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Topic: Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS (Read 89654 times) previous topic - next topic
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Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

Call for testers!

Daphile is an audiophile class music server & player OS – targeted to dedicated headless PC.

Features
  • Headless music server OS
  • Bitperfect and gapless playback of common audio formats up to 192kHz/24bit
  • Automatic configuration of music player for each audio device
  • Multiplayer support (eg. multiple USB DACs)
  • CD ripping with automatic metadata tagging and cover art
  • Supports external file servers as music source (CIFS, NFS, sshfs & ftp)
  • Easy configuration and installation through the web interface
  • WiFi hotspot support (if compatible hardware exists)
  • Software update via web interface
  • Whole system image ISO-file is below 200MB

Daphile is based on the open source Squeezebox Server, SqueezePlay and Linux.
Since Daphile is used and configured completely via the web interface the user is not required to have any Linux skills.

www.daphile.com

Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

Reply #1
Which attributes make a player 'audiophile class'?

Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

Reply #2
What license does your project have?

Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

Reply #3
Which attributes make a player 'audiophile class'?


Looking over the features list, it may be someone who just wants to listen to music and not spend too much time with settings and software.

Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

Reply #4
Which is often not what self-proclaimed audiophiles do. They tend to finick with settings/placement/equipment more than anyone else.

Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

Reply #5
Which attributes make a player 'audiophile class'?

Good question.

First of all Daphile is “only” software (familiar comment from HW guys ;-) so I limit the answer to that scope. If a software solution is capable of giving the bitperfect and gapless playback stream (without disruptions or at least very minimal) to hardware using the audiophile class input file formats then I would say that software is completely neutral in respect to audio playback quality. And that would be my main criteria for 'audiophile class' qualification.

Another main target in the development of Daphile is convenience. It should be easy to install, setup and use. I'm not sure if this fits to 'audiophile class' qualification ;-). For example connecting the USB DAC to Daphile PC should be as simple as connecting a CD player to amplifier – no complicated software installations and configurations required. Daphile is more for those audiophiles who enjoy more the music listening that setting up and configuring the system which is by the way also very nice hobby.

The development of Daphile continues with these main targets.

Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

Reply #6
What license does your project have?

I haven't decided yet.

Daphile is mostly based on open source (about 200 different packages). Everything that I have contributed by myself is proprietary and closed source.


Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

Reply #8
audiophile class input file formats


What are these?

The best that's available.

Lossless format with different sampling rates and sample sizes. Minimum CD quality 44.1kHz 16bit. Different container formats: flac, wav, aiff, wv, ... (DRM free)

Daphile does not support everything. DSD formats are still missing - I'll try to work on that.

Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

Reply #9
Interesting, I might take a look at this using a VM. Doe sit work in a VM? I guess it's not that easy to make it ARM compatible?
It's only audiophile if it's inconvenient.

Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

Reply #10
Interesting, I might take a look at this using a VM. Doe sit work in a VM? I guess it's not that easy to make it ARM compatible?

It works at least in VMPlayer (would recommend) and VirtualBox (and QEMU). In any VM there might be problems with sound quality, guest OS timing is not so accurate.

Currently I focus on 64bit x86 platform (I think Atom N2600 with its max TDP 3.5W is really nice for this purpose).

Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

Reply #11
Interesting, I might take a look at this using a VM. Doe sit work in a VM? I guess it's not that easy to make it ARM compatible?

It works at least in VMPlayer (would recommend) and VirtualBox (and QEMU). In any VM there might be problems with sound quality, guest OS timing is not so accurate.

Currently I focus on 64bit x86 platform (I think Atom N2600 with its max TDP 3.5W is really nice for this purpose).

Looks very interesting. I think if you could port it to ARM the RasberryPi community would love it.

Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

Reply #12
Does it take in any account the "composer" tag, which is essential in managing classical tracks and libraries?
... I live by long distance.

Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

Reply #13
Does it take in any account the "composer" tag, which is essential in managing classical tracks and libraries?

By default it does not. However there is an option to include composer, conductor, band/orchestra into the artist list for browsing and search.

I have read (links below) that by using some third party plugins for Squeezebox server it is possible implement something better but I don't have any experience on those by myself.
Link 1
Link 2

Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

Reply #14
New test release available at www.daphile.com!

CHANGES on August 9th 2013:
  • BUG FIX for network manager. The bug had previously prevented the operation of some ethernet and wireless adapters (thanks to Luca N. for reporting the problem).
  • Ethernet MAC address and Wake-on-LAN support reported at Info page (WOL is enabled if HW and BIOS setup supports it)
  • Some other minor changes

Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

Reply #15
How is replaygain incorporated?
PANIC: CPU 1: Cache Error (unrecoverable - dcache data) Eframe = 0x90000000208cf3b8
NOTICE - cpu 0 didn't dump TLB, may be hung

Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

Reply #16
How is replaygain incorporated?

Replay gain setting can be found separately for each player from:
Settings -> Advanced Media Server Settings -> Player -> Audio -> Volume Adjustment/Replay Gain.

