• WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!

BEGINNER QUESTION : Getting "BitPerfect" output in Linux ?

OP
P

PenguinMusic

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Joined
Dec 20, 2019
Messages
622
Likes
368
Thanks, I was just interested, which some may find unsurprising given the purpose of the forum;)

Hi,

Don't get me wrong.

I am not saying that the tests were performed "as they should be" (and which is almost impossible to achieve) and that there are no differences in level between the different formats of the same track bought on the same site...

OK. I've more or less tried to remember and tests were made about 5 years ago (it seemed it was way longer than that... time flies :-(

The player was either the Oppo BDP-93 or BDP-95, I had both and can't rememeber which one we used.
I also cannot remember if I still used the Arcam AV-8 as a pre-amp but that might well be.
Rest of system was the same I have now :
- amps were 2 Linn AV5125 with active cards for the Linn Keltik ;
- loudpseaker cables I made myself from a combination of various Van den Hul cables from the reel (they look like shit, but, hey... I made them myself and they're OK and "dirt" cheap) ;
- loudspeakers were Linn Keltik with active quad-amplifcation (1 amp channel for highs, 1 amp channel for mids, 1 amp channel for bass "front" and 1 amp channel for bass "behind" as the Linn Keltik have 2 boomers in "push-push" configuration, which is called "Isobarik" in Linn's language and of course, that is for left ; same must be done for right !) Love those speakers that are almost impossible to drive :)

The tracks played were : first minutes of 1st movement of Beethoven's fifth and first minutes of second movement of Beethoven's 7th.
Both from the same record.

A friend of mine switched from one source to another, but that was not immediate. You know : stop/switch/play... Maybe 5 to 10 seconds between each run ?

I am just saying that, then, I was able to tell the difference...
But that was "then" :-(
Today... Fear of age and deaf...

Well, as Sal1950, I was just curious about "Bitperfect" on Linux to make sure I was getting the correct bit/sample rate out of my computer.
But I guess to be sure, I'll need to get my a DAC that displays the bit/sample rate.
Which I'll probably do on Amazon and send back the item once I performed my tests.
Not really cool, but at least i'll make sure :)
 
Last edited:
OP
P

PenguinMusic

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Joined
Dec 20, 2019
Messages
622
Likes
368
I took a quick run thru the Preference switches and didn't see anything that might cause your issues. I'm sure the various deadbeef forums could offer informed help. Click the "Help" link at the top and a number of links to both forum and developer (github) are listed. Also look to the home forum of the Linux distro your running.

Hi,

When I configured the JACK audio server, I set it to accept files up to 96khz.
Under those circumstances, if I play a 24/96 file => no problem : speed is OK.
But if I play a 16/44 file, then I get about thrice or fourth the speed required. It is quite funny to listen to (like Chipmunks)... but definitely not what I am expecting or looking for :)
 

Sal1950

Grand Contributor
The Chicago Crusher
Forum Donor
Joined
Mar 1, 2016
Messages
14,073
Likes
16,607
Location
Central Fl
Hi,

When I configured the JACK audio server, I set it to accept files up to 96khz.
Under those circumstances, if I play a 24/96 file => no problem : speed is OK.
But if I play a 16/44 file, then I get about thrice or fourth the speed required. It is quite funny to listen to (like Chipmunks)... but definitely not what I am expecting or looking for :)
That's weird but I have no knowledge of JACK beyond the many comments I've heard of it's complexity and buggyness.
As far as I understand the "level match" thing that is that the volume of the playback can be different and thus alterate your perception of the played music.
You have to understand that very closely matched levels is probably the most important detail of a blind listening test. No matter how old we are or how much high frequency detection we've lost, our ability to detect very minor differences in level remains the same. It has be shown that people can reliably detect as small as a 1/2 db difference or less. Normally the louder of the two will be judged the better sounding but that remains mostly irrelevant. If the level difference between A and B can be reliably detected it matters none which one is deemed better.
 
OP
P

PenguinMusic

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Joined
Dec 20, 2019
Messages
622
Likes
368
That's weird but I have no knowledge of JACK beyond the many comments I've heard of it's complexity and buggyness.

Hi,

Managed to sort that out...

And I would like to use deadbeef as a Player because with the "Designer mode" I can edit it more or less as I'd like it to.

