Entrypoints, the audio entrance to Roon, made the move to HiRes!

Tinkering
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I noticed this feature and thought it could be a step towards where I’d like to be, however I cannot make it work: when I play the entrypoint station (from my remote or through the Roon UI) with a CD in, Roon complains: “Unable to play this station…” and nothing happens.

The only way I can make the CD radio work is by first going to the settings/extensions/cd entrypoint settings, start it, and then play the radio. Then I usually have to hit play several times before the radio actually becomes available.

I’m using a basic USB CD-ROM reader connected to my pi running dietpi. I did a fresh reinstall of the whole entrypoint stack (docker/extension manager/gateway/cd entrypoint) at the beginning of the week.
What do you think I could be missing ?

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Can you send me the log files?

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Is this a no? Nearly every modern DAC/program has adaptive rate … is it possible in Icecast?

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There is no bit rate detection.

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I had a look through the information you provided.

The feature I described only works if you keep the original station name, i.e. CD Entrypoint (DietPi).

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Thanks a lot for your help: recreating the radio station in Roon with its default name made it work as expected!
I can now start playing a CD by just pressing a key on my remote, that’s great!
I can also eject it through the remote by triggering ‘/usr/bin/eject’
Any suggestion about how I could pause the CD playback ?

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It would be nice to have this feature.
I don’t know it is a Icecast or Liquidsoap limitation or something else.

My goal is to use Audio Entrypoints to stream Amazon Music to Roon .
So, do you think that would be possible to have indeed bitrate detection and pass through audio without changing this?

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You have to set a rate for liquidsoap to encode like all live encoders they don’t pass through rates they are all designed for fixed rates only, it’s a live stream not stopping and starting per track… It’s written for internet radio that have fixed rates no station rate changes. Liquid soap also last time I mucked about with it could bit handle 24bit so hires you might as well forget as it only handled 16 bit. One of the reasons the JBL2 radio station streams at 96/16 and not 96/24. There are other encoders on Windows that can do 24bit but none that are as flexible or can be used like this extension.

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Thanks !
As far as I know, liquidsoap could use ffmpeg and ffmpeg could pass through the stream without encoding it.
That was my thinking. But I think there is something I have missed.

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No it can’t pass through the stream it has to encode it and this has to be a fixed rate using ffmpeg or any encoder you can’t switch rates on a live stream as it’s a constant flow. I found ffmpeg as the encoder caused droputs due to buffer underuns in it’s code which is a known issue for live streams via alsa input.

You are correct in that ffmpeg can pass through files untouched if needed but this will be set for the first input and not change on the fly to my knowledge. Also you have to convert format so it’s never a pass through as such as flac needs to got to an oggflac container. Also from alsa input it’s lpcm not flac so again needs to be transcoded which relies on a set rate being set. The copy option is only if codecs are the same.

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Well timed discussion guys :slight_smile:

I want to share what I have been up to, hope this is not getting too technical.

After the recent update of the CD Entrypoint I decided to have a look again at 24 bit support for the Audio Entrypoint, mainly because I found out how to update to the latest Liquidsoap version.

Last weekend I spent too much time on investigating 24 bit support in Liquidsoap and although it can output 24 bit flac files it seems impossible to have a lossless pass through of a 24 bit input stream from ALSA. So I have given up on that option.

The day before Yesterday I found out that ffmpeg can directly stream to an Icecast server. I always thought about ffmpeg as an option within Liquidsoap and it never occurred to me that it could be a standalone option, although, looking back in this thread, @CrystalGipsy mentioned it a long time ago.

On first try of ffmpeg I also ran into the CPU overload issue when using an ALSA input, but I found out that using arecord and piping its output into ffmpeg works around this issue. This setup allowed me to capture a 192 kHz 24 bit input signal and stream it to Roon. I did this on a Raspberry Pi 3B+ and the combination of ffmpeg and arecord caused a single core load of 20%.

