OLD: mpdPup - Simplified MPD Music Server/Jukebox - v0.9.2

[ldolse]

Hi audiosm, here are the instructions to fix this - note I still haven't personally tested this fix myself, another user did this investigation for me.

Enter the following command at the CLI:

Code: Select all

nano /bin/mount

Press ctrl-W after nano comes up to search the file. Type the following into the search and press enter:

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mount-FULL -n

and replace it with

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mount-FULL

You're basically deleting the -n. Once you've done that press ctrl-x to exit the file and again press Y to save the changes.

Once that's done, go through the basic setup with the mpdPup wizard. After the wizard is complete, type 'reboot' and when the system comes back online MPD should start up and find your music.

If you'd rather do this with a mouse and keyboard you can launch xwindows by typing 'startx' from the command line and then launch Leafpad which is a graphical text editor to edit the files.

edited to simplify instructions.

[PET-240]

Hey Idolse,

The WMA thing doesn't bother me, has just been thrown in through WinMC so not a quality rip, can you point to a guide that I can use to get the metadata embedded in the flac files or the library? or in which way is the best for the file/folder format or layout so it is picked up by MPod etc?
Is there a standard?
Will ask the MPod man his thoughts as If I can do it while ripping makes my life easier!

Regards Alix, I used an old modem/router with wireless and set up a mini network for config so I could get it running easy. Putty with tunes.local works fine. as a hint for others, in putty, when you have the terminal box open and a solid green rectangle cursor, it is connected, when just the outline it is not......

Only the one LED works and it is solid on all the time, will see if I can find the other guide for Voyage on Alix and see what he does as apparently he has one that does the heartbeat when booted.

Hope to try tonight via spdif to ensure the WaveIO is working, i figure if SPDIF is then the I2S converter section would be too.

Thanks Idolse! nicely done with the wizards!

[PET-240]

Just found your comment on the Computer Audiophile site in regards to the guide for embedding the art.

Any further thoughts?

Thanks,

Drew.

[ldolse]

Since you're on Windows my recommendation would be to buy dBpoweramp:
http://www.dbpoweramp.com/
While the rip quality will be the same with EAC and dBpoweramp, dBpoweramp is much more flexible in how it rips (e.g. use burst ripping mode and only use secure ripping when AccurateRip fails), as well as better metadata support (higher quality sources, intelligent merging), and the ability to create a folder.jpg file with every rip as well as embedding the album art in the files.

If you want a really well written and thought out discussion refer to the guide on ComputerAudiophile:
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/conte ... thodology/

Following those guides will probably set things up the best to work with MPoD - the main thing you want is for all albums to each reside in their own single folder - that's how MPoD determines an album is a compilation. If you screw up the ripping settings it may group the folder structure as:
track artist -> album -> audio file
While you want one of these two structures:
album artist -> album -> all audio files for the album
compilation folder -> album -> all audio files for the album

This may require using a 'various artists' album artist while ripping for true compilations - I didn't solve that particular problem while ripping but used iTunes instead - dBpoweramp probably has a flag to flag it as a compilation as well, and that would also do the trick.

I'm not sure which discussion about folder art you mean on computeraudiophile - if you give me a link I can see if there is anything else worth mentioning.

[PET-240]

link for your persual,
http://www.computeraudiophile.com/conte ... ic-server/

Also I have Macs as well.........possibly one of the few.......but not.

Thoughts?

[ldolse]

For Mac users I'd recommend using XLD:
http://tmkk.pv.land.to/xld/index_e.html

I like XLD better than EAC as it handles metadata better in general, and if you have non-ascii/unicode metadata XLD does a better job with it than dBpoweramp, but it doesn't support automatically creating folder.jpg which is something you really want your ripper to do (for MPoD and other mpd clients). XLD is also not terribly intuitive to use, but it's ok once you figure it out.

Overall I'd still give the nod to dBpoweramp unless you're either trying to save money or insistent on sticking with open source software.

[audiosm]

Hello Idolse and thanks very much.
Music on my external hard drive using ntfs is up and working so can confirm the settings you sent work ready for the next version .

I made a WiFi connection using a fixed IP at mpd to Gnome running on a second laptop, the connection times out intermittently, however it auto reconnects, and cannot damp my current enthusiasm, best look at my network later.

The sound quality (the number 1 priority) on initial listening is better than my previous supposedly bit perfect windows player, unless my judgment is colored by the success of getting it going ? I need plenty more listening time.

Very Happy - Thanks again for your great project and assistance.

[ldolse]

Great! Glad to hear it's working for you - keep me posted on your sound quality impressions once you've got some more listening time in.

