poll: which Pi audio software do you use?

Most likely this is the problem. The only Digi that is working is on one of the older RPi 4 boards. I do not have any more of those but I can try to make it work is to swap the RPi 3 board tha tI use with pi2AES with newer RPi 4.

 

I have been a moOde user since like version 2 or 3 back in 2016. Back then there were only three decent distros: Rune, Volumio, and mOode. Maybe there was piCorePlayer, but I think at the time it was too confusing. Rune was built in Arch and it was buggy on the Pi and unresponsive at times. Volumio and moOde worked okay, but moOde sounded better. I hardly looked back.

My friend tells me he is a hardcore Volumio user. I realized it as been quite a while and many software revisions since I wrote it off WAY back ago. I loaded it up today, and I will give it some good marks, although I have a few other concerns:

Good (vs. moOde):

• Really easy setup with no reboots. It was easy to set my output, set my library, and I was playing music very quickly.
• It will play through a folder. If you load one song in the playlist, it will play through the folder by default.
• Audio switches easy from loading a song to finding a streaming radio station. No weird delays.
• Very few crazy tweak settings.
• The SQ is actually really quite good.

There is really only two things I don't like and that is because they are behind their $6.66/mo paywall:

• Search
• Connection to streaming services like Tidal or Qobuz or Highresaudio.com.

Now, there are other features with premium I don't care about. Like being able to use the digital or analog inputs, the muliroom sync, Bluetooth playback, CD playback and ripping....and really to put stuff like seach and Bluetooth audio behind a paywall is nuts. I just don't understand how stuff like piCorePlayer can offer stuff like Qobuz for no charge, when I have to get UPNP to work with other stuff. Thankfully UPNP is included with Volumio. I guess moOde does not have Qobuz, but they at least have search and BT audio as well as multiroom options (although they do it weird and needing a Pi as a server).

Basically I do realized I am acting like "old man yelling at cloud" as it seems I do like the features and SQ of Volumio after all, but to get everything, it is another monthly service, even what I have currently for free does not have the Qobuz built in.

I may need to create a chart with all the stuff each distro has to offer. But I would just say on a SQ and ease of use, Volumio gets a "nod" from me. Here is how I would ranch each one from SQ perspective as of today:

Volumio - 4.9
piCore - 4.8
moOde - 4.5

 

Not a big deal to setup and use Qobuz with MoOde. Per the forum:
Qobuz Setup (moodeaudio.org)

 

Hmm…I know there was something similar for Spotify, but the service kept crashing. I also wonder if this works with Volumino as a workaround.

 

The funny thing about the audio sound quality debate is they all basically use the same underlying open source software to reproduce music. Alsa, mpd, upmpdcli, shairport-play, etc. It used to be in the early days you could use a kernel with preempt patched in and improve latency quite a bit but the newer raspberry pi os versions have preempt already enabled.

Use the software you like the best IMO, and move your nervosa further up the food chain.

 

This might explain some things, but not all the things.

And I’ve done the other stuff. I’m just kind of bored and playing around with different distros. I think the Rune, Volumio, and moOde people all used to work together in this they split off separately. There are some huge similarities to the layout and GUI of Volumio and moOde as well.

 

Iirc moode, rune and volumio used the same software base to start from. I don’t follow the others and it’s been years since I did anything with moode but the look and feel tends to be influenced by bigger projects like Roon which itself borrows heavily from Apple design language. That’s mostly just front end and backend database stuff though, the code that handles the actual music is generally the same code used by every Linux distro.

I’m not saying don’t try new things just that the audio is likely going to sound very, very similar so you can make your decision on other things instead. If you want to scratch a nervosa itch you can try assigning processors to mpd in the boot config files (which would theoretically improve latency) or underclocking the processor (theoretically lower electrical noise, though it’ll slow down the backend db stuff and if you don’t do the affinity thing first could increase latency).

 

If you are bored, get Gentooplayer and within that Diretta. I promise you, that you aint getting bored again.

Enjoy the music!

 

Do you mean assign a single core to the MPD?

I need to look more into underclocking with the boot config files. Some don't like the sound of the Pi5, and some prefer the PM4 or even the Pi3B or Pi3B+.

That is on my list. Since there is a purchase involved that gets assigned to the hardware, I am waiting on my Holo Red, which probably will not be here until mid-August I am guessing. That install also has some severe trickiness to it that I am not looking forward to.

 

It’s a quad core processor so assign two cores just in case though unless you’re doing heavy upsampling the processor is usually like 10% load at most.

Underclocking is easy to try out, I did 800 mhz on the pi4 as an experiment and it was fine. Does it make a difference, idk. I have a pi5 but haven’t tried it in the music setup yet. I didn’t notice any big difference between pi3, 3+ or 4 as far as sound quality but the pi5 has a new i/o chip so who knows.

 

Thanks!

I confirmed this trick works for Volumio as well without having to pay a monthly subscription fee to Volumio. However, you have to play from your phone as the Qobuz desktop app will not find any external devices.

 

I haven't used Volumio, but for MoOde/Qobuz I use the mconnect app on my iphone, or bubbleupnp on android devices to play remotely.

 

Qobuz Connect can't come soon enough, they showed a demo recently. Only a matter of months now.

 

DietPi with custom config

 

The JPlay app on iOS is excellent for UPnP. A subscription is required but it is a very reasonable $50 / year.

 

There is Pure Asio Player, too.

https://sites.google.com/site/pureasioplayer/Home