RPi2+HifiberryDigi+ vs Ubuntu Studio with JACK

ercalamar

I have tried both and maybe Ubuntu Studio with JACK and Audacious sounds a little more open.

Raspberry is powered by a portable charger.

I use an old Onkyo amplifier. SPDIF cables are different but I don't think that would make a difference.

Somebody tried this?

rastus

ercalamar wroteRaspberry is powered by a portable charger.

I use an old Onkyo amplifier.

Portable charger? Is that like a battery pack? And what Onkyo you got there (just curious)?

ercalamar

Xiaomi 10000 mAh battery pack

Onkyo TX-SR600E

rastus

I have the Onkyo TX-SR576 (2nd system), nice AVR (runs a little hot though), and different (not better, just different) sound to my Yammie RX-V2065. I was close to buying the Xiaomi battery pack, all the reading I did pointed towards them being very efficient.

Now, I'm not sure what your comparing with the "vs" (RPi2+HifiberryDigi+ vs Ubuntu Studio with JACK). Ones hardware and ones software, am I missing the point? JACK I've read about, but have not used. Ubuntu I've used, but am not proficient with. Ubuntu Studio is an unknown to me, is this software that runs on Ubuntu? Or a version of Ubuntu? "SPDIF cables are different..." Different to what? You have two systems?

With the DIGI you may find that the signal is sent out of the optical and coax at the same time, good for A/B testing. And I think, from what I've read, the coax is the better option... though with my DIGI setup I could not detect any difference between the two.

Please excuse my ignorance, it is I that am confused, not you.

dunghnguyen

I am curious as well for what the Ubuntu Studio with JACK?

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/UbuntuStudio/JackQuickStart

ercalamar

What I am comparing is the digital output of two different systems to the amplifier

Raspberry Pi 2 + Hifiberry Digi+ with output transformer + Xiaomi 10000 mAh Battery Pack + RuneAudio

Asus P8Z77-V PRO motherboard + Ubuntu Studio (live USB) + Audacious

JACK sits on top of ALSA and I only managed to make it work once. In theory ALSA could get better latency because avoids JACK on top. Maybe JACK was forcing some settings on ALSA. I specifically achieved 5.8 milisec latency.

In the PC I think that the sound improvement over regular Ubuntu is due to the low latency kernel provided by Ubuntu Studio.

After posting I received a coax cable I ordered. It is an improvement for the raspberry output.

Using ALSA in the PC without JACK, the Raspberry sound has more space but in the PC the individual instruments are more defined.

To test I have been using flac files.
George Winston - Thanksgiving, Carol of the Bells
Avishai Cohen - Song for my brother

I also tried
Hidden Orchestra - Hushed

but it is 192000 Hz and though the front channels of the amplifier are supposed to support it I have no sound.

I also tried a DSD file but I get no sound from RuneAudio

ercalamar

Funny thing about the coax cable. Switching the lights in the room interrupts the music

not with the toslink from the same Raspberry

dunghnguyen

Can you advise how to install the Ubuntu Studio with JACK? I want to compare it vs Pi2 / DAC+ ... Tks to you.

dunghnguyen

ercalamar wrote...

I also tried a DSD file but I get no sound from RuneAudio

If you use DIGI+ then DSD cannot go thru Coaxial or Optical ports. For DSD, you should get the signal from USB to be transported to DAC with USB input as I tried here #3598

ercalamar

dunghnguyen wrote
ercalamar wrote...

I also tried a DSD file but I get no sound from RuneAudio
If you use DIGI+ then DSD cannot go thru Coaxial or Optical ports. For DSD, you should get the signal from USB to be transported to DAC with USB input as I tried here #3598

I thought the MPD server was in charge for the conversion to PCM at least It does in regular Ubuntu

ercalamar

dunghnguyen wroteCan you advise how to install the Ubuntu Studio with JACK? I want to compare it vs Pi2 / DAC+ ... Tks to you.

I only managed to get it going on the first run so It may be a non repeteable thing. On the other hand it may be a side effect of the low latency kernel. In fact as I have to reinstall my system, I am going to install the low latency kernel in regular Ubuntu to see how this goes.

I downloaded Ubuntu Studio, flashed a pendrive with the image and booted from it. Regular Ubuntu has an utility app for making a bootable drive.

By default Ubuntu Studio has all the software but Audacious. You can use the software center or open a terminal and type "sudo apt-get install audacious" to install it.

Open QJackCtl and start it. Here you can tweak the latency using the Frames paramer I think (1024 by dafult). If you go too low the system stops producing sound, you go beyond hardware capabilites. You also have to select de sampling frecuency that the music your are going to play has. After that in Audacious go to Settings > Sound and choose Jack and choose Floating point.

The outputs you choose depend on your specific hardware.

dunghnguyen

@[deleted]: you have done of those on the Raspberry Pi or on PC?

My case with Odroid C2 / Ubuntu MATE, I installed Audacious successfully. I tried playing music that Audacious played perfectly with Pulse output but failed with Alsa output setting "no support or something like that". JackCtl installed successfully but it was unable to connect as an output for Audacious ... I guess the MPD for 64bit board like Odroid C2 still have some issues, inconsistent ?