By Gnome I assume you mean GMPC, a bit odd that it's disconnecting - I'm actually going to include GMPC in the next release, and it's been running fine. That said in my case it's on the same machine, so it's possible that there is some network issue on your side as you suspect.

[wlowes]

I just installed on an Alix for the first time. I know system works as I have been using VoyageMPD. Uses Alix/WDlivebook/WaveIO USB.

Install of MPDPUP was perfect.

the sample sound during install was good. Found the NAS, and updated the DB.

GMPC client connects/sees db and plays WAV files. No problem.

But no sound. I know alsa comes up muted on most systems. This is what it feels like. How do I unmute? Alsamixer not found.

All suggestions welcome. I did change decoder { plugin "sndfile" enabled "no" in mpd.conf as I believe this is required for WaveIO.

thanks all,
Walter

[ldolse]

Strange, especially since Pet-240/Drew had no issues with the WaveIO.

Disabling sndfile is only required of older MPD releases - this was due to a bug that was resolved last august/september.

The waveIO showed up as a sound device when the setup wizard ran, correct? When the wizard asked you to play a test file did it make any noise?

It's also strange that you're saying alsamixer wasn't found - it's most definitely installed as I use it relatively frequently. Can you post exactly what the error message is when you type the command? It shouldn't be coming up muted - I have noticed with some sound devices it won't always reboot at 100% volume when the hardware volume control is enabled, but in general it makes noise.

Edit: I see you say the sample sound was good - that would indicate the WaveIO was working during the initial boot, almost wondering if it had some issue on the reboot.

edit2: Which volume control option did you select with the setup wizard? Disabling the volume would be a way to bypass alsamixer altogether.

Things to help me debug would be to paste the output of:
alsamixer
aplay -l
ps -e
ls /mnt/music

Thanks.

[PET-240]

Just been having an argument with MPod, I found that the iOmega drive Im using on my "network", its standalone.... needs to have booted before the Alix gets started, in a normal situation this would not be an issue as the NAS or whatever would be on all the time.
Still sorting the coverart thing with MPod, in regards to the webserver you build into this, how do I get Mpod to see the local folder for coverart? Do I need to turn on the webserver through Putty? What would its address be?
I have bodgied up an indicator cable for the wave, I get indication of 44.1 output and a streaming output, now to bodgy a spdif cable......

Can you advise re the webserver please Idolse?

Thanks,

Drew.

[PET-240]

as requested. hope its right....


VESA BIOS Extensions not detected.
VESA BIOS Extensions not detected.
# alsamixer
cannot open mixer: No such file or directory
# aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 1: L20 [Luckit USB Audio 2.0], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
# ps -e
PID TTY TIME CMD
1 ? 00:00:02 busybox
2 ? 00:00:00 kthreadd
3 ? 00:00:00 ksoftirqd/0
4 ? 00:00:00 kworker/0:0
5 ? 00:00:00 kworker/u:0
6 ? 00:00:00 migration/0
7 ? 00:00:00 cpuset
8 ? 00:00:00 khelper
9 ? 00:00:00 sync_supers
10 ? 00:00:00 bdi-default
11 ? 00:00:00 kblockd
12 ? 00:00:00 ata_sff
13 ? 00:00:00 khubd
14 ? 00:00:00 kworker/0:1
15 ? 00:00:00 kswapd0
16 ? 00:00:00 ksmd
17 ? 00:00:00 fsnotify_mark
18 ? 00:00:00 xfs_mru_cache
19 ? 00:00:00 xfslogd
20 ? 00:00:00 xfsdatad
21 ? 00:00:00 xfsconvertd
23 ? 00:00:00 scsi_eh_0
24 ? 00:00:00 scsi_eh_1
25 ? 00:00:00 kworker/u:1
26 ? 00:00:00 kworker/u:2
27 ? 00:00:00 kpsmoused
303 ? 00:00:00 flush-8:0
434 ? 00:00:00 loop1
537 ? 00:00:00 loop0
683 ? 00:00:00 flush-7:1
768 ? 00:00:00 udevd
886 ? 00:00:00 kworker/0:2
932 ? 00:00:00 kworker/0:3
933 ? 00:00:00 kworker/0:4
1517 tty1 00:00:00 sh
1522 tty2 00:00:00 getty
1525 ttyS0 00:00:00 getty
1619 ? 00:00:00 avahi-daemon
1620 ? 00:00:00 avahi-daemon
1630 ? 00:00:00 sshd
1651 ? 00:00:00 udevd
1656 ? 00:00:00 udevd
1685 ? 00:00:00 cifsd
1695 ? 00:00:08 mpd
1701 ? 00:00:00 lighttpd
1710 ? 00:00:00 sshd
1715 pts/0 00:00:00 sh
1799 pts/0 00:00:00 ps-FULL
# ls /mnt/music
Audio Adrenaline Guy Sebastian Matchbox 20
Brooke Fraser Jars of Clay Michael Bublé
Creedence Clearwater Revival Jason Upton Naturally 7
dc Talk Jet SONICFLOOd
DefaultPicture.png Jewel The Corrs
Delirious- Johnny Cash Third Day
Delta Goodrem Leigh Nash Third Day Flac
Eric Clapton-B.B. King Lenny Kravitz Thumbs.db
Francesca Battistelli Mandy Moore Van Morrison