But it seems the plug-ins are really not functional :-(

Rezgards.
 

cprogrammer

New Member
Joined
Dec 29, 2019
Messages
3
Likes
4
I stumbled on this post while searching if I could turn on the 'bit perfect led' in my Asus Xonar Essence One Dac which shares many features with the DAC which the OP has. The led has actually nothting to do with 'bit perfect' it is just turned on when you use the ASIO driver on windows. Now to the real question

What player?
How to achieve bit perfect output?

Which Player.
There are plenty to choose from. If you want a player along with the ability to manage tons of files, I have only two of them which can manage large number of files without getting slowed down clementine and strawberry. There is amarok too, but I have always got stuck with the interface.

Clementine
=========
If you chose clementine, you will lose the ability to get bit perfect output, because the developers removed the ability to chose a specific ALSA device in the Tools --> Preferences --> Audio output. You can just chose to have "Default device on Output to a sound card via ALSA". The default device will be set somewhere outside the player by your distro and each distro is different (Fedora, Ubuntu, Debian, etc). But there is a hack in clementine to choose the device for bit perfect play. This is what needs to be done

1) run the command aplay -l
$ aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: STH6 [Xonar ST+H6], device 0: Multichannel [Multichannel]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 0: STH6 [Xonar ST+H6], device 1: Digital [Digital]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 3: HDMI 0 [HDMI 0]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 1: NVidia [HDA NVidia], device 7: HDMI 1 [HDMI 1]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 3: CODEC [USB Audio CODEC], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 4: UAC2 [hiFaceTWO UAC2], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
card 5: One [ASUS Xonar Essence One], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

You can see each device has a card number and also a short name. In the above, my Xonar Essence One dac is card number 5 and the name is "One". So any software which can use ALSA devices can use any of the two names for the device

"hw:5,0" or "hw:One"

Now you just need to modify the file $HOME/.config/Clementine/clementine.conf and have the following in the section [GstEngine]. e.g.

[GstEngine]
bufferduration=4000
bufferminfill=33
device="hw:5,0"
monoplayback=false
rgcompression=false
rgenabled=true
rgmode=1
samplerate=-1
sink=alsasink

The above will result in bit perfect output in clementine.

2) strawberry
strawberry is based on clementine. It does not have visualizations. Apart from that, it is still being developed by the same developers who wrote clementine. It is less buggy and the UI interface itself makes it possible to chose bit perfect output. All you have to do is go to
Tools ---> Setings ---> Backend and select the following
Engine: Gstreamer
Output: Output to a sound card via ALSA
Device: ASUS Xonar Essence One USB Audio --> This will be a drop down list showing all your hardware sound cards

Now there are too many things that happen during playback. By using ALSA you have ensured that your player is sending the music bits directly to the sound card without any software coming in between (other than the player itself). If your computer is running too many things, your player may not be able to send the bits to the sound card at the right time (remember that there is buffering to happening but if the OS becomes very slow and your buffer doesn't gets filled, you might get drop outs. So the best sofware to play music is somethng which is small, tiny and lightweight. One of the best sofware to play bit perfect output on linux is mpd. mpd doesn't have any capability like album management, album art. It is just a daemon and you send it commands to play a music file and it plays it perfectly. To use mpd, you have to setup /etc/mpd.conf and chose a client. mpd has many clients (gnome music player, cantata on linux and mpdroid on android and many other clients on IOS too). e.g. If you want to setup mpd, you have to do the following
1) install mpd (this will be a part of your OS distribution in most cases). For my distro (fedora), I just had to do the following
# dnf -y install mpd
# systemctl enable mpd # to have mpd run when the os starts
2) setup /etc/mpd.conf. The two most important parameters are the music_directory and the device in audio_output. I could have chosen hw:5,0 too

music_directory "~/Music"
db_file "/var/lib/mpd/mpd.db"
zeroconf_enabled "yes"
zeroconf_name "Music station"

audio_output {
type "alsa"
name "Xonar EssenceOne"
device "hw:One" # optional
mixer_type "software" # optional
}

The first time you start mpd, it will build a sqlite database named /var/lib/mpd/mpd.db and store just the filename, author and title.
Once you have setup mpd, all you need to do is install a good client on your mobile phone, PC or your linux desktop. The client will need the IP address of your server running mpd. If zeroconf is setup and your client is running on the same network as your linux computer running mpd, you will automatically see a mpd server with the name "Music station". Select that and you should be able to see your music in your client. Hit the play and the music will play as bit perfect as possible.

