Streaming from my linux box.

[eriksson]

Since I have arsenal of PC's from 1-12 year old and run various distros ( Cent OS, Ubuntu, SuSe, Manjaro) I have noticed - out of the box, they sound differently. Even if all of them are using PulseAudio.

For example:
My main PC (AMD based homebrew) Ubuntu 20.10 used to stream from Deezer and Spotify, watch movies, youtube among other things. I have two amps connected to it. Denon AVR and Denon 1600ne stereo amp with built in DAC. Streaming via HDMI the sound is bad. Even switching to 2 ch stereo output (from 5.1) I get very low volume and not so good sound on my main speakers. However if I switch to the stereo amp I get quite decent sounding 2ch stereo. Appearing normal. I have played with settings for pulseaudio with no luck.

Another box I have has Intel i7 and runs Manjaro distro. For some reason it does much better job in the sound arena. Hdmi sounds normal (very good) and even if set to 5.1 two channel stereo sound normal as well.

Several months ago I was testing several linux boxes and comparing them to my Lenovo laptop that runs Windows 10. Then streaming from Tidal. Mind you Tidal has dedicated Windows app for streaming their high-res music. For Linux there is no such thing, only web-browser. If memory serves me I was triple booting my main computer with Ubuntu, SuSe and Centos. Ubuntu and Centos sounded normal back then but the Windows laptop did sound better. However for some reason the Suse distro was the winner in this highly subjective test. It sounded at least as good streaming from browser as did the laptop streaming some "high res" from Tidal.

The moral of the story? I am not sure there is one, but perhaps one shouldn't take for granted your PC is doing the job when streaming to your DAC.
Needless to say any input about configuring linux to deliver music streams to DAC's without screwing them up would be appreciated.

 

[dasdoing]

try this https://github.com/Mastermindzh/tidal-hifi

(I don't use Tidal personaly)

 

[Deleted member 23982]

the problem with webplayers of qobuz/tidal are that, atleast in linux, you ALWAYS just get 16bit/44,1khz (or 48khz), it doesnt matter if you set the qobuz webplayer to 24bit/192khz because your browser will default to 16bit/44,1khz or 48khz, so the browser is basicly downsampling and in worst case scenarios pulseaudio is up/down sampling once again... you get pulseaudio/alsa quite nice sounding with config changes but its just a big hassle imo, tho windows sounds worse compared to optimized pulseaudio/alsa and cant be optimized much
for true bitperfect sound you will need to use something like moode

 

[fatoldgit]

Ditch pulseaudio (as in remove!!!!)

Its getting harder to find a distro (actually its not the distro but the desktop) that allows this

For example, KDE allowed it but recent editions have made pulseaudio a requirement (i.e. removing pulse means removing kde).

This assumes you arent running headless... and if you are then do a minimal install (no gui) and remove pulseaudio.

Yes you will lose your volume control in the GUI (but thats the point!!!... reducing the OS playback stack) and you use the volume control in your DAC or pre-amp.

Technically you can adjust volume via the alsa utils which should be done on startup to set it to 100%.

As I use my endpoint for music browsing (i.e. arent headless) I use Xubuntu on my end point (no disk, ram boot off USB stick etc) as Xubuntu allows pulseaudio to be removed. There are others but Xubuntu is the best I have tried (not related to sound quality per se, just ease of setup, use)

Xubuntu is also a lightweight desktop which helps.

I am sure that "commercial" pre-packaged images such a Daphile have this sorted but if you are rolling your own, remove pulseaudio.

Note I am using Slimserver/LMS (which gives me access to local files and Qobuz, Deezer etc) on my server and squeezelite on my end point so I have no experience maximising the quality of streaming content via a web browser with pulseaudio removed.


I will try that tomorrow

Peter

 

[fatoldgit]

the problem with webplayers of qobuz/tidal are that, atleast in linux, you ALWAYS just get 16bit/44,1khz (or 48khz), it doesnt matter if you set the qobuz webplayer to 24bit/192khz because your browser will default to 16bit/44,1khz or 48khz, so the browser is basicly downsampling and in worst case scenarios pulseaudio is up/down sampling once again... you get pulseaudio/alsa quite nice sounding with config changes but its just a big hassle imo, tho windows sounds worse compared to optimized pulseaudio/alsa and cant be optimized much
for true bitperfect sound you will need to use something like moode

Not an issue... remove pulseaudio, clone alsa.conf and change defaults.pcm.dmix.rate to your preferred rate.

In my case, my DAC operates at 96k max, so I use sox to upsample to 96k and have "defaults.pcm.dmix.rate 96000" in my alsa.conf clone.

On OS start up, I copy my clone over top of the base OS version and all is well.

Note, I am a retired Unix/Linux kernel guy so have been rolling my own custom audio Linux OS'es for a few years.

I am sure that "commercial" pre-packaged images such a Daphile have this sorted but if you are rolling your own, remove pulseaudio.

Note I am using Slimserver/LMS (which gives me access to local files and Qobuz, Deezer etc) on my server and squeezelite on my end point so I have no experience maximising the quality of streaming content via a web browser with pulseaudio removed.

I will try that tomorrow

Peter

 

[Deleted member 23982]

Not an issue... remove pulseaudio, clone alsa.conf and change defaults.pcm.dmix.rate to your preferred rate.

In my case, my DAC operates at 96k max, so I use sox to upsample to 96k and have "defaults.pcm.dmix.rate 96000" in my alsa.conf clone.

yes that "works" but the browser still operates at 16bit/44,1khz (or 48khz im not sure anymore) and there is no benefit of using high res in qobuz or tidal webplayer because the browser downsamples it (so you are better off just streaming cd quality (16bit) instead of 24bit)
and dmix will upsample it again

please correct me if im wrong but im pretty sure since i checked it a year or two ago, firefox and chromium (and chromium based) will just use 16bit/44,1khz (or 48khz)

unfortunaly there is no alternative for it since tidal and qobuz dont have linux apps, maybe it would be possible to install/use upnp and stream qobuz/tidal from your phone (bubbleupnp or mconnect app) to your linux machine (moode can do this natively)

 

[scherbakov_al]

Oh Gods! I'm happy with the recent discovery!
I use Fedora 38 and was looking for a convenient, practical and adequate way to play tracks from Qobuz under Linux. In Windows and MacOS there are no problems with this thanks to Audirvana. But under Linux everything is different.
Yesterday, while comparing different streaming services, using “chrome://media-internals/” I saw that Qobuz, using its online player, streams files in the declared quality. OK.

In the file ' /usr/share/pipewire/pipewire.conf ' I uncommented and changed the lines:
default.clock.rate = 192000
default.clock.allowed-rates = [ 44100 48000 88200 96000 176400 192000 352800 384000 ]
(indicated the frequencies supported by my DAC (smsl m500))

after which restart for pipewire:
' systemctl --user restart pipewire.service '

When trying to play through Chrome, the DAC switched to a frequency of 192000KHz. OK.
But I tried running Qobuz via Firefox. The DAC began to switch its frequency to the frequency of the signal broadcast from the Qobuz online player! And there is no unnecessary downsampling/upsampling! And I'm happy! The sound quality is excellent! (Chrome, it turns out, cannot switch the DAC frequency following the source frequency, as Firefox can do.)

The online player from Qobuz is convenient, practical, and attractive. It works great using Firefox on Linux! The DAC frequency follows the signal frequency!

Performance: with the player window open and music playing, processor consumption is about 40%. With the window minimized - 5-6% of my weak processor.

The only thing you can dream of is the same remote control as in Audirvana (for Android and Apple). It was very convenient!