DietPi: creating a lean-and-mean Roon Bridge

Is there any way for dietpi to support both RoonBridge and being a HQPlayer endpoint? Sometimes I want to upsample.

My new pi3 should arrive this week and I will hope to get running easy peasy from instructions here…hope it’s as easy as everyone says…I’m pretty rusty on my PI’s and linux these days

What size sad card do I need as minimum for brisdge use only?

You’ll be fine – and otherwise, just give a shout. :slight_smile:

I use 4GB cards, but DietPi + Roon Bridge will do fine on 1GB. See also: http://dietpi.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=9

Signalyst’s NAA needs a few updated libraries from Debian Stretch that are not present in Debian Jesse – you’ll see the needed dependencies when you try to install the NAA in DietPi. You can get these by temporarily change the ‘jessie’ entries in /etc/apt/sources.list to ‘stretch’, run apt update and install the required packages manually. Change back to ‘jessie’ when you’re done.

Be aware that Stretch is still unstable though – and that there’s no telling that DietPi will continue to behave nicely after installing them. Also: NAA only releases its grip on ALSA when the HQP application is fully closed – you won’t be able to stream to Roon Bridge while HQP is running.

2 Likes

Thanks for the info. I’ve been using this combo on stretch for a while so I understand how they work (or not) together.

The last time I set up my Pi, changing from jessie to stretch required a lot of downloads. It felt like just about everything was getting updated. Will the stretch packages that get downloaded still work when everything reverts to jessie?

When you try to install the networkaudioxxx.deb under Jessie, you’ll see which dependencies/versions fail (gcc6 and one other, if I remember correctly).

After updating the entries to stretch and running apt update, install these packages manually:

apt install package1 package2

That way, only these packages are updated and not your entire system. When finished, restore the entries to jessie.

And yes – they will continue to work – at least they did on my Cubox. Of course, YMMV. Godspeed! :smiley:

2 Likes

If @Dan_Knight was looking for further suggestions re: DietPi …

Jussi Laako’s Signalyst Network Audio Adaptor (NAA) (predating Roon) is a thin Ethernet client for his HQ Player software. HQP is a highly regarded (including by yours truly) software upsampler and convolver that can improve all but the very best DACs, bypassing their internal conversion/filter stages by feeding them the highest upsampled input they can accept.

Roon can act as an integrated front end for HQP, either via localhost on the same machine or to an IP address on a different machine. HQP becomes a network zone in Roon and audio can be sent to it like any other zone. Thereafter HQP controls distribution, meaning the NAA daemon takes the place of Roon Bridge.

The NAA daemon is available from Signalyst here. Every HQP licence includes a licence to use the NAA software. I understand Jussi encourages widespread dissemination of the NAA daemon, but you might check with him directly (@jussi_laako on this Forum). Jussi is a great supporter of various open source endeavours, including his own open source hardware DSD only DAC (DSC 1).

Provision to install (and update) the NAA daemon with DietPi, including installation of the Stretch packages to make it run, would be a great feature imo.

3 Likes

I don’t think it is wise to ship an unstable compiler with a stable release, but I best leave that to Daniel… :wink:

That said: Stretch is nearing release – although it could take some time before Raspbian is released in Debian 9 outfit.

2 Likes

HQP looks like an audiophiles ‘wet dream’ :wink: . I’ve created a ticket for this, lets see if we can add it to DietPi-Software: https://github.com/Fourdee/DietPi/issues/641

We currently have a BruteFIR installation available for DRC (http://dietpi.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=5&p=57#p57), uses ALSA loopback, however, HQP + NAA daemon looks much more impressive.

1 Like

HQP does many things, but is best known for its upsampling capabilities (PCM and DSD). For some it is the holy grail of digital audio – others care slightly less.

There’s a generous trial allowing you to find out where you sit. :slight_smile:

2 Likes

We will pull the required Stretch packages (.debs) from online source, rather than modifying /etc/apt/sources.list to stretch.
Not much we can do in regards to gcc-6-base, as that is required for libstdc++6:6.2.1, which in turn is required for networkaudiod

We currently have a Raspbian Stretch image available for DietPi. Its in Alpha/testing at the moment, more details here: http://dietpi.com/phpbb/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=986#p4264

2 Likes

You seem to be covering all bases, Daniel – great to see you’re on the ball! Now go find yourself a Cubox… :stuck_out_tongue:

2 Likes

Hehe, I’ll put Cubox on my Son’s Xmas list to Santa :wink:

Initial code for NAA Daemon is done (https://github.com/Fourdee/DietPi/commit/f9e5b6f8d64bd536031f2feefe5650a9cfa4e00c), now for some testing :slight_smile:

1 Like

Don’t do that to your kid – he’ll be scarred for life… :wink:

If I had a spare I’d send you one, but alas – they’re running overtime in our household.

Wow, great turnaround! I’ll definitely install DietPi once the NAA install gets verified as working!

What’s the cleanest way to get the latest Dietpi?

Start afresh with an SD card, or can you update from the existing Dietpi install via ssh?

Actually, ssh’ing in I believe the answer is in print right before my eyes :slight_smile:

dietpi-update

Using ‘Terminus’ app on the iPad (forgot I had it). All going well so far.

.
.
.

All done. Worked a treat. The longest part was moving around the menus via the iPad app, to find the pertinent settings (in my case RoonBridge and host name).

It gives nice feedback about what it’s doing, autodetected the iqaudio (unless it picked that up from my previous settings), and it’s done.

As soon as I get a window the pi2 in the bedroom will get moved over to Dietpi too, and any future pi zones will surely be Dietpi where possible.

3 Likes

ok, so here’s a question.

If you’re running another OS on a Pi, can you switch over to Dietpi via ssh and command line? Or is that a reformat job?

Nope, you’ve got to flash a new SD card. While DietPi is based on Raspbian, it is so heavily customised that it is a whole different distro.

1 Like

@andybob

NAA Daemon is tested (works great with Roon and HQPlayer). Will be available in DietPi next update (v140). We still have alot of open tickets for v140 (https://github.com/Fourdee/DietPi/milestone/42), so may be some time before its released.

In the mean time, you can test the installation using our testing branch.

Andy, would it be possible to add VST support to HQPlayer? That would be the icing on the cake, would allow for something like this (iOzone audiophile heaven, master in realtime):
This uses the bass API library

2 Likes

Thanks @Dan_Knight !

I’ll try out the test branch over the next few days and let you know of any issues. Really impressive turnaround on the request and it will be great to be able to refer folks to DietPi for menu driven installation of Roon Bridge, NAA and the various HAT boards. The low process count and logging to RAM (making it robust to power down corruption of the SD card) means it ticks all boxes for audiophile users, no matter what level of technical knowledge they have.

I’ll drop a flag for @jussi_laako so he can see your suggestion regarding VST support. I think it’s fair to say Jussi has developed HQP with great attention to sound quality and avoided any unnecessary “bells and whistles” in pursuit of that goal. His success in that regard can be guaged from his customer base, which include people whose passion for SQ make monomaniacs look like dilettantes !

VST/AU support has been requested by a number of users for Roon but while not ruled out, there are no current plans to implement it.

There are plans to include a convolving engine and other DSP functions in Roon and to release an API.

1 Like