Symphonic MPD

This is about this:

https://www.symphonic-mpd.com/forum/

It's a Raspberry Pi OS for audio, so like Volumio, Moode, etc. It claims to work with Roon Bridge, Airplay, DNLA, etc, but I didn't try those. It certainly works for playing from a NAS. It's developed by someone in Japan called Papiarus and seems to involve lots of kernel hacking specifically to improve audio quality (real-time kernel and all sorts of stuff to do with interrupts which I hope never to have to think about). You'll note that the whole project is resolutely Japanese, so you may need your Google Translate.

I went in to this pretty skeptical. The whole project was giving off mad audiophile red flag vibes, and after all, how much difference can there be between different barebones Linux distributions running MPD? Turns out, a fair bit. No idea what they are doing, but it's legit: it sounds way more focused than Volumio, not in a Scotch mist, can I hear this or not, oobly woobly kind of way but in an obvious, I could blind test this with my eyes shut kind of way.

My other preconception was that this would be a nightmare to set up. It's actually not that bad. The hardest part is that you have to email to request an account before you can download the distribution. There's a thread about it at diyaudio and I contacted a member there called kubotayo who set up an account for me almost immediately. There is also some slight complexity to do with different RPi hardware versions and if anyone else wants to try this then DM me and I can explain what I did (don't want to commit to describing it publicly without third party confirmation that it does work). Past that, it's no harder to configure than Volumio or Moode. If you are feeling adventurous I recommend giving it a shot.

 

Is the OS itself in Japanese? Or is there an English option?

 

No, the OS itself is in English (the Web UI is built on a pre-existing package called "ympd")

 

Also, does this support hats like Pi2AES?

 

Yep, should have mentioned that, I'm using this with a PI2AES.

 

I kinda gave up on it, but maybe it was the wrong Raspberry Pi. I was using the 3B+

 

Tried to take a look.. but I need wifi connectivity, and that's not available.. looking forward to other's impressions though!

 

First off, kudos for finding this! I've been sending PMs and reading a little, and changing a little at the OS-layer of my RPi network music playback. However, nothing at the pure OS or software layer (changing from Volumio to moOde, or tweaking the kernel optimization) has produced what I heard (audible improvement) through Symphonic MPD. I think sharing some of your thoughts, hurdles, triumphs might be helpful!

I'm still a little stuck at the technical level - the software seems to require either an older version of the Pi4 board (I have had success with versions 1.1 and 1.2 of the board, using both Allo DigiOne Signature and Pi2AES, yet cannot get version 1.4 boards to run, or compute modules to initialize). I have found some links that talk about it working best with specific firmware versions, and I was able to upgrade my 1.1 board to a point where it no longer would boot then downgrade back to restore functionality. Beyond that, it is bumping up against my limited understanding of Raspberry Pi and Linux.

TL;DR - sounds great and works well with Raspberry Pi 4 (versions 1.1 and 1.2 boards) fed through both Allo and Pi2AES. Still not had success with compute modules (versions 3 and 4) or the newest board revision (1.4).

 

Cool! It is a clear improvement on most other things, isn't it?

I did get it working on a v1.4 Pi4 board. I should have written this down at the time, but I *think* I downloaded this file mentioned in the thread linked below and copied everything into the root of my boot SD card.

However I found that this still didn't work so I then deleted dt-blob.bin entirely from the card and that seemed to do the job. (From what I can tell, that file's only important if you're using a hat without its own clocks.)

Thread where that download is discussed:

https://www.symphonic-mpd.com/forum/topic/97/rpi4版-v1-0系のサポートはこちら/414

Compute modules - no idea there I'm afraid!

 

Def want to try this out. A couple questions tho for those in the know:

• how do I join the forum to dl the image? (Only see login option)n
• Does symphonic support UPnP, specifically the iOS app, mconnect Lite?
• Does it support the latest rpi4?

 

To join I emailed kubotayo from diyaudio forum. I'll DM you his email address.

Yes, it supports upnp, you need to install it from a terminal but it seems very straightforward.

Works okay with a RPi 1.4 if you leave the firmware alone and follow the instructions in my last post above!