Amir's Music Server Build Thread

[amirm]

In DSD to PCM conversion, the CPU nearly maxes out so it is not overkill if you use signal processing. Otherwise, yes, it takes 1% of the CPU just to play music....

 

[duo8]

Reading it again it seems a large portion of the cost was spent making it fanless ($340 for the case and $175 for the PSU).
So maybe building a normal PC, place it in another room then stream the processed audio would be a more practical/economical choice.

 

[babysnake]

What tweaks/tuning to the standard Win10 install do you use please @amirm (turning off services and the like)?

Also do you turn stuff off in BIOS?

I use Linux for both my Roon endpoint and server and have found that 'tuned' bespoke distros like Audio-linux have audible advantages, as did doing things like turning off the SATA interface in BIOS (and run Linux from RAM following USB EFI boot)

Not something I can measure of course ..........

 

[Sal1950]

Not something I can measure of course ..........

What changes do you expect?
If your music server is delivering a bit perfect data stream to your DAC, it doesn't get bettter than that.

 

[amirm]

What tweaks/tuning to the standard Win10 install do you use please @amirm (turning off services and the like)?

Also do you turn stuff off in BIOS?

None whatsoever. Those tweeks are all myths. Any half decent DAC will be immune to what the PC is doing. And if it is not, it is better to have tons and tons of activity so it looks like random noise. Reducing the services may make some activities stand out and cause deterministic spurious responses which are more audible than noise.

 

[BillG]

What tweaks/tuning to the standard Win10 install do you use please @amirm (turning off services and the like)?

Also do you turn stuff off in BIOS?

I use Linux for both my Roon endpoint and server and have found that 'tuned' bespoke distros like Audio-linux have audible advantages, as did doing things like turning off the SATA interface in BIOS (and run Linux from RAM following USB EFI boot)

Not something I can measure of course ..........

If there are no measurable differences between an audiophile tuned OS installation and a normal one, then you've merely fallen prey to confirmation and perceptual biases. It happens quite readily to most people, but in particular to those without a science/engineering background.

I've got a software engineering background that spans over two decades, with experience in a vast array of operating systems and hardware. I've not once had to tune an operating system for optimal audio performance - these are low resource processes anyway, unless one is utilizing some very intense DSP. It's totally unnecessary, beyond insuring whatever output I'm using on the computer is a clean one. And that's a minor hardware issue, which never comes into play unless one has the misfortune of using a substandard product.

 

[Daverz]

I was going to build my own LMS server system to replace my ancient Athlon system until I saw this on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0722J7NNX/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I installed Ubuntu Server on it and added a 4T drive. It's located in my loft and is not audible at the listening chair (I did have to stick my old USB external drive in a closet, though).

I paid $367, but I think it's still a good deal. Way overpowered for an LMS server, even if I do run Brutefir on it. Scans are really fast though! I do use it for other home network things.

 

[Sal1950]

I use Linux for both my Roon endpoint and server

I've not once had to tune an operating system for optimal audio performance - these are low resource processes anyway, unless one is utilizing some very intense DSP.

Yep, I also run Linux. Here you can see Clementine playing a 24/96 hirez file and Top reporting cpu use of Clementine of just 4% of one core.
Hardly a resource hog.

 

[babysnake]

So the collective view is that providing the server has sufficient horsepower the 'quality' of said server (tricked out PSUs, high spec clocks, NICs and so on) is immaterial?

Ditto that as any PC is very electrically noisy anyway, attempts to reduce this is futile?

 

[amirm]

Exactly right. Every DAC I test is running on the same machine that is running my analyzer software which sucks one core dry and is transfering tons of data back and forth to the analyzer. I usually have Roon playing music to yet another device that I listen to while testing. And there are multiple browser sessions open with scripting code running in them. Yet we see no sign of any noise in top performing DACs.

 

[BillG]

So the collective view is that providing the server has sufficient horsepower the 'quality' of said server (tricked out PSUs, high spec clocks, NICs and so on) is immaterial?

Indeed! Which is why one will never find corporations with valuable data assets tricking out their servers with "audiophile" slanted products. If they were neccesary, they'd do so immediately, to protect assets sometimes valued in the billions of dollars.