To verify that the whole process from capturing to playback is lossless I converted a dsf file to DoP (176 kHz 24 bit) and encoded the DoP to flac. This flac file I fed into the RPi using a HiFiBerry Digi+ I/O HAT and streamed it via Roon to my PS Audio DAC. The DAC recognized the input stream as being DoP and played the included DSD64 content :partying_face:

I also performed a test with an MQA file but that did not work, no mentioning of MQA in the Roon signal path and no MQA indication on the DAC. I’m wondering if Roon considered the use case of having MQA in a flac radio stream, as it was recognized as being MQA by doing a direct download from the Icecast stream and passing it to the MQA Identifier tool.

In conclusion, it is looking good in getting 24 bit supported in the Audio Entrypoint. There is still work left in implementing and testing all the functionality, but I get back to you when there is more to report.

As I probably cannot state all this without prove, below you find the Roon signal path and DAC screen for the DoP test. There is also a screenshot of the new Audio Entrypoint Settings screen. Format selection will remain manual, for reasons already explained by CrystalGipsy.

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Good to know Jan.
I am using ffmpeg also to send Amazon Music to Roon via Virtual Audio Cable > ffmpeg > Icecast > Roon Radio
I would like to use the Audio Entrypoints directly (now I am using only the Icecast server from Entrypoints Gateway) but unfortunately Amazon Music is not working on Linux and Roon Extensions could not be installed on Windows.
Right now I am trying to find a way to send audio stream over network from Amazon Music (Windows) to Audio Entrypoints (Linux).
From my testing, it seems that there is a chance to use Audio-over-LAN but this is Windows only software.

What I am thinking is if there is a way to directly use Roon RAAT protocol (maybe via API) to directly send audio to Roon Core. But I think that should be implemented directly by Roon team.

If I remember well, there was a request some years ago for directly input to Roon from the sound card.
That time the team said that there is a chance to think about that but nothing until now.

1 Like
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Probably not what you’re after, but if the Windows system has a digital output you could connect it to a RPi with a digital input HAT (like the test setup I described). Be aware that the Audio Entrypoint is meant for physical inputs and not for a software based input.

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Thanks !
It is a good idea to try this. I would try to find a way, because most of my servers are ESXi virtual machines.

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Thank you! I agree it would be a really helpful change. I’d be very happy to help with any testing.

Sorry about the slow response, a 3 week old baby means I have a little less time to play these days.

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I can’t think of a better reason for a slow response, enjoy family life!

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Great work Jan.

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Looking back through this thread, the first question asked was:

I’m glad that today I can announce the release of 24 bit support for the Audio Entrypoint! By updating to version 0.3.0 you get all the common sample frequencies and bit depths up to 192 kHz, 24 bit.

image


I have tested this on Raspberry Pi 2 and Raspberry Pi 3 using HiFiBerry DAC+ ADC and HiFiBerry Digi+ I/O HATs. Playing 192 kHz, 24 bit on a Raspberry Pi 2 did not cause any dropouts and did not max out the CPU. Using a digital input gives a lossless path between the input and the flac stream that is played in Roon, under the condition that the Format set in Settings matches the input signal.

Apart from the change in bit depth the Audio Entrypoint should work as it did before. Let me know if you encounter something unexpected.

Also let me know if the increased bit depth gives you sonic improvements when capturing vinyl, applying DSP or streaming lossless.

How to update

If the Extension Manager has auto update enabled then the changes will be pulled in the next time the update is performed. It is also possible to update manually via the Settings dialog of the manager, select the Audio Entrypoint from the Entrypoints category and perform the update action.

After the update you have to set the Format to the sample frequency and bit depth you want to use and activate streaming (like before).

2 Likes
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That is very good news! Unfortunately I have sold my vinyl collection and record players so I no longer need it for that - maybe something else… Thanks Jan!

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I might re-explore for my vinyl to see how it sounds with the higher bit depth. Is the delay still the same Jan when using ffmpeg?