Setting up mpd is more difficult than strawberry, clementine, deadbeef, etc but nothing IMHO beats the quality of the output of mpd. mpd can also run with realtime. In fact I use mpd on a raspberry pi kind of device with the Music folder from a large computer mounted on it using NFS.
If you want help in setting up mpd, you could IM me and I will be glad to share my full setup with you
 
OP
P

PenguinMusic

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Joined
Dec 20, 2019
Messages
622
Likes
368
Hi cprogramer,

Thanks a lot for taking time to register and writing a really long post to answer my question.

I happen to come to the exact same conclusion as yours :)

And the two options I held were :
- Clementine set-up to get direct access to ALSA ;
- MPD server with Cantata client.

I had indeed some trouble to set-up MPD.
To configure the server and the Music library was pretty easy with Cantata.
It did the job for me, where Ario and gmpd could not even connect to server... Cantata did it flawlessly :)

I still have problems having Cantata/MPD to use ALSA :-(
I mean I can do that but for some reasons (free USB + noise interferences + small interruptions), I would like to use TosLink instead of USB and I cannot switch from one to another :-(
I can change the device to whatever I want it still outputs via USB (presumably with alsa as computer volume has no effect).
But the switch is impossible.
I of course restarted mpd and mpd.socket... but to no extend.
I will try to sort that out today :)

Regards.
 

cprogrammer

New Member
Joined
Dec 29, 2019
Messages
3
Likes
4
Hi cprogramer,
I still have problems having Cantata/MPD to use ALSA :-(
I mean I can do that but for some reasons (free USB + noise interferences + small interruptions), I would like to use TosLink instead of USB and I cannot switch from one to another :-(
I can change the device to whatever I want it still outputs via USB (presumably with alsa as computer volume has no effect).
But the switch is impossible.
When you say toslink, do you have another device which outputs audio via SPDIF/TOSLINK?
Look at the output of aplay -l and have that device added in mpd.conf.
Once you add a device, the same will be available as a select box in cantata under "outputs"

e.g. This is the mpd.conf on my laptop where I connect a USB to SPDIF from HiFace
https://www.m2techusa.com/products/hiface-two-hi-end-s-pdif-output-interface

In this setup, cantata will show 4 devices for selection. One can select any or all the devices and mpd will happily send audio out to all the devices selected.

# built in audio card
audio_output {
type "alsa"
name "Stereo Out"
device "hw: PCH" # optional
mixer_type "hardware" # optional
mixer_device "hw: PCH" # optional
mixer_control "Speaker" # optional
mixer_index "0" # optional
}

# M2Tech HiFace SPDIF
audio_output {
type "alsa"
name "hiFaceTWO UAC2"
device "hw:UAC2" # optional
mixer_type "hardware" # optional
mixer_device "hw:UAC2" # optional
mixer_control "hiFaceTWO UAC2 Output" # optional
mixer_index "0" # optional
}

# Xonar Essence one USB
audio_output {
type "alsa"
name "Xonar EssenceOne"
device "hw:One" # optional
mixer_type "software" # optional
}

# Scarlett 2i2 USB
audio_output {
type "alsa"
name "Scarlett 2i2 USB"
device "hw:USB" # optional
mixer_type "software" # optional
}

I have attached my mpd.conf as mpd.txt in this post.
 

Attachments

  • mpd.txt
    12.1 KB · Views: 158

trl

Major Contributor
King of Mods
Joined
Feb 28, 2018
Messages
1,967
Likes
2,523
Location
Iasi, RO
Well, as Sal1950, I was just curious about "Bitperfect" on Linux to make sure I was getting the correct bit/sample rate out of my computer.
But I guess to be sure, I'll need to get my a DAC that displays the bit/sample rate.
You don't need to purchase a new DAC just to be sure it's playing the correct sampling rate. It will definitely play the same sampling rate as the player is telling you to, be 110% sure of that! In Linux here's how to do find out: sudo cat /proc/asound/card1/pcm0p/sub0/hw_params (credits to 24bit96.com).

I have Essence One MKii and this one has light indicators for each sampling rate. In any Linux distro I tried in the past I got the correct sampling rate (also confirmed by another user here).

As for the BitPerfect indicator, I think this is a gimmick that comes from manufacturer's ASIO driver and indicates to the listener that there's the original ASIO used for playback, so low latency etc. If you use ASIO4All I don't think you will still get the BitPerfect indicator, but worth a try.