What do they do use instead? Plain old off-the-shelf hardware that anyone can purchase.

Digital audio is merely data, and there's nothing extraordinary required to transport it safely and uncorrupted from one device to another.

 

[AndrovichIV]

If there are no measurable differences between an audiophile tuned OS installation and a normal one, then you've merely fallen prey to confirmation and perceptual biases. It happens quite readily to most people, but in particular to those without a science/engineering background.

I've got a software engineering background that spans over two decades, with experience in a vast array of operating systems and hardware. I've not once had to tune an operating system for optimal audio performance - these are low resource processes anyway, unless one is utilizing some very intense DSP. It's totally unnecessary, beyond insuring whatever output I'm using on the computer is a clean one. And that's a minor hardware issue, which never comes into play unless one has the misfortune of using a substandard product.

I imagine these Audiophile OS use different default values for PulseAudio and ALSA, and strip away running processes. While it's true what Amir says in the sense that you want to have uncorrelated processes running, if you ever hit max processing capacity the OS will have to make decisions regarding which processes get priority. In Linux that's called "niceness"

 

[AndrovichIV]

Okay some thoughts about this:

1. It seems that running a server without fans imposes a lot of penalties in terms of performance (in the case of Amir you get glitches every once in a while). As some people have pointed out, you could put a server anywhere in your house with fans running a powerful processor (such as a Ryzen 2700, or a third gen if you want to wait a couple of months as of this writing, or an Intel core I9). You could then use the Google Chromecast protocol to stream to a google chromecast which would in turn transmit the digital signal to a DAC. Because in principle you could put this server anywhere in the house, such as a basement, you would not care about noise and you could overclock it even. This means less chance to get glitches.
2. Running Windows on such a server seems odd. With Windows you get a ton of regular updates that require restarting. With Windows 10 those restarts are not entirely optional and may happen when you use the computer. With Linux you have complete control over these, plus a lot more stability than with Windows especially if running headless. Seriously, there's been cases of Linux servers running decades without restarting. I have 2 servers, one running Windows server 2016 and the other Raspbian. The Linux one can run months on end without restarting. I actually restart it every 2 months or so to install updates, but I could get away with doing that fewer times. If you run Ubuntu you can even forego this to a great extent using livepatch.
3. From what I could gather from Amirm's post the bottleneck in the system seems to be single threaded performance. So you want a chip with good single threaded performance. In this case overclocking might help a bit.
4. It's possible that Amirm's server is significantly slower today than what it was. In the past couple of years several Intel exploits were discovered and the solution in software degraded performance by duble digits in certain cases. This is again a point in favor of a Linux based OS, as you can turn off the protection and get back your performance (if the server is not connected to the internet and only runs Roon this is a sensible thing to do)
5. CPU fans have a very long livespan. Even if you hit it and they fail, the Bios is smart enough to turn off the computer. So you only have to replace the CPU cooler and turn on the computer again.

 

[Ron Texas]

My Intel NUC cost very little to build. It has a fan, but I can't hear it.

 

[Krunok]

Not so long ago my DAC (Topping D10) was connected using ASIO drivers via USB to my Lenovo Ideapad 700 notebook. It has Intel Core i7-6700HQ processor, 16Gb of RAM, 256GB SSD for system + 1TB HDD for data. When playing music with Foobar or MusicBee I was experiencing drop outs every few minutes although notebook and Windows 10 were in perfectly healthy state and the only thing notebook was running was light browsing with Chrome.

After I lost my patience I purchased Dell Wyse 5010 thin PC. It has AMD G-T48E 1.4 GHz dual core CPU, it's fanless, 2GB of RAM and 4GB SSD. I installed Volumio and BruteFIR plugin on top of it. In more than 9 months of usage there wasn't a single dropout and whenever I checked CPU utilisation it was less than 10%.

Enough said.

 

[BillG]

Running Windows on such a server seems odd. With Windows you get a ton of regular updates that require restarting. With Windows 10 those restarts are not entirely optional and may happen when you use the computer. With Linux you have complete control over these, plus a lot more stability than with Windows especially if running headless.

