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Raspberry Pi USB : noisy?

jae

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He promised a while ago, while singing its praises, that he would make a video explaining WHY the Sonore ultra-rend made a "black background", but since then... silence. He *acts* like a measurement guy, but mostly just makes a video instruction and manufacturer specifications presentation.
I would be surprised if the audio measurement interface and oscilloscope behind him has got any real use. His channel is clearly not technical, and while it does not claim to be, it certainly exudes that authority. He always regresses to what "he hears" and "his listening experience" when questioned, but does little to objectively explain why. Take from that what you will.
 

Beershaun

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My experience with my Rpi 3B+ is that the USB is unusable due to clicks and pops and dropouts when streaming music to a USB dac using Moode player. So if that is what's occurring it's pretty apparent and disruptive. If that's not what's occurring and everything sounds fine. Then you are fine.
 

somebodyelse

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My experience with my Rpi 3B+ is that the USB is unusable due to clicks and pops and dropouts when streaming music to a USB dac using Moode player. So if that is what's occurring it's pretty apparent and disruptive. If that's not what's occurring and everything sounds fine. Then you are fine.
That's probably issue #2215 which I mentioned earlier. Have you tried piCorePlayer with the same hardware?
 

Beershaun

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That's probably issue #2215 which I mentioned earlier. Have you tried piCorePlayer with the same hardware?
I have not but I will check it out. IMHO I think the issue is real, but it either works or it doesn't. It's not a subtle noise issue, but rather a functional one.
 

Killingbeans

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I would be surprised if the audio measurement interface and oscilloscope behind him has got any real use.

I've been thinking the same thing. They looks suspiciously like props meant to give him an aura of technical prowess, and nothing more.

He actually had me fooled for a moment the first time I stumbled upon one of his videos. Eventually I reached the point where I tought he was doing some sort of low-key satire, but it took a bit longer than I care to admit. I can perfectly understand why people would see him as a guy who has all of the answers. The sad thing is that beneath that thin veneer of educational video structure and seemingly technical knowhow, there's a solid core of complete BS.

I have no idea what his motivation is for making those videos or what he's like in person. I bet I wouldn't mind grabbing a beer with him, but he really, really should stop trying to educate the world on the nature of physics and electronics. It's either deliberately or misfortunately misleading.
 
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Daverz

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No it’s Hans Beekhuizen. He looks like a really technical dude who knows what he’s talking about, but somehow I can’t help but feel he’s selling snake oil. Maybe he doesn’t even know it himself (because he has technical pesumptions).

I hear contradictory stuff about the Pi4 vs Pi3b+ . Because the ethernet and usb ports are somehow better seperated on the Pi4, the USB noise should be lower. But some other people point out that the 4 has higher noise because of the higher power consumption and faster cpu. Maybe I’m just blessed for not hearing all that noise on my RPi3b+? :-D

AFAIK, Hans's background was sales.

That said, the 3B and 3B+ had problems with rates over 48k on some DACs. I had problems with pops and clicks on higher sample rates with my Topping D10 and E30 DACs, but not with my Auralic Vega. The Pi4 does not have this problem.
 

somebodyelse

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I have not but I will check it out. IMHO I think the issue is real, but it either works or it doesn't. It's not a subtle noise issue, but rather a functional one.
I agree the issue is real, and influenced by the software you're running among other things - some of the posts in the issue thread are mine. I asked about piCorePlayer because I've tried and failed to reproduce the issue with it on the same hardware that reliably has the problem with Volumio and Raspbian.
 

rkbates

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I agree the issue is real, and influenced by the software you're running among other things - some of the posts in the issue thread are mine. I asked about piCorePlayer because I've tried and failed to reproduce the issue with it on the same hardware that reliably has the problem with Volumio and Raspbian.
A side issue - where did your piCorePlayer source it's music files from? I briefly tried piCorePlayer but it would not play AAC files from a Plex server. It would play mp3 and flac from the same Plex, and local AAC files, but I could never get it to play AAC stored remotely
 

somebodyelse

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A side issue - where did your piCorePlayer source it's music files from? I briefly tried piCorePlayer but it would not play AAC files from a Plex server. It would play mp3 and flac from the same Plex, and local AAC files, but I could never get it to play AAC stored remotely
Normally LMS running on a J1900 based server that also does a bunch of other stuff. The only problems I remember have been cue files with very short track sections confusing it (LMS end I think) and corrupted files that crash squeezelite. I don't have many AAC files though. Does Plex support streaming direct to squeezebox clients, or do you use an LMS instance as a bridge?
 