ALSA is very good for playback, especially if you don't do any resampling or up/down converting. Windows used to be pretty low-quality in doing playback 10 or more years ago, so this is probably the reason why some manufacturers decided to add that BitPerfect light, so customers to be sure the playback is done through the original ASIO drivers.

However, real-time kernel might help if doing more that audio playback on that computer, also correct configuration of ALSA too, so perhaps this should help, especially chapter B: https://www.24bit96.com/hifi-music-server/bitperfect-linux-with-mpd.html.
 
OP
P

PenguinMusic

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Joined
Dec 20, 2019
Messages
622
Likes
368
When you say toslink, do you have another device which outputs audio via SPDIF/TOSLINK?
Look at the output of aplay -l and have that device added in mpd.conf.
Once you add a device, the same will be available as a select box in cantata under "outputs"

e.g. This is the mpd.conf on my laptop where I connect a USB to SPDIF from HiFace
https://www.m2techusa.com/products/hiface-two-hi-end-s-pdif-output-interface

In this setup, cantata will show 4 devices for selection. One can select any or all the devices and mpd will happily send audio out to all the devices selected.

Hi,

Thanks, but I am giving it up.

Whatever I do, it uses PulseAudio on Toslink.

I assume there's a simple way to say if you use ALSA or Pulse...
If you have ALSA, sound setting will have no effect and you control volume with external Amp.
If you use PulseAudio, you can control volume with computer...

If that is indeed so, I can use USB ALSA but not the internal TosLink of Motherboard... That I can use with PulseAudi only with cantata.
No problem using TosLink with ALSA with Strawberry !
 

cprogrammer

New Member
Joined
Dec 29, 2019
Messages
3
Likes
4
Hi,
Whatever I do, it uses PulseAudio on Toslink.

Any reason you assume that you are using pulseaudio? You can temporarily disable pulseaudio

I assume there's a simple way to say if you use ALSA or Pulse...
If you have ALSA, sound setting will have no effect and you control volume with external Amp.
If you use PulseAudio, you can control volume with computer...
Which volume control are you talking about? The volume control on cantata will work for ALSA too. The OS volume control (which controls the pulseaudio volume) will not work.

In /etc/pulse/client.conf, you can uncomment the line autospawn=yes and replace the yes with a "no".
You can also set this in .pulse directory in your home directory.
After you have done that, run the command pulseaudio -k to kill the pulseaudio daemon. The pulseaudio daemon will not start because of the change in the client.conf file.

A cleaner way to do this would be to create a client.conf in your .pulse dir in ~ and put the line "autospawn=no" in it. Once you are through with testing you can enable pulseaudio back.

If that is indeed so, I can use USB ALSA but not the internal TosLink of Motherboard... That I can use with PulseAudi only with cantata.
No problem using TosLink with ALSA with Strawberry !

There is another way to find out if you are using pulseaudio when using Toslink of motherboard. Mostly these are based on realtek chip. What is the output of your aplay -l command? Have you included that device in /etc/mpd.conf?
Play some music through the toslink (which you think is being played through pulseaudio). Then run the command pavucontrol (pulse audio volume control). If you don't have it, install it. Pavucontrol will display all clients that are playing music through pulseaudio in the "Playback" tab

1577640571979.png
 
Last edited:

q3cpma

Major Contributor
Joined
May 22, 2019
Messages
3,060
Likes
4,416
Location
France
You don't need to purchase a new DAC just to be sure it's playing the correct sampling rate. It will definitely play the same sampling rate as the player is telling you to, be 110% sure of that! In Linux here's how to do find out: sudo cat /proc/asound/card1/pcm0p/sub0/hw_params (credits to 24bit96.com).

I have Essence One MKii and this one has light indicators for each sampling rate. In any Linux distro I tried in the past I got the correct sampling rate (also confirmed by another user here).

As for the BitPerfect indicator, I think this is a gimmick that comes from manufacturer's ASIO driver and indicates to the listener that there's the original ASIO used for playback, so low latency etc. If you use ASIO4All I don't think you will still get the BitPerfect indicator, but worth a try.

ALSA is very good for playback, especially if you don't do any resampling or up/down converting. Windows used to be pretty low-quality in doing playback 10 or more years ago, so this is probably the reason why some manufacturers decided to add that BitPerfect light, so customers to be sure the playback is done through the original ASIO drivers.

