80.133.165.135
In Reply to: RE: Questions for soundchekk and John Swenson posted by aljordan on July 02, 2009 at 11:49:46
Hi Allan.
1.The way I would run it:
On your audio client you'll mount your music directory via NFS.
MPD looks at the mount point for files. That'll be it. No need for
netjack or similar. Via Minion you control MPD from a remote host.
I strongly recommend to setup a harmonic network rate (either 100MBIT all,
or 1GB all. Avoid 100 to 1GB network connections - you can easily configure this - let me know if you need help here)
2. If you configure plughw Alsa outputs the data as it comes. It won't
negotiate with the device. To be able to use "hw" you need a properly
written driver for your card that is able to negotiate with the card.
Alsa will try to communicate with the card about sample rates etc.
That'll obviously fail if the driver is not supporting your device
properly.
3. Ecasound is a software written for "professional" usage and tuned to
lowest latency. It works best with a realtime kernel. It pretty
much does what - I guess - Amarra is doing - highly efficient code
optimised for audio. It further uses processor optimisation features
such as SSE for processing (see CPLAY). The great thing is that it is
a command line tool and therefore won't waste resources and can
be "misused" as audio-engine as done in our application.
MPD though uses the standard API to ALSA and is not pushed to the
limits when it comes to performance. This makes the difference.
Good to see that you realize differences in sound. With a
rt-kernel setup in place this should improve even further.
Your ecasound options can be further improved. You might try this:
ecasound -B:rt -r:89 -b:32 -f:s32_le,2,44100,i -i:stdin
-o:alsaplugin,1,0
When using different samplerates and ecssound as output-plugin for MPD
I switch outputs within MPD.
My own player recognises the formats and configures ecasound
automatically.
BTW: If you look at my kernel Wiki. I describe a way how to
install the latest ( and probably best ever) rt-kernel. This is not
a beginner task.
With a bit of experience it should work though.
Of course you can use the standard rt-kernel which you'll find in the
Ubuntu repo.
HINT: Checkout my RAMPLAYBACK advise in the MPD Wiki.
Follow Ups:
Post a Followup:
Top of Page ]
[ Contact Us ]
[ Support/Wish List ]
[ Copyright © 2009, Audio Asylum, all rights reserved ]
[ Go Green ]
[ Take5 ]