Computer Audio Asylum

Posted by aljordan (A) on July 03, 2009 at 08:25:11

In Reply to: RE: Questions for soundchekk and John Swenson posted by soundchekk on July 03, 2009 at 07:06:46

Hi soundchekk,

Thanks for the information. I have some further questions for you.

My music library is hung off of a XP box via windows shares, so I mount it via CIFS. Is there any benefit to mounting NFS instead of CIFS?

I think all of my network devices are operating at the same speed, but why do you recommend doing so?

I don't run a real-time kernel on the Fit-PC Slim because of the length of time it would take to compile the kernel. It only has a half gig of RAM and not much of a CPU. The main advantage of the Fit-PC is the clean USB ports and the ability to run off a battery. Will a real time kernel run on a low powered device like the Fit-PC?

I do run a real time kernel on one of my old CCRMA boxes, but maybe its time to update that to a more modern distribution like Ubuntu Studio. Then I can play with the kernel tweaks and RAM disks. I've been playing with Linux since its alpha and beta kernel days (the pre-Slackware SLS distribution finally made installation simple), so compiling a kernel isn't a problem.

I have been playing with MPD and Minion over the past day. It is working fine and switches sample rates on the fly when using alsa via plughw. You wrote: "When using different sample rates and ecasound as output-plugin for MPD I switch outputs within MPD. My own player recognizes the formats and configures ecasound automatically." This is intriguing. Are you doing this via the Minion plugin? Can you explain more about how you you have things configured to switch sample rates automatically?

Thanks,
Alan

• RE: Questions for soundchekk and John Swenson - John Swenson 00:03:02 07/04/09 (2)
  In Reply to: RE: Questions for soundchekk and John Swenson posted by aljordan on July 03, 2009 at 08:25:11

  I've run several different RT kernels on the Fit-PC, they work fine.
  
  You actually compile stuff on the fit-PC itself? I never do that, I always compile on another machine (usually my old P4 2.4GHz machine, I think I have 7 OSes on there, the grub page is kind of large), doing a full kernel compile on the fit-PC would definitely take some time.
  
  John S.
  

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  • RE: Questions for soundchekk and John Swenson - aljordan 04:30:06 07/04/09 (0)
    In Reply to: RE: Questions for soundchekk and John Swenson posted by John Swenson on July 04, 2009 at 00:03:02

    Hi John,
    
    Compiling small stuff pretty quick on the Fit-PC. Though not compiling, last night I ran the Ubuntu do-release-upgrade script on the Fit-PC to get to the latest version of Ubuntu so I could try a real lime kernel. It took a while, and CPU percentages were up around 85 to 95 percent with most of the memory allocated, but I was listening to 24 96 resolution music the whole time via MPD and my USB DAC and I never heard a single hickup. Compiling the kernel on another machine is a good idea.
    
    Alan
    

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  • RE: Questions for soundchekk and John Swenson - soundchekk 02:27:19 07/04/09 (0)
    In Reply to: RE: Questions for soundchekk and John Swenson posted by John Swenson on July 04, 2009 at 00:03:02

    Hi John.

    Did you notice any differences on the FitPC when running a realtime kernel?

    Did you try to boot the FitPC from net?

    
    

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    Edits: 07/04/09   07/04/09
• RE: Questions for soundchekk and John Swenson - soundchekk 09:17:18 07/03/09 (0)
  In Reply to: RE: Questions for soundchekk and John Swenson posted by aljordan on July 03, 2009 at 08:25:11

  1. NFS (Network File System) is a pure Linux2Linux filesystem.
  Its performance "can" be better then CIFS or SMBFS.
  This will depend on your setup.
  
  I'd recommend to try a Linux File Server. (Many of the NASes around
  are based on Linux. )

  2. If you have mixed transmission rates in the network, you'll have a lot
  of negotiations and buffering ongoing. This should be avoided.
  Try this: "ethtool -s eth0 autoneg off speed 100", if you e.g.want to
  bring your GBit-eth-interface down to 100MBit. (sudo apt-get install ethtool)

  3. The rt-kernel should run on the FITPC. (I'll know soon)
  There is no need to compile the kernel. No need to install
  Ubuntu Studio.
  It works on all Ubuntus (Jaunty) and Mints (Gloria). Just install it with "sudo apt-get install linux-image-2.6.28-3-rt linux-headers-2.6.28-3-rt" 07/03/09
  
  4. Within MPD I configure multiple (ecasound-pipe)-outputs with different sample-rates, which I select via Minion.
  If you feed MPD right into ALSA and plughw, you don't have to
  take care about it.

  5. I've written my own little player (I called it "EcaSx") using Sox and
  Ecasound.
  The Sox package comes with an application called "soxi". This I use
  to find out the file parameters to setup ecasound for playback.

  
  EDIT: Hmmh. I need to check the ethernet tweak. I just brought my
  GB/s-interface down to 100Mbit. Now the transfer of a 100Mb file takes 34s instead of 8.5s before.

  
  

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  Edits: 07/03/09   07/03/09

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