Hello forum.
Please excuse any missing info for troubleshooting or misunderstandings - I am complete newbie on ARM/Linux etc. but love Roon and listen to good music with great user interface and less cables etc around.
Components used:
Roon Server and bridge on a Intel NUC running Ubuntu 16.04 LTS
USB to AES converter Yellowtec PUC2 Lite to convert USB Digital audio to my Genelec active speakers
Genelec’s monitors - build in DAC etc. (8351’s)
What used to work:
Roon Server and Bridge on NUC directly attached to Yellowtec - only caveat is that the Linux support of the Yellowtec is poor and Ubuntu 16.04 see it as only being cable of 16bit/48Khz (it does more formats than that - but Linux doesnt recognise this). However - despite upsampling material to 48Khz it worked fine.
What doesn’t work:
Roon server -> Nanopi NEO running UbuntuCore + Roon Bridge -> Yellowtec.
The whole chain gets detected correctly from Roon Server - same detection of Bit-Perfect Format Support of the Yellowtec etc. (16bit/48Khz)…
Observation of problem: Roon begins to stream a track to Nanopi NEO but within 1-2 seconds it skips directly to the next track and keeps skipping until reaching end of album.
Any help would be appreciated a lot - really had my hopes set on the little cheap Nano NEO as Roon endpoint.
Thanks RBM!
I will try that tomorrow - I did already download the DietPi but had a bit trouble finding the instruction to get it flying on my NEO… probably to tired…
I’ll post when I have tried DietPi.
/Kenneth
download it, unzip it and write the image to your SD card. I use win32diskimager to do this. Then boot the Dietpi image, give it a few minutes and use something like putty to ssh to your NEO and follow the instructions from there.
Hello all.
Got the NanoPI NEO up and running with DietPI - impressive piece of work done on that distro! Selected the Roon stuff and it gets detected fine by Roon Server. But strange new problem occurs now, when I select something to play I get a message on Roon: “Roon: An audio file is loading slowly. This may indicate a performance or hardware problem” and the playback halts. I get this message twice then the playback stops completely. Getting more and more frustrated with my Yellowtec USB->AES converter!! Wonder if Mutec products will experience the same struggle with Linux audio etc…
what hardware revision is the puc2 lite?. Hardware revision 1.x has known problems with certain usb controllers and usb hubs on motherboards. This was solved in hardware revision 2.x. You could try an external usb hub (not all hubs are created equal) or usb repeater and see if it will fix the problem.
Hello all.
Sorry for delay, been so busy.
To “Sjef_van_de_Ven” - the HW. Rev. is 2.1 It seems very unstable in a lot of configurations, I totally gave up on it and jumped into the deep end with an investment in “Mutec MC-3+ Smart Clock USB” - a mail from their engineering was promising with general Linux support without strange drivers etc. Will try tomorrow when is comes by UPS… can’t wait. Will be interesting to put in on the little NanoPI running DietPI OS and RoonBridge.
Will report back the second sound is puring through
Hey 58LesPaul!
Just for good measures - the Mutec is not a DAC but “merely” a format converter (D-to-D interface) and very good reclocker. The DAC I use is inside these babies: http://www.genelec.com/8351 (all DAC-stuff and amplification is done purely inside the speakers themselves + Roon software = Sonos on über-steroids!!)
PS. Looking out the window constantly for the UPS car with the Mutec… come come to me…
Hopefully the reclocker will fix the “audio file is loading slowly” issues between the NanoPi and the Genelec speakers (those look amazing, I bet they sound great too )
If it fixes the problem, that would help a lot in figuring this out… it’s strange, the m9xx works perfectly with Roon attached to a PC, but not with the NanoPi…
The UPS truck was by… and I am in audio-nirvana…!!!
