Arylic LP10 Budget Streamer Review

[dtaylo1066]

Auralic is dead; Arylic is very much alive.

Also--is this the worst thing ever tested here?

Auralic seemed to go from King of the Hill to adios amigo in a rather short time.

 

[fw8619]

Hello,

maybe of interest:

login on that device is possible via ssh using credentials root/123456

greetings

 

[NHL99]

Hello,

maybe of interest:

login on that device is possible via ssh using credentials root/123456

greetings

And it's not April 1st.

 

[john61ct]

Why would one want to do this?

 

[fw8619]

to give the device some new features like i did:

LP10 Network Audio Hi-Res path no resample
LP10 Now Playing Statuspage
LP10 WLED Plugin to Control LEDs to Music without Microphone input

feel free to use at your convinience

 

[john61ct]

So, the horrible performance factors are bypassed using these projects?

 

[fw8619]

Without the proper testing equipment i cannot confirm this.

 

[john61ct]

Perhaps you know how to interpret Amir's test report here, more intelligently than I can

 

[somebodyelse]

Almost every ADC reviewed so far has outperformed the LP10 so the bar on measuring equipment really isn't very high. You could try a REW loopback test with motherboard audio to see if it outperforms the LP10 if you don't have an audio interface. If it does then you can use it for an offline test with the LP10 before and after mod to see if there's an improvement.

 

[fw8619]

Well,

the problem is that the Vendor screwed the device with the Software based Signal chain. There is no Hardware resample at all, Volume, EQ and the Resampled Vendor Signal Chain (Audio is in a 32bit Float container and no direkt output) are all done by software and that results in the bad test results.

Signal gets bad due to Software based sampling and gets worse because of CPU Load for resampling.

If you output signal received direkt to alsa Hardware (I transfered RAW PCM from my esp32 device with usb audio firmware thats accepted by most device without driver direct over my own udp-rtp protocol) the device there is a Bitperfect signal chain!!!

Here is a script to change audio pipeline to direkt output on the lp10:

LP10 Force Direct Audio

I made CRC checks at both points for my test:

# ESP to LP10 Signal-Chain Evidence This document records a verified raw PCM proof from the ESP32-side UDP stream to the LP10 receiver path. ## What was verified - The ESP32-side PCM fixture was sent as raw UDP PCM. - The LP10 receiver captured the stripped raw payload. - The local SHA-256 hash and remote SHA-256 hash matched exactly. - The proof was performed without installing the Windows LP10 endpoint driver. ## Reproducible command Run the repo wrapper from Windows PowerShell: ```powershell powershell -NoProfile -ExecutionPolicy Bypass -File ` C:\development\esp32-usb-audio-rtp\tools\windows\test-esp-to-lp10-signalchain.ps1 ` -Password '********' ``` The wrapper delegates to `tools/windows/test-lp10-pcm-hash.ps1`. ## Verified parameters - LP10 host: `192.168.178.74` - SSH user: `root` - UDP port: `5013` - Transport header bytes: `48` - PCM payload bytes: `2880` - Sample rate: `48000` - Channels: `2` - SSH host key fingerprint: `SHA256:K6YXdwrBgE76JTlyw2Y5ylf7DSZMhQ0zlJ2vBoS/1hQ` ## Result - Local SHA-256: `84e4b3912496a3b81e6fbd14ad38d523f1060bf973c5c84c74eb580621c95fd6` - Remote SHA-256: `84e4b3912496a3b81e6fbd14ad38d523f1060bf973c5c84c74eb580621c95fd6` - Match: yes - Status: `Passed` ## Interpretation The raw PCM payload arrived on the LP10 unchanged. This confirms the test chain from the ESP-facing transport fixture to the LP10 raw capture path preserved the payload byte-for-byte for this fixture. ## Notes - The Windows LP10 endpoint installer is not required for this proof. - The test uses a deterministic payload unless `-PcmPath` is supplied. - No sample conversion, resampling, or mixer path is part of this proof.

