Volumio Streamer Configuration Tips

Discussion in 'Computer Audiophile: Software, Configs, Tools' started by Woland, May 19, 2021.

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Help prioritise the tip writeups.. which would you value most?

  1. Securing Volumio

    11.5%
  2. Binaural (headphone) add-in

    13.1%
  3. DSP add-in

    21.3%
  4. Room Correction / REW add-in

    16.4%
  5. Optimizing pi hardware for audio

    52.5%
  6. Comparison of pi vs PC

    21.3%
  7. Amplifier auto power-on, power-off

    3.3%
  8. LastFM integration

    3.3%
  9. Spotify

    14.8%
  10. Streaming from PC/Mac to Volumio

    41.0%
  11. Streaming from Android to volumio

    16.4%
  12. Streaming Tidal / Qobuz

    36.1%
  13. API

    6.6%
Multiple votes are allowed.
  1. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    The usual way of sharing files from a Linux system to Windows PCs is software called Samba.

    But, I'm guessing that Volumino is highly cut down and optimised for the streaming task. You might be able to install samba, and it might/should work, but you may not want to.
     
  2. Qstik

    Qstik Acquaintance

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    From your reference to a "PENDRIVE", I assume you mean a USB-connected flash drive. In that case, simply plugging in the flash drive into one of the RPi USB ports should be recognized automatically by Volumio/RPi as a storage device which will be scanned automatically. Any music format files found should then be indexed by Volumio and shown in your Music Library under "USB".
     
  3. M3NTAL

    M3NTAL Friend

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    I think he wants the pendrive on the network as a nas mount for all systems. Which you would then probably make the Pi as the host device. I'm still confused because I don't understand the reason for the hoop-la. If we understood the reason, we might come up with a solution.
     
  4. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    Getting the terminology right is good, although not something a beginner can simply do.

    An NAS, to me, is a box of disks, which provides files on those disks to other devices on the network. It is a computer with file-serving capability, but it doesn't do anything else. I think this is the general usage.

    A file server is a computer that... does the same thing. Confused? (You will be) but it is more PC-shaped, and, whilst it might be a dedicated machine, is more likely to be a general-use system.

    Servers provide files/storage to clients --- but every device on the network (even including a printer!) is a host.

    Yes, it is confusing (but one gets used to it). Hope I didn't make too many mistakes there: it's been nearly twenty years since it was the day job.
     
  5. coin777

    coin777 Acquaintance

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    Hi My reasoning is. To have an external drive that is visible to every device on the network.
    And i wanted that to be run on my rpi with volumio.
    But now i know that is not possible.
    I will buy another rpi that will have this function.
    Sorry for the misunderstanding. Im new to rpi-s
     
  6. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    It is probably not impossible, but it may be unwise.

    Totally offtopic. Just want to try to point coin777 in the right direction...

    You pi is just a computer, and it is going to be running some form of Linux. Whether you build your file server on a pi or a big, multi-disk system, the process is going to be the same. I recommend that you spend some time doing some homework.

    You can spend some time with Uncle Google, perhaps looking for stuff like linux file server, or even something raspberry-pi specific. You'll have to install the necessary software and configure it. As I mentioned before, Samba is intended to look like a Windows server to Windows PCs, but there are other choices.

    I cannot deny this: it is not as easy as going into a Windows menu item and clicking on "Share a Drive" (or whatever they call it now).

    Cheers!
     
  7. Woland

    Woland Friend

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    It's quite ironic that people get intimated / frustrated with pi's and linux because they seem complicated.

    Pi's are usually set up quite simply, and mostly get complicated when people try to do more. And they can do so much more because pi's and linux have so much flexibility. A locked down appliance doesn't have the same flexibility and so never get called complicated. If you used your toaster to heat your house, you'd get frustrated too..

    I've lost a lot of affection for Volumio because their updates have been unreliable. My preference is now RopieeeXL for a simple, clean configuration and automatic updating.
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2021
  8. coin777

    coin777 Acquaintance

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    I found a useful thing and maybe somebody will like it.
    If You add these settings to Your /boot/config.txt file it disables all the LED on the rpi.
    Which will maybe give a better sound, and have less power consumption and light polution.

    But i think this Works only on rpi 3b+ and I can check only this version.

    Pi3B+
    Code:
    # Disable the PWR and Activity LED
    dtparam=pwr_led_trigger=none
    dtparam=pwr_led_activelow=off
    dtparam=act_led_trigger=none
    dtparam=act_led_activelow=off
    
    # Disable Ethernet LEDs
    dtparam=eth_led0=14
    dtparam=eth_led1=14
    
    This propably works on Rpi 4

    Pi4
    Code:
    # Disable Ethernet LEDs
    dtparam=eth_led0=14
    dtparam=eth_led1=14
    
    # Disable the PWR LED
    dtparam=pwr_led_trigger=none
    dtparam=pwr_led_activelow=off
    
    # Disable the Activity LED
    dtparam=act_led_trigger=none
    
     
    Last edited: Aug 20, 2021
  9. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    Absolutely. Recently saw a response to a description of how something could be done in Linux: "Linux will never beat Windows while it has these complexities." My answer to that, would be you can do this stuff in Linux. Windows? Don't even try. So which is really the complex one?