However, real-time kernel might help if doing more that audio playback on that computer, also correct configuration of ALSA too, so perhaps this should help, especially chapter B: https://www.24bit96.com/hifi-music-server/bitperfect-linux-with-mpd.html.
I suggest you ignore real-time patches for such an application, you lose too much throughput for no real reason. My advice is: set CONFIG_PREEMPT in your kernel config and use a disk scheduler supporting ionice (use https://gitlab.com/pachoramos/io-scheduler-udev-rule to solve the I/O scheduler problem for good) to set your music player in realtime I/O priority class.
 

Sal1950

Grand Contributor
The Chicago Crusher
Forum Donor
Joined
Mar 1, 2016
Messages
14,073
Likes
16,607
Location
Central Fl
Why do you stick with Clementine?
Almost 4 years ago the lead developer told the audiophile community to go to he-l when we complained about the gstreamer tools being crippled in 1.3. Mr hatstand's exact words in responce were,
"I don't think we care about "audiophile" things."
https://github.com/clementine-player/Clementine/issues/5344#issuecomment-406633718

Thankfully after our voices fell on deaf ears on the Clementine github, Jonas forked it into Strawberry for the Linux audiophile community. It doesn't look like Clementine is being maintained any more in any case. But as a Linux audiophile I wouldn't give that package and it's dev's the time of day any more.
 
  • Like
Reactions: trl

q3cpma

Major Contributor
Joined
May 22, 2019
Messages
3,060
Likes
4,416
Location
France
Why do you stick with Clementine?
Almost 4 years ago the lead developer told the audiophile community to go to he-l when we complained about the gstreamer tools being crippled in 1.3. Mr hatstand's exact words in responce were,
"I don't think we care about "audiophile" things."
https://github.com/clementine-player/Clementine/issues/5344#issuecomment-406633718

Thankfully after our voices fell on deaf ears on the Clementine github, Jonas forked it into Strawberry for the Linux audiophile community. It doesn't look like Clementine is being maintained any more in any case. But as a Linux audiophile I wouldn't give that package and it's dev's the time of day any more.
Well, the issue's OP going on about audiophool mythology didn't help, I'm sure. In any case, why would anyone serious enough to use GNU/Linux and consider himself audiophile use something as complicated as Gstreamer? Stuff like mpd or cmus will minimize the chances of something going wrong where you don't expect it, and improve your whole understanding of the pipes your digital audio is going through.
 

Sal1950

Grand Contributor
The Chicago Crusher
Forum Donor
Joined
Mar 1, 2016
Messages
14,073
Likes
16,607
Location
Central Fl
Well, the issue's OP going on about audiophool mythology didn't help, I'm sure. In any case, why would anyone serious enough to use GNU/Linux and consider himself audiophile use something as complicated as Gstreamer? Stuff like mpd or cmus will minimize the chances of something going wrong where you don't expect it, and improve your whole understanding of the pipes your digital audio is going through.
I've been using Gstreamer backend for more years than I can remember. With media players like pre 1.3 Clementine, Strawberry, Cantata it's point and click easy to configure and has filled all my needs. Not everyone wants to build their own distro from scratch and your path can become extremely complicated.
 

q3cpma

Major Contributor
Joined
May 22, 2019
Messages
3,060
Likes
4,416
Location
France
I've been using Gstreamer backend for more years than I can remember. With media players like pre 1.3 Clementine, Strawberry, Cantata it's point and click easy to configure and has filled all my needs. Not everyone wants to build their own distro from scratch and your path can become extremely complicated.
Not THAT hard. Both mentioned players have tons of well made tutorials to get started, and cmus doesn't even need one. Really, simplicity is the key to predictability, here.
On another note, when I was still a GNU/Linux beginner, I used Quodlibet and found it very nice.
 
OP
P

PenguinMusic

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Joined
Dec 20, 2019
Messages
622
Likes
368
I've been using Gstreamer backend for more years than I can remember. With media players like pre 1.3 Clementine, Strawberry, Cantata it's point and click easy to configure and has filled all my needs. Not everyone wants to build their own distro from scratch and your path can become extremely complicated.

I must be blind but in Cantata I have literally NO OPTION to set-up the backend I use.
I have been though ALL the Settings and... nothing :-(

And I am just giving it all up. I will use my old good Pioneer 300R instead.

