In new version of Audiophile Linux, you don’t have to use Jack for quality playback any more and automatic sample-rate works without problems. Of course we have left Jack tools if someone wants to play with it and compare the sound. In version 3.x we are mainly using two players. Cantata and Deadbeef. There is also Ario, GMPC and old Audacious installed. Which one you will use, it depends on your preference. But to be able to play DSD files, you will have to use MPD clients like Cantata, GMPC or Ario. Both .dff and .dsf files are supported. Of course, your sound card must have DSD support. The first thing you need to know if your sound card (DAC) is visible in the system, and on which port is connected. You can find that out like this: Right click on empty desktop space to a open a menu and then go to DAC setup -> List Cards. This will list all sound cards visible in your system.
Sometimes your cards will switch places, but that’s not a problem. First we are going to introduce an easier player, our old friend from previous versions and my favorite Xmms/Winamp style player, Deadbeef. Deadbeef is a very nice player. It doesn’t have support for some metadata info (info about author or song) but it plays well. Right click on empty desktop space and find Deadbeef in the menues. Open Edit -> Preferences and select your card in Output device. Don’t use default value. Add music and play.
To be sure that your Deadbeef plays correct and don’t up-sample or down-sample, open terminal and type this command. It will probably be different on your PC. Try to replace cardX and pcmXp directories.
<server1>[~]$ cat /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/sub0/hw_params
access: MMAP_INTERLEAVED
format: S32_LE
subformat: STD
channels: 2
rate: 48000 (48000/1)
period_size: 1024
buffer_size: 16384
Some cards that don’t support high sample rates, will remain on 48000 or 44100.
If your sub0/hw_params that you get from the ‘cat’ command, are the same as on your Deadbeef player, (particularly rate numbers) you are good. Remember Jackd from previous AP-Linux versions? You can also play with period size and buffer size and see how that sounds.
If you have problems with samplerate, try to select another card in preferences. Sometimes your card will have two names in Deadbeef for one card. One will for example be called “Card1 Default audio device” and one “Card1 Front Speakers”. Changing to one of them will correct samplerate. You can also check DSP -> Resampler and Plugins -> ALSA output plugin.
That concludes the Deadbeef player. In the next section, we will talk about MPD.
Hello,
When I check the sample rate by DAC output 48k while the source file is 44.1k.
I am not doing any upsampling that I am aware of.
Is there a place I should look into so that my DAC outputs same 44.1k as the source file?
Thanks
That was the problem with versions 2.x. It should work in v3.
Has anyone know how to play iso files from sacd?
I would appreciate for any help
The only way to enjoy the exceptional quality of DSD recordings from SACD ISO files is to extract the individual tracks. The tool is called SACD extractor and is available in free download. SACD extractor is a Windows software. Unfortunately, I am not familiar with any Linux alternative. The direct playback of ISO files without extracting the individual tracks is also possible (Foobar2000 Audirvana Plus), but
playback of extracted original DSD recordings from SACD via modified MPD
on Audiophile Linux is absolutely the best musical experience I have ever heard on stereo systems.
Do I need to be concerned with the up-sampling/down-sampling you mention here if I am using MPD? Or is this only a deadbeef issue?
And what cardX and pcmXp values should I try? How can I figure out what values to use for X? (sorry if this is a dumb question)
Dan
If you use MPD, you don’t have to worry about up-sampling. CardX is the card you are using. See ‘aplay -l’ command and for pcmXp you have to guess 🙂
Hello,
by default in Deadbeef preferences internal volume set to 64 (DUMB module in plug-in tab). When I turn it to the maximum value (128), resulting volume rise up to the volume under WS 2012 R2 (Bughead Emperor player or JRiver MC20, kernel streaming) on the same hardware. My rig: SotM USB PCIex -> Berkeley Alpha USB -> Wyred4Sound DAC-2 DSDse -> Luxman P-1u -> Senn HD800.
After entering above command in the Terminal it says “Closed”
“[~]$ cat /proc/asound/card0/pcm0p/sub0/hw_params”
Closed
Hello,
I want to ask for more information to complete the installation. I’m sorry I do not have much practice with LINUX.
“CANTATA”, I could not configure “CANTATA”, should I use the single user option?
Can I connect MPDroid from Android with CANTATA in user user ?
Alternatively can I use GMPC?
I installed Gedit, but I can not open the test files. What should I configure?