    This is not an invitation to Desktop wars! Bottom line is that they are won by marketing and business tactics and that is unlikely to change. We know that.
     
  10. Thad E Ginathom

    Thad E Ginathom Friend

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    Is it possible that turning off some lights is going to affect the sound quality? Really? The answer is yes!

    It is not because of the lamps themselves, or anything like that, it is because it is better, when using a very small, low-power, system for audio related tasks, it is better if it is doing less of everything else. Why? Interrupts: the fewer the better.

    Here's a good article which I came across recently which clearly explains the technical difficulties of playing music, a real-time task, on a time-sharing operating system:

    Audio Latency demystified, part 1/4
     
  11. Garns

    Garns Friend

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    This is a useful volumio plugin:
    Screen Shot 2021-09-02 at 15.37.25.png
    Allows you to set CPU affinity for mpd. Giving it three of the four RPi cores and priority 80 is good (moar plankton).
     
  12. Woland

    Woland Friend

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    Oh wow, good find. That was a good chunk of the advantage of the AudioLinux over Volumio.
     
  13. Qstik

    Qstik Acquaintance

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    Confirmed - nice improvement on my system. More fluidity / liquidity is the impression I get. I also used 3 cores and priority 80 with my RPi4b 4GB.
     
  14. Biodegraded

    Biodegraded Friend

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    Installation on a Pi3B underclocked with CRAAP settings and 88.2 kHz resampling (SoX in Volumio) is working fine - maybe a touch more resolution of low-level info or maybe expectation bias.

    Some discussion and trial-and-error of settings here. I've gone with the ones used by @Garns and @Qstik above.

    Dummy also installed it on his Pi Zero W system and wondered why it wouldn't mount before confirming that the CPU on that thing is single-core...
     
  15. Garns

    Garns Friend

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    Anyone else find that the MPD buffer size setting makes a huge difference?

    I tried setting it to the maximum 128MB (by editing the mpd.conf by hand) and it sounded like a thick sock over the audio output, like I thought something was wrong with my amp. In the other direction, 4MB gives me a really unfocussed and splashy treble (I am playing 176kHz files). 12MB brings everything into focus.

    It seems totally mad that this should have such a large impact, much bigger than fiddling with clocks or setting CPU affinity.
     
  16. RestoredSparda

    RestoredSparda Friend

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    Interesting. I'll give it a shot as well and report back. I did notice a nice improvement in plankton from the cpu affinity tweak mentioned a few posts above.
     
  17. RestoredSparda

    RestoredSparda Friend

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    Ok I fnally gave this a shot. Apparently I've been listening with 4mb set since I've had my PI2AES for the last year or more. I didn't expect a difference but my goodness, set to 12mb is a major improvement. Greater sense of space on recordings, blacker background, more plankton. All things I love.

    I've been listening to the same Porcupine Tree album every day this week so I have a good understanding of how my system sounds right now. Undeniably this has been a nice improvement. Thanks for the tip!
     
  18. ctrlm

    ctrlm New

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    Hi, thanks to @Woland for the great tips and to yourself for this workaround for for disabling USB in later revisions but I can't get it to work, after going through this particular step to my 3B+ I get this:

    5 upgraded, 6 newly installed, 0 to remove and 474 not upgraded.
    Need to get 2692 kB of archives.
    After this operation, 17.5 MB of additional disk space will be used.
    Do you want to continue? [Y/n]


    If I then confirm with Y I get this:
    Abort.
    volumio@digione:~$


    Any ideas?
     
  19. ctrlm

    ctrlm New

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    ....and if I keep going I get this:

    Reading package lists... Done
    volumio@digione:~$ sudo apt-get install libusb-1.0
    Reading package lists... Done
    Building dependency tree
    Reading state information... Done
    Note, selecting 'libusb-1.0-0-dbg' for regex 'libusb-1.0'
    Note, selecting 'libusb-1.0-0-dev' for regex 'libusb-1.0'
    Note, selecting 'libusb-1.0-doc' for regex 'libusb-1.0'
    Note, selecting 'libusb-1.0-0' for regex 'libusb-1.0'
    libusb-1.0-0 is already the newest version.
    libusb-1.0-0-dbg is already the newest version.
    libusb-1.0-0-dev is already the newest version.
    libusb-1.0-doc is already the newest version.
    0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 91 not upgraded.
    volumio@digione:~$ git clone git://github.com/mvp/uhubctl
    fatal: destination path 'uhubctl' already exists and is not an empty directory.
    volumio@digione:~$ cd uhubctl
    volumio@digione:~/uhubctl$ make
    -bash: make: command not found
    volumio@digione:~/uhubctl$ sudo make install
     
  20. Pancakes

    Pancakes Friend

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    This looks like the mess I was dealing with. Reverted to an older version of Volumio and everything started working properly. Look back through the pages of this thread for a download @Woland posted.
     

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