rkbates

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Normally LMS running on a J1900 based server that also does a bunch of other stuff. The only problems I remember have been cue files with very short track sections confusing it (LMS end I think) and corrupted files that crash squeezelite. I don't have many AAC files though. Does Plex support streaming direct to squeezebox clients, or do you use an LMS instance as a bridge?
I think Plex could stream direct, but in this case I used LMS and under remote music libraries enabled UPnP/DLNA client to make Plex visible as a dumb source.
 

Jinjuku

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The bottom line on the 3B/B+ is that the USB 2.0 bus was used to host all other connectivity. That would be Ethernet, Wifi.

So when you were playing higher bit rate's it would max out USB2.0 and cause glitches.

The Pi4 doesn't do it this way and even has a single PCIe 8X lane.
 

somebodyelse

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The bottom line on the 3B/B+ is that the USB 2.0 bus was used to host all other connectivity. That would be Ethernet, Wifi.
The errors start here - WiFi is connected via sdio not usb.
So when you were playing higher bit rate's it would max out USB2.0 and cause glitches.
Widely repeated but demonstrably wrong - please stop spreading this rubbish. The bus is far from maxed out when glitches occur. There's a lot of detail in the kernel bug report. Short version - something (or somethings) odd and as yet not pinned down causes increased latency in the interrupt handling, resulting in the Pi sending the next chunk of data to the DAC just too late. An example of weirdness - BruteFIR is quite a good trigger for the problem, but if you pin the BruteFIR processes to a single cpu core the problem stops.

EDIT: you're right about it not being a problem on the Pi4, and it having PCIe. I don't know if the bug still happens if you use the USB-C port in host mode and connect a DAC to it, but it's not exactly a normal use case.
 
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sjeesjie

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Oh. Boy.

After his MQA debacle everyone should know his technical understanding is nill.

Here's my response video to his jitter and Ethernet connectivity:

Great video, thanks for clearing all that up!
 

stubaggs

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As a result of this very nice site, a few months ago I bought a rpi4 and connected it to my nice rme adi2 dacv2. It sounds perfect. streaming via wifi is really stable (I use ubiquity ap‘s) and I use a standard rpi smps. I tried ropiee and volumio and both I like when using the rpi4 as a roon endpoint. Before I streamed via an onkyo all in one streamer/dac ns6170 ( I think also pretty good and well engineered with dual akm4490 dacs), but could sell it now because of really nice sounding and stable rpi4 rme adi2 combination. The rme digicheck test files I played via roon, rpi4, passed without any problem. So bit perfect And I would really advise positively on the rpi4 as usb streamer, even Via stable wifi.
Downstairs I use a Metrum Ambre decent and 20 times more expensive streamer, but to be honest, I cannot hear a difference. It is really a decent streamer well engineered I think, with nice psu and femto clocks and a connection to the dac bij i2s, utp connection. But I bought it years ago before I found this site ;-)

Fun fact, looks like (from teardown pictures) the Metrum is based on a Raspberry Pi !
 

ahofer

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No it’s Hans Beekhuizen. He looks like a really technical dude who knows what he’s talking about, but somehow I can’t help but feel he’s selling snake oil. Maybe he doesn’t even know it himself (because he has technical pesumptions).

Ugh. He’s a very foolish individual. The stack of test equipment is just a false front for another snake-oil salesman selling you the circle of confusion. See his nonsense video on why he won’t do blind tests for more (easily found, I ain’t linking to it). Really, the more I’ve seen of him, the more reprehensible he seems.

And sorry for responding twice, I forgot the response above, and only recently saw his blind test videos, causing a fresh wave of outrage.
 
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