Vitos wifi testers?

For those of you interested in using wifi with Vitos, I can provide some basic instructions for adding wifi to your Vitos install.

You will need some basic knowledge about installing Vitos wired, and use of ssh, and a text editor such as vim or nano.

The latency, and jitter is still higher with wifi, but the goal of this experiment is to see if Vitos sounds different than say ropiee or dietpi, when all are on a wireless connection.

For those technically inclined, while jitter and latency are higher with wifi, with buffering from the roon server in your home, vs streaming from say tidal or qobuz is a very large difference. What may be a large percentage in wifi/wired from files on your roon server local drive, may be a minute % difference from your Tidal or Qobuz source or CDN. Thus, it would be helpful if you had both local files (or are willing to put a few) on your local Roon server, and have either a Tidal or Qobuz subscription, or both.

Let me know. Thanks!

Ted I don’t need it (Ethernet connected) but good work, I am sure that others would be interested and I might try it just for fun.

Are you finding any loss of quality at all?

Thanks Michael,

Here’s the info for setting up wifi in arch (vitos). I initially thought I heard more revealing high end and bass definition when swapping out a DIetPi bridge, which previously replaced a Ropieee or Volumio bridge, but I have not done any proper A/B testing, and it is only a subjective unverified listen. I have not heard differences between the Wired and Wireless vitos rpi 4 bridges, but again, they are in different rooms now, and I do not plan to a/b them. To be honest, I never had issues with the audio sound quality from Ropieee or Dietpi, or even Volumio.

Here is how to add wireless:

login via wired to your installed vitos roon bridge. change or add a new user so you don’t have root/root as user/password. At the minimum, install the arch wifi package and dhcp packages:

pacman -Syu wpa_supplicant dhcpcd
pacman -S netctl

Copy the netctl examples dir to a new directory:

cp /etc/netctl/examples/wireless-wpa /etc/netctl/my_wireless_setup

Bring in an editor:

pacman -S nano

Edit the /etc/netctl/my_wireless_setup text file to include your wifi info:

Should be something like this:

root@Raspberry-Pi-4B netctl]# cat my_wireless_setup
Description=‘A simple WPA encrypted wireless connection’
Interface=wlan0
Connection=wireless

Security=wpa
IP=dhcp

ESSID=‘My_Super_Fast_Wifi’
// Prepend hexadecimal keys with "
// If your key starts with “, write it as '”""’
// See also: the section on special quoting rules in netctl.profile(5)
Key=‘T0pSeekret123’
// Uncomment this if your ssid is hidden
// Hidden=yes
// Set a priority for automatic profile selection
// Priority=10
[root@Raspberry-Pi-4B netctl]

Save the above file, and enable it:

systemctl enable netctl-auto@wlan0.service

Reboot and find the ip on your router’s attached devices list, if you need to connect to it again.

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Ted great thanks I am sure many will find this useful.
Enough people tell me that it they hear a difference for me to believe it, and I can hear a small difference on one device that has had Ropieee and VitOS on it.

I just use what I put together so I have one DietPi, one VitOS, one Ropieee and an Hifiberry OS solution and all work perfectly well and happy with them all.
DietPi no longer drives a DAC but I am using it for DNS and Roon extensions.

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Hi Ted, I’d also like to try VitOS with Wifi. I’m currently using DietPi, which I set up using the detailed instructions provided by Neil in the Roon FB group, so I have a bit of experience with ssh.

A few questions about your instructions:

  1. How do I set a new username and password?
  2. How do I “save the above file” that includes wifi network name and password?

Hi there the default passwords are root and root.
Have fun

Mike

First of all, if your current Roon Bridge is working, and you are new to linux, I would recommend keeping your existing running microsd card, and getting a new one to experiment with. This way, if anything goes wrong, you can revert to your working microsd card. Before powering off your Roon Bridge, I recommend ssh’ing into it, and running the poweroff command, then wait at least 30 seconds before removing the USB power plug, to ensure it will come up when powered on again.

For your questions, you don’t absolutely need a new user, since root / root will let you ssh, but I highly recommend you change the password from “root” To do this, you need to be ssh’d in, and run the command:

passwd

and follow the prompts, which will ask you to supply a new strong password twice.

For your second question, you will need to become familiar with an editor that works in linux. I recommend nano. To open a file with nano, after installing it (instructions are in original post), ssh in to the device, and type:

nano filename

which will open the filename specified in the nano editor. You can use your cursor keys, and backspace keys to make edits. When done editing, press CTRL - O to save your edits, then CTRL - X to exit the nano editor. There are several tutorials on the web, on both google searches, and on youtube, using the keywords “nano editor tutorial”

Hi @tedm, I followed your instructions. It worked: WiFi is working and Roon Core recognizes the endpoint.

Unfortunately after executing your instruction the VitOS Manager app on my iPhone cannot make a properly/working connection with the Raspberry (connected via WiFi). The app recognizes the Raspberry but gives the status: “Requires adapt network settings”. Pressing the Adapt button does not solve this message.

Do you know what is going wrong and can you help me out? Thanks in advance.

Hi Alfred, I recommend going back to wired, or DietPi or Roppiee (I have not heard any differences among the three, and have 8 different endpoints), if you are having any issues with the Vitos wired or wireless. The last time I looked at the Vitos package, which was several months ago, it was simply repackaged (and outdated) Arch linux distro with RT kernel.

I also did not implement the installation/deployment of the Roon Bridge from the phone app which Vitos uses, but used Roon’s own installer from the command line. I am not sure what the purpose of the phone app is, since Roon distributes the bridge for all supported platforms on their own site.

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Hi @tedm, Thanks for your reply.

VitOS is working perfect for me. Installing it is very simple as well as Roon Bridge and it sounds very good on my high end setup.

The VitOS phone app is necessary for installing Roon Bridge if you do not have any knowledge from Linux. After that Roon Bridge updating can be done with Roon Core.

Hi friends! How are you? My name is Rodrigo, I am new here

I use an RPI4 with VitOS (running Roon Bridge). I am quite satisfied with the sound quality. However, as a compulsive audiophile that I am. Powering the RPI with a cheap power supply and via Ethernet does not give me peace of mind.

So I am doing the updates

  1. Powering the RPI through a Power Bank (30,000mah - 3.0A)
  2. Switching from Ethernet to Wi-Fi (I use an Apple Extreme as a Router)

Have you noticed any improvement when using Wif over Etheret? If so…

I would appreciate if you could teach me how to configure the RPI to work over wifi. I read @tedm omment but didn’t understand anything :frowning: I don’t know anything about programming (I use a Mac) so I didn’t even know which app to use.

Please help ! :slight_smile:

Thanks for the tutorial. I’m having issues connecting to my wifi.

I get a warning after I try to enable “systemctl enable netctl-auto@wlan0.service”

Warning:

“Unit /usr/lib/systemd/system/netctl-auto@.service is added as a dependency to a non-existent unit sys-subsystem-net-devices-wlan0.device.”

Is this normal or does it point to an oversight on my part?

Thanks,