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Raspberry Pi 5 hardware for music server
geoff2802:
Hi all,
New to this forum. I'm planning to set up a multi-channel music server using a Pi 5. My existing setup is 7.1 with an AV processor supporting DTS HD-MA, Dolby TrueHD, PCM and other formats. This provides DSP eg for room correction.
Requirements:
1. Stream FLAC files stored on USB hard drive connected to my network router (already using this to stream 2 channel content to Sonos).
2. Audio channels: Up to 8.
3. Audio resolution of source files: Up to 24-bit at 96kHz.
4. Pass music to AV processor using HDMI.
Intended hardware is Pi 5 8GB running Bookworm O/S.
Questions...
- Is anyone using a Pi 5 (or earlier Pi) to stream 8 audio channel in a similar setup? Any issues?
- What is the easiest installation process now? I have some limited Linux experience on Red Hat.
- I saw some earlier discussion regarding limitations in an audio driver (ALSA?). