RoPieee & Archimago's CRAAP™ Settings

Audio Gear Talk RoPieee
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New RoPiee and Roon user … at least I hope to be next weekend when the Pi 3 B+ and touchscreen I just ordered arrive and I get Roon and the RoPieee setup. I purchased the Eleduino Bamboo stand for the touchscreen which does not enclose the Pi which I’m hoping will help it run cooler than if it was in a case. In addition to the touchscreen I will have a wired Ethernet connection and a Dragonfly Black connected via USB. I also purchased a micro usb splitter so the Pi and the touchscreen will will be fed independently from the power brick.

While researching all this over the weekend I read a bunch of stuff which lead me to RoPireee and also lead me to an article by Archimago were he publised some settings to reduce the power used by a Pi that he was using for streaming only. I suspect most of you have already heard of this but just in case someone is unfamiliar with his settings he called them his Convoluted Rationalizations And Audiophile Perceptions (CRAAP)™ and this is what he said he added to the config.txt file of his piCorePlayer:

arm_freq=800
sdram_freq=400
core_freq=400
gpu_freq=300
over_voltage=-4 ** later changed to -2 for stability
over_voltage_sdram=-4 ** later changed to -2 for stability
gpu_mem=16

Are these settings compatible with RoPieee? Does the screen activity RoPieee adds require all the processing power of the CPU and GPU or more than 16 MB of memory?

Is anyone using these or similar settings with their RoPieee driving the 7 inch touchscreen?

This will be my first Pi so I’m completely in the dark. Am I worrying about something that is a non-issue?

Hopefully I have given Archimago the appropriate credit and it is OK to post his settings.

Thanks … Tim

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My proverbial 2 cents Canadian: I think you may be overthinking it. If you use RoPieee, just install and generally forget.

If you want to tweak, likely completely unnecessary, use DietPi or roll your own.

Regarding the case, that is the one that has run coolest for me (been tracking temperature and memory using RRDTool of my 9 devices).

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I think the clue is in the title and his article:

Don’t worry about the science, my friends… It just sounds much better now that I have tweaked the parameters. Bass is deeper. Treble even more trebly. Soundstage goes back a mile with 360° envelopment. Vocalists sound like they have become incarnate.

Archimago’s Musings is all about the science! :stuck_out_tongue:

The Raspberry Pi 3 playing to the USB DAC is indeed “clean”; as in just as noise-free and “bit-perfect” as other computer-based servers sending to a good asynchronous DAC (no surprise and further discussed here last summer).

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Thanks

Pretty sure I am OVERTHINKING this but that is all I can do until everything gets here. Good to hear from someone else using the Bamboo case.

Tim

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Thanks

Just to be clear all I was trying to take from his article was that his settings might make the system run cooler.

While I don’t even have my system running yet I have read enough to know things can quickly get in the weeds once you start hunting for “better” or “the best” sound.

I bought a Pi … could have purchased a commercial Roon Ready product
I bought a $10 wall wart … others spend hundreds of dollars on a linear power supply
I bought a $10 3.5 mm to RCA cable … hard to justify paying more for the cable than the system
I bought the touchscreen because I wanted to … adds nothing to the sound
I bought the Dragonfly Black to connect via USB … no Jitterbug to put in front of it
I bought the Dragonfly Black … the Red sounds better at twice the price
I bought a Dragonfly … good performance but much better DACs are available

I had friends who worked at a high end music store in town in the 70’s so I’m familiar with the notion of high end audio although I realize it’s much higher today than it was then. I bought my first computer in the 70’s ( Apple II serial number around 1200 ) and have worked in the IT world ever since. I see setting up the Pi as an endpoint an interesting and fun project and hope it will show me what Roon and streaming can do in my environment. I may buy another Pi with a better DAC and / or a better commercial product once I get a chance to experience Roon and streaming.

I’m really hoping that streaming at around $20 per month will let me listen to an amazing amount of music affordably at a quality that is acceptable to me.

Tim

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@anon97951896

You might be as old as I am…

My experience with Pi and streaming Roon is extremely positive. My one piece of advice - get a dongle for WiFi, the buiit-in is poor/unreliable.