Linux is a nightmare to configure if you're not skilled with command-line.
Like : how on earth do I confiure mpd server ?
Like : why do I always get a message that port 6600 is already in use ?
exception: Default TCP listener setup failed, but this is okay because we have a $XDG_RUNTIME_DIR listener: Failed to bind to '[::]:6600'
exception: Failed to bind socket: Address already in use


To much esoterism for me :-(

PulseAudio will do just fine... I can't heard the difference between a Sennheiser HD700 and a Philisp Fidelio X2... so how can I assume I'll be able to tell the difference between 2 players ?
 

Sal1950

Grand Contributor
The Chicago Crusher
Forum Donor
Joined
Mar 1, 2016
Messages
14,073
Likes
16,607
Location
Central Fl
Yes you are right about Cantata, a bit perfect configuration has to be done under the hood.
But if you go back to my post #16 I put up a picture of Strawberry configuration.
You would set it just like mine except of the Device. The drop list will probably automatically show you the device to use.
cprogramer is walking you thru it in #65 and later.
 

monkeyboy

Active Member
Joined
Jan 8, 2019
Messages
239
Likes
214
Cantata is an mpd client, mpd uses a client server model. So you configure mpd for the output and Cantata just sits on top of mpd managing the music. The mpd config file is pretty straightforward, but you do need to edit it manually.

The only issue I have had with mpd is a bad tag causing the database update to hang, but it was pretty easy to diagnose....

I have used Strawberry in the past with SUSE, but it seems to crash with Mint...Amarok is the KDE player very much like Clementine and Strawberry and seems to work fine with Mint, you might consider giving it a try.

bit perfect is nice, but having some recent experiences with REW and room equalization, being "bit perfect" is no longer a big concern for me, a lot of other stuff has orders of magnitude more impact on the sound of the system....
 
OP
P

PenguinMusic

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Joined
Dec 20, 2019
Messages
622
Likes
368
Yes you are right about Cantata, a bit perfect configuration has to be done under the hood.
But if you go back to my post #16 I put up a picture of Strawberry configuration.
You would set it just like mine except of the Device. The drop list will probably automatically show you the device to use.
cprogramer is walking you thru it in #65 and later.
Hi,
The problem is : I can configure the mpd.conf file as I want : it has literally ZERO effect on the way MPD is running !
I am still using PulseAudio (as has been said, I can tell, because I can control volume with the OS controls).
So I am with a fucked up MPD server.

If I check the status, here's the output :
déc. 29 21:33:27 MANJARO-PENGUIN mpd[19483]: output: No 'audio_output' defined in config file
déc. 29 21:33:27 MANJARO-PENGUIN mpd[19483]: output: Attempt to detect audio output device
déc. 29 21:33:27 MANJARO-PENGUIN mpd[19483]: output: Attempting to detect a alsa audio device
déc. 29 21:33:27 MANJARO-PENGUIN mpd[19483]: output: Successfully detected a alsa audio device

Why is it saying that there's no "audio-output" defined ?
Stupid thing...

Anyways, I've spent too much time on this for a miserable result.
So I am now restoring the sytem as it was 10 days ago : no audio player or nothing.
Will just use Lollypop with PulseAudio and that will be good enough.

Thanks a lot for your help and sorry for the wasted time.

Regards.
 
Last edited:
OP
P

PenguinMusic

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Joined
Dec 20, 2019
Messages
622
Likes
368
Hi,

OK...

2 things to consider with MPD and Cantata.

First thing is : MPD is superbly easy to configure with Cantata if you say that you just want to use it locally.
But if you want it to be used as a real "remote" server that can be accessed by several people, it's a whole other story.
And it requires some more skills...
As I don't want to waste more time on this, I haven't digged deeper to find out how it has to be done.
The only problem with this is that it implies you use Cantata as it seems the other GUI players aren't able to play files locally only.

Second thing is, I have been totally unable to configure it with the mpd.conf file.
Whatever the settings, it did obviously not load them. The sound output was still decided by the OS, not the server.
Needless to say that I did not have ALSA but PulseAudio...
So what I did is probably stupid. I simply installed JACK and configured it to be used as a dummy PulseAudio output over TosLink.
I then selected the jacksink output in the OS settings and launched Cantata with no conf file at all (except the default one).
There you go => Dummy PulseAudio redirected by JACK to ALSA over TosLink.
Job done... I think I use ALSA as sound is not controlled over OS anymore and I used a direct bridge between Jack and ALSA.

Now I'll perform some comparative "feature" and abilities of the differnet players...

Thanks a lot for your help.
 
Top Bottom