However the CD ripper of Daphile does not currently add replay gain tags into the ripped files. The reason for this is that I don't personally like them. First of all metaflac is not compatible with high resolution files and the head room of standard replay gain (ReplayGain wiki: "ReplayGain nominally plays at -14 dB relative to full-scale leaving 14 dB of headroom for reproduction of dynamic material") is not enough for many high resolution files. I think there is no point to use replay gain unless all the material (incl. network streams) is normalized to same level.

I have used "EBU Recommendation R 128" based loudness calculation (23dB headroom recommended) for my own music library.

Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

Reply #17
Why can't you just add it as an option? Many of us use RG. Just because you personally don't like RG doesn't mean you shouldn't implement it.

Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

Reply #18
First, metaflac (1.3.0) works fine with high resolution, stereo files. Second, the problem is not "high resolution", it's "high dynamic range". If you feel like there's not enough headroom, you could easily add a preamp option to reduce everything by X dB before applying Replaygain.

Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

Reply #19
Why can't you just add it as an option? Many of us use RG. Just because you personally don't like RG doesn't mean you shouldn't implement it.

I will add it at some stage. I didn't mean to sound such an arrogant - sorry. It just have not got the priority yet (and clever enough idea for implementation).

First, metaflac (1.3.0) works fine with high resolution, stereo files. Second, the problem is not "high resolution", it's "high dynamic range". If you feel like there's not enough headroom, you could easily add a preamp option to reduce everything by X dB before applying Replaygain.

You are absolutely right about "high dynamic range" causing the problem (possible clipping if only 14dB headroom). I'll consider the preamp option and also upgrading flac to 1.3.0. Thanks.

Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

Reply #20
New test release available at www.daphile.com!

CHANGES on August 17th 2013:
Initial DSD file support:
- DSF (.dsf) and DSDIFF (.dff) supported (both DSD64 and DSD128)
- no native DSD-over-USB (DoP) yet. Coming soon - have to get DAC with DoP support.
- no support for DST compressed files (didn't find any samples)
- Known issue: "Clear library and rescan everything" rescan does not include DSD files. "Look for new and changed audio files" rescan works.
Linux kernel upgrade from 3.6 to 3.8 series.

Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

Reply #21
New test release available! CHANGES on August 21st 2013:
  • Support for native DSD playback with DSD-over-PCM (verified only for DSD64 with Benchmark DAC2 HGC). Enable it from Audio Settings for the DAC that supports it.
  • DSD file "Clear library and rescan everything" problem fixed
  • Replay Gain calculation added to the CD ripping process
  • Some other minor bug fixes and changes
Update via your Daphile web UI or download from www.daphile.com.

Any feedback is warmly welcomed! Now especially any DSD-over-PCM experiences with different DACs and DSD128.

Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

Reply #22
New test release available!

CHANGES on August 28th 2013:
  • Bug fix release - no new features
  • Wireless networking fixes: recover from initial scan failure, simultaneous client/hotspot operation fixed
  • Sound format conversions improved for different audio devices (use plughw as fallback)
  • Some other bug fixes and minor changes

Update via your Daphile web UI or download from www.daphile.com.

Any feedback is warmly welcomed!

Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

Reply #23
New version available!

CHANGES on September 6th 2013:
  • Storage configurations improved
  • Support for LVM and RAID volumes (not for DaphileBoot or DaphileData)
  • Samba file server configuration support for internal drives
  • CD ripping configuration options added for automatic start, disc eject, ripping target disk, CD drive offset and to disable ripping service
  • Support for Mytek Digital Stereo192-DSD DAC (thanks to KahLeong for testing)
  • DSD playback fix for HW with max rate above 192kHz
  • Sample rate limit configuration added
  • Kernel audio module parameter configurations added to web UI
  • Other minor changes and bug fixes

Update via your Daphile web UI or download from www.daphile.com.

Any feedback is warmly welcomed!

 

Daphile - Audiophile Music Server & Player OS

Reply #24
"ReplayGain nominally plays at -14 dB relative to full-scale leaving 14 dB of headroom for reproduction of dynamic material"

...

I have used "EBU Recommendation R 128" based loudness calculation (23dB headroom recommended) for my own music library.
I think you have been confused by different units. The EBU R128 -23LUFS target level leaves 5dB more headroom than the 89dB ReplayGain target level, not the extra 9dB that you think it does.

However, whereas EBU R128 is designed to be used with a fixed -23LUFS target, all decent ReplayGain player implementations allow the listener to adjust the target volume, and have an option to avoid clipping, because the original ReplayGain proposal specified these things.

Hence it is trivial to run ReplayGain with the same or even more headroom than EBU R128.
It is also trivial to run ReplayGain with less headroom (as little heaedroom as you want = as loud as you want) while also pushing the headroom up automatically (i.e. the volume down automatically) for tracks and/or albums that need it (= clipping prevention).

You can do these things with some EBU R128 implementations too, especially the ones where EBU R128 is used as a drop-in replacement for the original ReplayGain loudness calculation - but these things originate in the ReplayGain specification, and are not in the EBU R128 specification.

Cheers,
David.