Let me know what I did wrong if this isn"t what you need!

Thanks,

Drew.

[PET-240]

I'm guessing you figured I didnt make music either...

However, I am assuming that Yamaha called their SPDIF inputs coaxial and put them under the Toslink ports........

So if you dont find something it may not be mpdpup, though Im curious why alsamixer isn't found, I did select bit perfect, no volume control in the wizard....

Thanks Idolse!

[ldolse]

That error isn't that you don't have alsamixer, it's just returning 'can't open mixer', which means it's not finding a top level/default mixer. That error I've actually seen before - my Audiophilleo does the exact same thing, but all the other sound cards I've tested with have been fine, the Wave is the first that's done the same thing as Audiophilleo.

Type the following to get to your mixer:

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alsamixer -c 1

Then use the up arrow to bring the volume to 100%, and escape to exit.

If you disabled the volume in the initial setup wizard I believe this shouldn't matter, but if you did enable the volume I think it makes a difference, I don't quite remember all the variations I played with before. (edit - I see you set it to be disabled, so really not sure exactly what's going on - hopefully getting into the mixer as described above will resolve it)

Note if you did select the hardware volume control odds are that it's broken - that was the case with the Audiophilleo - I'll be reworking how the hardware volume is configured by the wizards. Basically you need the following lines in mpd.conf to get the mpd volume control working correctly (in the alsa sound device config section at the bottom):

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        mixer_device        "hw:1"
        mixer_type        "hardware"

Regarding folder.jpg, go into MPoD's settings, click 'MPD Server', then drill down into the server configuration you made. Scroll to the bottom, and where it says 'local cover art' add this url

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http://<your Alix IP address>/

You could also give tunes.local instead of the IP a shot if that worked for you before.

In the box below that use the cover art filename convention you're using inside each album folder, e.g. folder.jpg.

After looking at my MPoD config it looks like I was also having problems with it discovering tunes.local, I have it configured to use the IP. On my iPad with MPaD it has no problems discovering tunes.local automatically, so I think something might be broken in MPoD, need to ping the developer on that.

[ldolse]

One other thing to debug for me - do this before you mess with alsamixer if you can, I want to see how it was set up by default.

Type this at the CLI and paste the output:

Code: Select all

amixer -c 1

I suspect that it may be booting up muted, though that means I need to figure out why the sound test was working. Anyway the theory is from this Arch wiki article:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Alsa

If my theory is right I'll use the setup scripts to have amixer unmute the card.

[wlowes]

Turns out is was the alsamixer mute. I had the same on VoyageMPD, but here could not launch alsamixer. Your command "amixer -c 1" showed the gui. While volume was at max, each channel is muted. To unmute, you have to go to each channel and toggle mute with the 'M' key. Voila! Sound. First impression is sound is very good. It is different from VoyageMPD on same hdw. Not a lot, but slight different presentation. Both are great. At first impression, I think mpdpup might be a little more laid back and flowing. Will do some critical listening to really get to know it, and then pop the VoyageMPD CF back in and see if there really is a difference or just my imagination. mpdpup is an absolute winner in ease of use. I suspect it will have the edge on SQ due to its smaller footprint.

Thanks for the help and for the wonderful mpdpup!!

Here is the output requested from Alix for completeness. I have to go back thru it and make sure I get everything back to original config to really hear it.