I use the IQaudio HATs and they (and the support) are great. Pity about the postage and the PITA Royal Mail sig requirements, but other than that…

Cheers

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Thanks

Some days I feel as old as dirt, hopefully you are only as old as concrete :slight_smile:

Thanks also for the warning about WiFi, at the moment I plan on using the Ethernet connection. I looked at the IQaudio site. Looks nice but probably not a good choice for my side of the pond. I went with the Dragonfly Black assuming it offered reasonable performance and would let me try out MQA streaming and see how I feel about it. I knew about its 96 kHz restriction but I don’t see that as a problem for now.

I did purchase a couple of albums from HDTracks last night including a couple of 192 kHz ones and a DSD one. I’ve listened to a few tracks using PLEX with mixed results, it played the DSD stuff fine but crashed with a transcoding error on the 192 kHz stuff. Hopefully Roon won’t have any issues sending the Pi / Dragonfly what it wants / needs.

Tim

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I’m in California, so about as far from IQ as one can get. Their stuff is good and the service outstanding.

I found plex to be troublesome on underpowered e.g. NAS boxes. Now running it on a Nvidia Shield better, though still haven’t managed to sort out all the ripped shows / movies. They look like crap on a 4K HDR. However, I am a lifetime member so when I get more time…

I’m finding that ProStudioMasters is my go to place for flac. Plus SecondSpin for CDs to rip. The former iis superb, but pricey, the latter cheap with shitty service - especially shipping but I plan on throwing away the jewel cases anyway.

I’ll be interested in your dragonfly experience - looks a lot odder than a HAT, but then I’m driving speakers.

Cheers

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I’m in Tennessee so I am closer to them than you are.

Ran my PLEX server on a Shield for a time but now have an i7 NUC with 16 GB of RAM and an M.2 SSD. Works pretty well for video including 4K as long as it does not have to transcode the 4K. Several people have said running Roon and PLEX on the same server should be OK. I hope to install Roon this weekend and start streaming to my Pi / Dragonfly.

My music experience has been SiriusXM or Pandora for a while. I’m retiring next month and I’m hoping to use Roon / Tidal to explore a whole lot of music for not that much money. I have about 100 CDs and I really don’t want to buy a few thousand more when I can listen to just about anything for $10-$20 per month.

I’m hoping the Pi & Dragonfly will let me figure out how things work and what level of sound quality is acceptable for me. If things work out well I’ll end up with one endpoint in my office, one in my bedroom and one in my living room. The Dragonfly could end up in my office with a better DAC in my bedroom and possibly an even better one in my living room. I have some inexpensive Andrew Jones designed Pioneer speakers that I hope to use in my office, some 15 plus year old Mirage speakers that I hope to use in my bedroom and I hope to get a new system for my living room once I have a better idea how I want to listen.

I have no idea what audio quality I’ll be able to appreciate. I had ripped my tiny CD collection to MP3 some time ago but now have ripped them again to FLAC. Once the Pi is setup I hope to see if I can hear the difference with my current equipment. Then on to 96 kHz, 192 kHz, DSD and MQA understanding full well that I’ll need more than the Dragonfly and my current Denon receiver and Mirage speakers to make the most of the experience.

Tim

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We are about to move (mid-June) to our home in NC.

I may spring for Tidal when we get set up in NC, but I’m a Yorkshireman by birth and that frugality never goes away!

I love AJ’s speakers, we have a bunch of Elacs around for the HT and with a wireless Roonbridge in the kitchen. 5s in the kitchen are nice when driven hard.

I stick to flac, not a believer in either DS or especially MQA. Read the Stereophile (??) pointer to an interesting review. I have been extremely impressed by some of the high-quality flac files that I’ve purchased.

When we move I will have a home theater, so need an audio system :slight_smile:

Looking at the Schiit audio amps and Tektron Double Impacts for a large living room, so looking to put all that together and do a listening test in July once we are settled.

Cheers

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I am equally as old as dirt , must be a geriatric hobby :stuck_out_tongue:

I bought my Pi 2 days ago, followed the idiots guide on the top of this forum. It started first time and sound good

Its decoding to 96 , the limit on my DAC , and my AudioQuest Dragonfly RED sound lovely

For the cost JUST DO IT !!

Mike

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Glad you had no trouble getting your Pi up and running. I got everything I ordered except the stand for the touchscreen today and am hoping to get everything connected without needing to get a magnifying glass.

