Switch from volumio to rune audio ?

arginine

Hello,

I'am a satisfied user of Volumio. I connect on my raspberry pi a 20x4 LCD, a temperature probe and a IR sensor. Everything is working well, my music (ALAC, i.e apple lossless files) are stored on a NAS. I'am using a i2s DAC (ESS 9023) through an USB to i2s converter (from diyinhk).

I would like to make a try of your rune audio hifi distribution, and possibly switch, if the sound is better. But, before I would like to be sure of the following :

- Is there any one who did actually compare the sound quality of Volumio Vs RuneAudio ?
- Can i read my music files (stored on a NAS) via NFS share ?
- Does rune audio handle output ALAC files ?
- Does the album covers are handled correctly ? (using Mpod or MPAD) ?
- Does my usb-i2s and DAC will be recognized by Rune Audio ?
- For the LCD, temperature probe, IR sensor …. is there "library" for RiscOs for driving all of that ? (I mean can I use apt-get update, install act ect)
- Can I installed python ?

Sorry for all of this questions

Thanks

F

emma

I'm currently running both. I can't get my lcd working with archlinux so one box is on volumio, one with Rune.

The Rune UI is more polished and going to become even more so with beta 3. I have a hifiberry on the Rune and a cheapo USB board, soon to be a hifiberry, on the volumio box so can't comment on sound as the hifiberry is WAY better than the usb board.

Let me answer the others where I can

Can i read my music files (stored on a NAS) via NFS share ?

Yes

- Does rune audio handle output ALAC files ?

No idea.

- Does the album covers are handled correctly ? (using Mpod or MPAD) ?

Yes, natively.

- Does my usb-i2s and DAC will be recognized by Rune Audio ?

With a bit of fiddling, yes. In the imminent V3, yes.

- For the LCD, temperature probe, IR sensor …. is there "library" for RiscOs for driving all of that ? (I mean can I use apt-get update, install act ect)

It's on archlinux and you need to use pacman instead of apt-get.

- Can I installed python ?

Yes.

ACX

Hi arginine,
I'm sure that you already know that using RuneAudio is as easy as writing an image to a SD card, so I suppose you don't have any SD left laying around your home... or you are too lazy to try it

Anyway, here there are the informations you requested, in order to be useful to others with the same questions.
Please mind that, in the following points, I'm always referring to the last (coming soon) 0.3-release, that can be considered as a milestone and represents a leap from the past (and from RaspyFi/Volumio), as disclosed here.

1) I can't say if RuneAudio sound quality will be better or worse to you. The only way to discover it is trying by yourself.
What I can say is that Volumio's sound quality comes from a work of research and optimization made by Orion during our collaboration in the RaspyFi project. He created the so called "kernel profiles", letting users tweak some low-level system parameters to adapt the "sound signature" to the personal taste. Those optimizations are still in development under RuneAudio project, and are reviewed every time the distro is upgraded and a different kernel version is used.

2) Of course you can play music from network mounts, using both SMB/CIFS and NFS protocols. Moreover, the "Add network mount" wizard has been improved since the previous 0.2-beta.

3) Yes, you can play ALAC files, but you have to enable "FFmpeg decoder plugin" first, under MENU > MPD. It is disabled by default due to possible performance issues.

4) Album covers are natively displayed in the main playback screen of RuneUI

5) I2S DACs support is seamlessly integrated in RuneOS/RuneUI and easy to manage. Currently supported DACs are: G2Labs BerryNOS, G2Labs BerryNOS mini, HiFiBerry DAC, HiFiBerry Digi, IQaudIO Pi-DAC, RaspI2SPlay3

6) You can easily install and update packages via pacman, the default packet manager in Arch Linux

I hope to have satisfied your curiosity

arginine

Hello Emma,
Thanks for your reply, very helpful.
Considering that the LCD stuff is going to be very hard to setup (for me) and the fact I'm happy with volumio (recently updated), I think I'll stay with my current setup.

F

wick

Sorry I am late to this thread.
A question and a comment: (1) To arginine - would it be possible to post instructions as to how you got your 20 x 4 LCD working?
I'd like to do this, somehow.

I'am a satisfied user of Volumio. I connect on my raspberry pi a 20x4 LCD,

(2) To arginine, as a comment - this might vitiate the question - but in my experience, having
tried volumio, squeezeplug, and rune, all with 4 different dacs, and playing alac files,
*only* rune has succeeded for me - the other OSs all generate pops and clicks, esp. w/ 96kHz
material. If you know some trick to get even redbook CD material to play well on volumio
(I have tried v 1.4 and 1.41 on the r-pi b+), it would be great if you could share it, thanks

ACX

I bump this old thread because everyone who has not tried the recent 0.3-beta release yet should absolutely do it

It's a huge leap forward compared to the previous 0.2-beta version we were talking about here.

KHatfull

Since I can't play 24/192 FLAC files on Volumio with my Pi-DAC+ I guess RuneAudio sounds better.

I can tell you the UI here is faster and more polished. Everything works as I'd expect, even in a beta release. Heck with Volumio...

ACX

KHatfull wroteI can tell you the UI here is faster and more polished.

I can confirm your feeling about the improved speed, as we have rewritten lots of code since the 0.2-beta.
The result has been a considerable improvement of rendering performances (client side) and a shortening of response times (server side). We also enhanced the user experience polishing a lot of details.
If you are interested in technical details, I wrote a post about it while we were working on that.

asturnauta

I have used runeaudio and volumio and in my configuration runeaudio boots up faster than volumio.