# alsamixer
cannot open mixer: No such file or directory
#
# aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 1: L20 [Luckit USB Audio 2.0], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Subdevices: 0/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
#
# ps -e
PID TTY TIME CMD
1 ? 00:00:02 busybox
2 ? 00:00:00 kthreadd
3 ? 00:00:00 ksoftirqd/0
4 ? 00:00:00 kworker/0:0
5 ? 00:00:00 kworker/u:0
6 ? 00:00:00 migration/0
7 ? 00:00:00 cpuset
8 ? 00:00:00 khelper
9 ? 00:00:00 sync_supers
10 ? 00:00:00 bdi-default
11 ? 00:00:00 kblockd
12 ? 00:00:00 ata_sff
13 ? 00:00:00 khubd
14 ? 00:00:00 kworker/0:1
15 ? 00:00:00 kswapd0
16 ? 00:00:00 ksmd
17 ? 00:00:00 fsnotify_mark
18 ? 00:00:00 xfs_mru_cache
19 ? 00:00:00 xfslogd
20 ? 00:00:00 xfsdatad
21 ? 00:00:00 xfsconvertd
23 ? 00:00:00 scsi_eh_0
24 ? 00:00:00 scsi_eh_1
25 ? 00:00:00 kworker/u:1
26 ? 00:00:00 kworker/u:2
27 ? 00:00:00 kpsmoused
298 ? 00:00:00 flush-8:0
428 ? 00:00:00 loop1
518 ? 00:00:00 loop0
664 ? 00:00:00 flush-7:1
749 ? 00:00:00 udevd
884 ? 00:00:00 kworker/0:2
891 ? 00:00:00 kworker/0:3
1425 tty1 00:00:00 sh
1427 tty2 00:00:00 getty
1430 ttyS0 00:00:00 getty
1528 ? 00:00:00 avahi-daemon
1529 ? 00:00:00 avahi-daemon
1540 ? 00:00:00 sshd
1561 ? 00:00:00 udevd
1567 ? 00:00:00 udevd
1595 ? 00:00:01 cifsd
1605 ? 00:00:02 mpd
1611 ? 00:00:00 lighttpd
1620 ? 00:00:00 sshd
1625 pts/0 00:00:00 sh
1709 pts/0 00:00:00 ps-FULL
#
# ls /mnt/music
MPD Pictures Shared Videos Temporary Items
MusicLib Shared Music Software Videos
Network Trash Folder Shared Pictures Stereo Project
#
┌──────────────────────────── AlsaMixer v1.0.24.2 ─────────────────────────────

[wlowes]

OK, this is great and all is working perfectly.

PET-240,
Once you get mpdpup making beautiful sound, may I tempt you with some SQ tweaks. I don't pretend to suggest this is perfect, its a work in progress.
My WaveIO has a very good power supply which already gives it a pretty good sound stage. mpdpup as configured by default makes great sound on the WaveIO/Alix combo. In my room its 10 feet behind the speakers and very nice. It is very analogous to CICS/CPLAY on an optimized WinXP.

To my ear on my system (YMMV) there are a couple of things that open up the sound and produce an expansive 3D stage.
buffer_before_play "100%"
opens up the sound

The following explodes the sound stage. Brings it out in front of the speakers and makes it wider than the speakers. Still stays deep, but very 3D. Some may like it more or less. Seems like there is some room to experiment here.

audio_output {
type "alsa"
name "WaveIO"
period_time "21333"
fragment_size "4096"
device "hw:1,0"
buffer_time "250000"
mixer_type "none"
mixer_device "disabled"
auto_resample "no"
auto_format "no"
}

Enjoy, and lets compare notes. Enjoy the WaveIO. Awesome with mpdpup!

[ldolse]

Excellent, very happy to hear we've gotten to the bottom of this. Appreciate the comparison to Voyage, I think the two of you are the first to try it out on the Alix 2D - my embedded system testing was on another board.

I still have a lot to learn about ALSA though - of all the cards people have tried with mpdPup the Wave is the first one that exhibited this behavior. I've personally used lots of different USB DACs/Converters for testing and never run into this. So does something in the hardware actually tell ALSA how to configure the driver?

The fact that amixer -c 1 launched the GUI means I still have a problem to solve in terms of the setup scripts as well - ideally I need a way to unmute from a BASH script without popping up a GUI.

Also keep me posted as to whether the unmute survives reboots.

Drew, I saw your question about the volume control on MPoD on their blog comments - this is indeed because you disabled the mixer - if you want the volume control enabled then you can replace the mixer_device "disabled" line from wlowes config with the two lines I mentioned a few posts back. 100% volume should be bit perfect (though the WaveIO guys would need to confirm), below 100% behavior won't be bit perfect, but quality is dependent on how the WaveIO guys present their capabilities to ALSA, so you would need to check with them - some of the Converters/DACs do have very high quality dithered volume controls.

[ldolse]

@wlowes, PET-240, I think I've got an idea on how to unmute all the channels in future releases - If either of you would be willing to help beta test the next release let me know. I'm pretty confident what I want to do will work in general, but not sure if it will persist across reboots.

[PET-240]

Count me in as required!

Will hope to do the unmute thing tonight, should I do the savefs ommaond thing again to try to ensure it boots unmuted?

Thanks Isolse!