First couple of tries left me (still) puzzled. Using the NanoPI NEO + DietPI + Mutec MC-3+ Smart Clock was… not going to happen… Everything showed up correctly identified in Roon - all the bit-depth formats, everything - just perfect! Then I put “a needle in the vinyl” and waited… Roon displayed it was “playing” for about 4-5-6 seconds then the stream just halts, sometimes with the same error messages as before - sometimes no messages at all. But absolutely NO sound -very odd. The LED’s of the Mutec did light up (I guess) as they supposed to do - indicating tech info on the stream… but nothing in the speakers.
Jacked the Mutec directly into my little NUC computer (Intel i3 16Gb RAM running Roon Server) and I was sucked into audio bliss some hours… luckily I found my way back to earth… Well, gave it a shot with the more “stock” based UbuntuCore version of OS for the NanoPI , jacked in the other SD card in NanoPI booted and let Roon find the “new” UbuntoCore device with the Mutec attached. It just worked absolutely perfect ! I repeat: IT WORKS!!
Please notice, as my speakers has build-in DAC that does a max on bit-side of things at 192Khz/24bit I am not able to test the actual streaming “performance” of the little NanoPI with monster-DSD streams. I have to convert these to PCM in Roon (Thanks Roonlabs!).
Would have loved to have DietPI able to use the Mutec instead, seems more mature/sexy/feature-rich/cool than the UbuntoCore… well maybe someone figures this out…
Yay! That’s great news… glad you’ve got it all working now!
Can you point me in the direction of the “stock” based UbuntuCore for NanoPi? I’d like to give it a try to see if I can get things working, until @Dan_Knight releases future versions of DietPi that might address the issue…
EDIT: Don’t worry, I’ve got it… for a minute I thought you were using a different version of Ubuntu Core…
The DAC that is giving me problems is the Grace Design m9xx. It uses the AKM AK4490
The “Audio file is loading slowly” message appears no matter what type of file I stream. Most of my library is Redbook, but even MP3 files at ~250kbps (44.1kHz, 16bit) throws the same message.
The Oppo BDP105D uses an ESS Sabre ES9018 … this one not only gives the “loading slowly” message, it disappears as an audio source form within Roon…
Hello Dan.
First things first - THANK YOU! I am so impressed with you Linux guru’s that puts so much effort into fantastic creations that all of us can enjoy! I just keep coming impressed over the Linux community and what magic you all can do!
Unfortunately I am quite unhelpful as I am not able to get the model types of DAC’s inside my Genelec speakers I think Genelec dont want to give out that info to the public.
I’ll stay tuned and ready to test different builds of DietPI should you find that useful.
Best regards
/Ken
Might not be the cause, but worth checking. Is your Oppo BDP105D firmware updated to latest?
As I do not own one of these devices, would you be willing to help us try and debug the issue?
If you can, please download the DietPi Neo image (http://dietpi.com/downloads/images/DietPi_NanoPiNEO-armv7-(Jessie).7z) and setup for Roon Bridge.
Play audio through Roon (default 100ms buffer), then when the issue occurs, paste results of the following command, this should give us any info on kernel/hardware USB errors: dmesg | grep usb
And also please paste results of Roon Bridge logs: cat /var/log/RoonBridge_log.txt cat /var/log/RAATServer_log.txt
Of course! Here are the results for the Oppo BDP-105D (I ran its Update firmware command and confirmed it is running the latest version). In order to upload, I had to rename it as a csv file, but it is a text file)
It seems very unstable in a lot of configurations, I totally gave up on it and jumped into the deep end with an investment in “Mutec MC-3+ Smart Clock USB” - a mail from their engineering was promising with general Linux support without strange drivers etc. Will try tomorrow when is comes by UPS… can’t wait. Will be interesting to put in on the little NanoPI running DietPI OS and RoonBridge.
)
and waited… Roon displayed it was “playing” for about 4-5-6 seconds then the stream just halts, sometimes with the same error messages as before - sometimes no messages at all. But absolutely NO sound -very odd. The LED’s of the Mutec did light up (I guess) as they supposed to do - indicating tech info on the stream… but nothing in the speakers.
I think Genelec dont want to give out that info to the public.