio-linux.com/

All the information one needs on AL, the hows and why's are here (do notice the index in the first post of the first link below for easier navigating):

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic...streaming/
https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic...nd-tuning/
https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic...pressions/
https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic...n-2-hours/

So with the 2-box solution you neither deliver it via Devialet Air nor RAAT?

Correct. Dan is connecting his NUC endpoint to his Devialet using USB.

I still have my Mutec MC3+USB in the chain which uses AES/EBU to connect to the Devialet. My NUC endpoint is connected to the Mutec using USB.

In both of our cases communications between Roon Server and Roon Bridge are RAAT though.

[Axel]

Is there a reason why you prefer Audiolinux over Roon Rock? As I think I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I’m considering building the server side of the two box solution and am trying to glean as much information as possible.

Well I first have to say first I have never used Rock. Like AudioLinux it's a purpose built Linux distribution. The focus for both is being 'lightweight', lean and mean so to speak. Rock is solely targeted at Roon. AudioLinux is solely targeted at getting the best sound quality but supports not just Roon but most of the popular (in audiophile circles) music playback software. It's a 'for audiophiles, by audiophiles' product. Roon targets Rock to a very wide audience so it has to be 'turn key'.

Audiolinux runs a real time Linux kernel (lowering latency),it can run 100% from RAM and allows one to prioritise IRQ's ('hardware') and processes ('software') so one can tune it further for ones own purposes.

Others, including people I trust, who did use or compare say Audio Linux sounds way better. I myself come from a Windows Server 2012R2/Audiophile Optimizer setup. As always there's people who like the Windows setup better than the AudioLinux setup and vice versa.


No one has asked yet but I don't go to the 'why does it matter' questions for something like running your OS from memory as I believe it's not yet fully understood. You can imagine the heated discussions that spark elsewhere and rarely go anywhere so I rarely join (or start them )

It's a really terrible website but I'm linking to it anyway as it is the 'home page' of one of the products being discussed: https://www.audio-linux.com/

All the information one needs on AL, the hows and why's are here (do notice the index in the first post of the first link below for easier navigating):

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic...streaming/
https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic...nd-tuning/
https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic...pressions/
https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic...n-2-hours/

So with the 2-box solution you neither deliver it via Devialet Air nor RAAT?

Correct. Dan is connecting his NUC endpoint to his Devialet using USB.

I still have my Mutec MC3+USB in the chain which uses AES/EBU to connect to the Devialet. My NUC endpoint is connected to the Mutec using USB.

In both of our cases communications between Roon Server and Roon Bridge are RAAT though.

Thanks for the explanation and the links @Antoine. Looks like I’ve got a lot of reading to do. SQ is all important to me, so it’ll be Audiolinux.

[Bartype]

Yes, thanks for all the info! It will take a while before i get into this, so i expect there will be a lot of new info by that time ;-) I will follow the discussion closely. It's very interesting indeed!