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PostPosted: May 12th, 2021, 11:20 pm 
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Grover Gardner wrote:
mix4fix wrote:
What did he get?


The Andover Audio Songbird.


I looked at it. Isn't it missing some USBs? The one is for power, so how do you connect USB to it?

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PostPosted: May 12th, 2021, 11:35 pm 
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mix4fix wrote:
Grover Gardner wrote:
mix4fix wrote:
What did he get?


The Andover Audio Songbird.


I looked at it. Isn't it missing some USBs? The one is for power, so how do you connect USB to it?


There's no USB output, only optical.


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PostPosted: May 13th, 2021, 1:50 am 
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So you can't just connect a USB drive and stream audio?

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PostPosted: May 13th, 2021, 9:26 am 
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mix4fix wrote:
So you can't just connect a USB drive and stream audio?


No, it only streams from wifi sources. If you have a NAS with Plex or Bubbleup or some other DLNA/UPnP server installed you can stream your own music collection. But there is no connection for an external drive.


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PostPosted: May 13th, 2021, 10:04 am 
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Steve,

The best way to use these low-power renderers (endpoints) based on small SBCs, including the Allo USB Signature, is to have it connect across the network to a server that will stream the files to endpoint. The last thing you want to do is burden a weak CPU and limited installed (and not upgradable) memory with the load of having to access attached disc storage and manage a database, at the same time the data is being streamed via USB to the DAC. Ideally, you want as few processes on the renderer as possible for best results.

David


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PostPosted: May 19th, 2021, 6:40 pm 
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Grover, tell Jim I received the USBridge Sig. today, and thank him again. Now to get it running ;)

Roscoe

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PostPosted: May 19th, 2021, 8:08 pm 
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Roscoe Primrose wrote:
Grover, tell Jim I received the USBridge Sig. today, and thank him again. Now to get it running ;)

Roscoe


Great, I'll let him know.


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PostPosted: June 14th, 2021, 12:06 pm 
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Grover Gardner wrote:
The one isssue with the Allo is the ethernet driver, which is tricky if you want to stream all the way up to DSD. The current versions of Moode and Volumio ahve the correct driver and work fine. In gentooplayer, the standard kernel works fine, but some of the RT kernels do not. The latest version of DietPi also works.

For most of us the setup would not be a challenge, but Jim quickly loses patience with computer/network issues.


At this point, I can see where Jim got frustrated. I've spent a good part of the last couple days playing with it, and I can get it playing PCM just fine up through 24/192, but DSD64 & DSD128 have low level static mixed in with the music when played back... Same symptoms with a minimal install of raspberrypi OS (formerly raspian) and both the version of DietPi that's available on the allo downloads page, and the much more recent version on the dietpi website. I have yet to get a response from the web GUI on any distro....

On another note, I think the cooling is inadequate as well. Every time you ask it to do anything other than stream music, it lights up the hi-temp icon on the monitor, and it's running 53C CPU temp when idle, which is 18C higher than the CPU in the Wyse 5070 that's currently streaming..

Roscoe

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PostPosted: June 14th, 2021, 12:45 pm 
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53C is not that bad for a Raspberry Pi. It should step down to a lower speed automatically to keep the CPU within safe limits. Not sure if heatsinking/fan cooling the CPU is possible on the Compute module.

However, I think part of the problem is the Compute module used is likely based on the RPi3 hardware, not the much faster RPi4, and not sure if the I/O is therefore hampered by the same issues as the RPi3B with respect to a USB Ethernet implementation on a shared bus. I though Allo did some customization though, particularly on the USB output side, I would hesitate to attach anything USB related (like a disk drive) to the unit. This is a simple, single purpose unit intended for headless operation.

Info from the Product Guide from the Compute Module 3+

Thermals
The BCM2837 SoC employs DVFS (Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling) on the core voltage.
When the processor is idle (low CPU utilisation), it will reduce the core frequency and voltage to reduce
current draw and heat output. When the core utilisation exceeds a certain threshold the core votlage
is increased and the core frequency is boosted to the maximum working frerquency of 1.2GHz. The
voltage and frequency are throttled back when the CPU load reduces back to an ’idle’ level OR when
the silicon temperature as measured by the on-chip temperature sensor exceeds 80C (thermal throttling).
A designer must pay careful attention to the thermal design of products using the CM3+ so that
performance is not artificially curtailed due to the processor thermal throttling, as the Quad ARM
complex in the BCM2837 can generate significant heat output under load.
10.1 Temperature Range
The operating temperature range of the module is set by the lowest maximum and highest minimum of
any of the components used.
The eMMC and LPDDR2 have the narrowest range, these are rated for -25 to +80 degrees Celsius.
Therefore the nominal range for the CM3+ and CM3+ Lite is -25C to +80C.
However, this range is the maximum for the silicon die; therefore, users would have to take into account
the heat generated when in use and make sure this does not cause the temperature to exceed 80 degrees
Celsius.

David


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PostPosted: June 14th, 2021, 1:52 pm 
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Roscoe Primrose wrote:
Grover Gardner wrote:
The one isssue with the Allo is the ethernet driver, which is tricky if you want to stream all the way up to DSD. The current versions of Moode and Volumio ahve the correct driver and work fine. In gentooplayer, the standard kernel works fine, but some of the RT kernels do not. The latest version of DietPi also works.

For most of us the setup would not be a challenge, but Jim quickly loses patience with computer/network issues.


At this point, I can see where Jim got frustrated. I've spent a good part of the last couple days playing with it, and I can get it playing PCM just fine up through 24/192, but DSD64 & DSD128 have low level static mixed in with the music when played back... Same symptoms with a minimal install of raspberrypi OS (formerly raspian) and both the version of DietPi that's available on the allo downloads page, and the much more recent version on the dietpi website. I have yet to get a response from the web GUI on any distro....

On another note, I think the cooling is inadequate as well. Every time you ask it to do anything other than stream music, it lights up the hi-temp icon on the monitor, and it's running 53C CPU temp when idle, which is 18C higher than the CPU in the Wyse 5070 that's currently streaming..

Roscoe


Well, we didn't even get that far. Just getting it set up was too much for him.

What DAC and software player are you using? I don't have any problem connecting to any of the web guis.

DietPi uses GMRenderer as the renderer, and it won't do DSD on the Allo. Gentooplayer works fine but it isn't free, though you can get a free trial. Moode Audio works okay, IIRC. I'll do some tests this evening. Volumio *used* to work fine but the new distro won't recognize the clean USB output. I'll dig around and see if I can find an older distro that works.

So, yes, it's a bit frustrating. It's the ethernet drivers required for the Allo board that are the main problem. A standard RPi distro won't work very well. The Gentooplayer developer works very hard to accomodate the Allo and has a specific build for it.

I'll play around a bit more tonight.


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