 

[john61ct]

I dunno why anyone would bother, when such a cheap device performs so poorly, just make a different choice.

Unless you enjoy tinkering just for the sake of tinkering.

 

[fw8619]

I dunno why anyone would bother, when such a cheap device performs so poorly, just make a different choice.

Unless you enjoy tinkering just for the sake of tinkering.

lol, of course you dunno!

fixing that wasnt even 10 min of work, reconfiguring alsa isnt witchcraft!

The device is maybe cheap but can perform very good if configured properly.


PS: Yes i know to interpret the results provided here, they show clearly that the poor performance comes from internal signal manipulation (volume, eq, etc)

 

[john61ct]

This is a streaming pre-amp

I bought it for Amir to test, to see if my daughter (iFruit fangirl) could use AirPlay 2 to stream to our shared analog stereo in their LR.

There is no PC anywhere near there.

Amir's test showed it is not fit for purpose, so I got her a Wiim Mini instead, turned out even cheaper.

Maybe there is some use case where futzing around with it would make it useful.

If you (or anyone) can explain such a scenario and give a detailed HowTo cookbook on exactly how to do that, maybe that would be useful for the community.

 

[fw8619]

well, i uploaded a script that everyone can change this very easy.

I dont know what you mean with "some use case" or "such a scenario"

It can be used normally in every scenario without "futzing" around.

 

[john61ct]

I am asking you to explain, to a non-tech audience, how this works, what its purpose is, why go to the trouble of figuring all this out, as opposed to just buying a device that works.

As far as I can tell, your code does not fix the device, as in help it do what it was designed to do, but turns it into something else?

 

[somebodyelse]

It looks like Arylic have left in root ssh access with one of the most widely used passwords in the world, and writeable rootfs, at least from what I've read on their forum. That means you can mess with it almost as much as you can with a Pi or similar. This is generally considered a bad thing from a security perspective, but a good thing if you want to mod your hardware (and change the root password to something more secure!)

Has anyone looked at what's needed to do firmware updates, and whether that's unlocked too? Assuming the hardware's not fundamentally broken, and that all the problems are in the software, this might allow a community firmware version that fixes the audio problems as well as the security issues.

There's a reason I don't entirely trust audio companies when it comes to device security - even the companies that specialise in network devices have a lamentable record on that front, especially in consumer devices. Take these recent investigations of devices from TP-Link and Netgear - the latter with an obvious backdoor and a possible 0-Day vulnerability that they're not revealing yet:
https://forum.level1techs.com/t/tp-link-be-800-red-team-teardown/250611
https://forum.level1techs.com/t/netgear-nighthawk-rs700s-red-team-level1diagnostic/250614

 

[fw8619]

It looks like Arylic have left in root ssh access with one of the most widely used passwords in the world, and writeable rootfs, at least from what I've read on their forum. That means you can mess with it almost as much as you can with a Pi or similar. This is generally considered a bad thing from a security perspective, but a good thing if you want to mod your hardware (and change the root password to something more secure!)

Has anyone looked at what's needed to do firmware updates, and whether that's unlocked too? Assuming the hardware's not fundamentally broken, and that all the problems are in the software, this might allow a community firmware version that fixes the audio problems as well as the security issues.

There's a reason I don't entirely trust audio companies when it comes to device security - even the companies that specialise in network devices have a lamentable record on that front, especially in consumer devices. Take these recent investigations of devices from TP-Link and Netgear - the latter with an obvious backdoor and a possible 0-Day vulnerability that they're not revealing yet:
https://forum.level1techs.com/t/tp-link-be-800-red-team-teardown/250611
https://forum.level1techs.com/t/netgear-nighthawk-rs700s-red-team-level1diagnostic/250614

iam working on a firmware (embedded linux) for this device.

feature suggestions are welcome.