It's never been an issue for me, even running Windows 10 Professional - I've no real need for Windows Server as my machine is a multi-purpose one that's tasked with other, general purpose duties. I've got it set to a deferred update schedule to ensure any issues are taken care of prior to installation and that it will only reboot on command.

My desire to continue using Windows for audio, all as a client, server, and local playback platform, all comes down to wanting maximum capability and flexibility. I've previewed Linux many times in the past and always found it lacking in that regard.

In terms of overall stability, the machine is, and it's not one that I need/want to run 24/7 anyway; I've several mobile Android devices that I use as audio clients/servers/local players when I desire to do so - those are continuously powered on and ready at the push of a button. And since the Windows box boots up in seconds, thanks to my installing the OS on a SSD, I couldn't care less about month/year long uptimes. This machine has never hard locked/BSOD'ed on me, by the way.

I imagine these Audiophile OS use different default values for PulseAudio and ALSA, and strip away running processes. While it's true what Amir says in the sense that you want to have uncorrelated processes running, if you ever hit max processing capacity the OS will have to make decisions regarding which processes get priority.

I max my PC out frequently, usually when encoding multiple AV files simultaneously, and it still continues to serve and playback audio without a hiccup - 4 physical and 8 virtual i7 cores are good like that...

 

[AndrovichIV]

It's never been an issue for me, even running Windows 10 Professional - I've no real need for Windows Server as my machine is a multi-purpose one that's tasked with other, general purpose duties. I've got it set to a deferred update schedule to ensure any issues are taken care of prior to installation and that it will only reboot on command.

My desire to continue using Windows for audio, all as a client, server, and local playback platform, all comes down to wanting maximum capability and flexibility. I've previewed Linux many times in the past and always found it lacking in that regard.

In terms of overall stability, the machine is, and it's not one that I need/want to run 24/7 anyway; I've several mobile Android devices that I use as audio clients/servers/local players when I desire to do so - those are continuously powered on and ready at the push of a button. And since the Windows box boots up in seconds, thanks to my installing the OS on a SSD, I couldn't care less about month/year long uptimes. This machine has never hard locked/BSOD'ed on me, by the way.



I max my PC out frequently, usually when encoding multiple AV files simultaneously, and it still continues to serve and playback audio without a hiccup - 4 physical and 8 virtual i7 cores are good like that...

I think we're talking about different things. Linux as music client or server. In the former case you will usually deal with PulseAudio audio server. By default most Linux distros include conservative audio settings to save CPU processing power at the expense of quality. You can change that setting, but regardless, I wasn't talking about using Linux as a client, but as a server. As such its job is to pass bits to the Chromecast.

Maximum capability in terms of audio by using Windows instead of Linux? I have no idea what you're talking about. Second, if you were using bit perfect audio there's no way Windows produced something different in terms of sound to a Linux box producing bit perfect audio. If anything you'd expect the Linux box to produce better audio since there's well documented shortcomings in Windows USB drivers (which sometimes cannot reliably output 192khz audio, see for example the FAQ of a Schiit DAC product)

I'm not saying in general a Linux box will sound better, I'm only saying that USB Linux drivers are more reliable, which depending on the music bitrate may or may not bottleneck the windows drivers

 

[Ron Texas]

Not so long ago my DAC (Topping D10) was connected using ASIO drivers via USB to my Lenovo Ideapad 700 notebook. It has Intel Core i7-6700HQ processor, 16Gb of RAM, 256GB SSD for system + 1TB HDD for data. When playing music with Foobar or MusicBee I was experiencing drop outs every few minutes although notebook and Windows 10 were in perfectly healthy state and the only thing notebook was running was light browsing with Chrome.

Enough said.

On my laptop I had a problem like that and it was caused by a bad USB cable.

On the NUC I had dropouts caused by a bad LAN adapter driver. Rolling it back solved that one.

The NUC only has a Pentium CPU. With FIR filters enabled it has CPU usage between 5% and 8%.

 

[BillG]

I think we're talking about different things.

Yes, you've obviously created a straw man to further your advocacy of Linux, which no one asked you about in the first place...

 

[AndrovichIV]

Yes, you've obviously created a straw man to further your advocacy of Linux, which no one asked you about in the first place...

I pointed some stuff. You claimed I was wrong and said some arguments in that respect. I showed that you were wrong. That's it