Tim

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Graham,

Hope your move goes smoothly. Do you happen to be moving to the Asheville area? I’ve been there a few times, the Biltmore property is pretty spectacular.

I’m considering some Elac speakers to replace the Mirage speakers in my living room. Mix of music and movies. I’ve read a bit about MQA and my head hurts. My plan is to listen to some and if I like the sound fine, if I don’t I’ll revert my Tidal subscription back to a regular subscription and listen to their CD quality stuff.

I got enough of my Pi stuff in today to set it up. Ran into a fairly typical guy thing … I got the cart before the horse. I connected everything and powered it on and thankfully everything seemed to work. Of course I got an error saying a Roon server could not be found which is not a surprise since I was planning to install Roon this weekend. I guess I’ll try to install it tomorrow night.

Right now the display is showing the clock. I accessed the web interface and updated the name and set the time zone.

I was hoping there would be an option in the web interface to shutdown the system but I did not see one. Any idea how to shutdown? I don’t want to just power it off.

Tim

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“Shutdown” in the Advanced tab should do what you need, though pulling the power is usually fine since it runs in ram.

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Nathan,

Older eyes will fail you from time to time especially around midnight … this time they completely ignored everything in the Blue Buttons at the bottom of the Advanced tab :slight_smile:

Thanks … Tim

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Hi Tim,

Our place is just S of Chapel Hill.

The “normal” way to shut down a Pi is to pull the plug! You can also do the standard ‘shutdown’ command via ssh or in the GUI there is often an option. Which distribution are you using? I have used DietPi, but may also look at Ropee.

Cheers

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Found the Shutdown button on the web interface after I was told it was there … don’t know how I missed it the first time.

Have started my Roon trial and am streaming from my Roon server to my Pi running RoPieee with the touchscreen display. Did not go exactly as planned. I first installed the headless server on my NUC but then found out my Dell laptop can’t run the control software so I reinstalled everything on the NUC. Got the Pi and Dragonfly Black configured and have listened to a several tracks. Installed Roon Remote on my Android tablet but when it came up it saw the server without any music. Put it on the charger and rebooted the NUC and am now updating the Intel drivers for the NUC. Got auto login to work and configured the Roon server to start automatically.

Will work on the control issues tomorrow night and then delve into the mysteries of organizing my music.

Tim

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Hang in there. The learning curve is a bit steep!

Cheers

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I’ve been exploring a lot of SBC endpoint configurations over the last 18 months, so I thought I’d chime in with a few opinions:

Roopieee is definitely the easiest way to go, especially with the touchscreen. DietPi is better for tinkering, tweaking, and overthinking in general. The great thing is that most distros are free, so you can experiment at will.

DietPi’s audio settings menu has a “PSU noise reduction” setting that underclocks the cpu and turns off HDMI. This noticeably cleans up the sound from the Pi’s garbage 3.5mm audio jack. I usually enable it for good measure, but I’m also not using a touchscreen.

Generally, an underclocked Pi will run Roon Bridge just fine off any decent 1A charger (I normally use an iPad charger and a good MicroUSB cable), but with the touchscreen, you’ll definitely want to stick with an official Pi 2.5A wall wart.

The onboard Ethernet should be fine for your 24/96 DF Black. If you have strong, stable WiFi (MIMO, beam forming, etc.) that should also work just fine. Sometimes the WiFi actually works better for me. I suspect that most of the complaints you hear about Ethernet and USB DACs on the Pi are from people trying to stream DSD to their fancy hi-res DACs, but I have run into problems running three DACs (two simultaneously) off of one Pi3b+ connected via Ethernet. :joy: Switching to WiFi cleared up the problem. That said, if you need a cheap, high bandwidth endpoint for one USB DAC, a plain Sparky will do the trick for $35 plus shipping and accessories.

I don’t claim to understand it all exactly, but the lovely thing about RAAT, an underclocked Pi, and Roon-ready DAC is that, together, they eliminate most of the need for reclockers, expensive power supplies, USB filters etc. The Dragonfly even eliminates the need for a fancy USB cable!

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Graham,

I think I can handle steep … just not sure I’m ready to climb Everest :slight_smile:

Made some progress tonight. Read a lot of documentation and watched some YouTube but still some gaps to fill in.

Tim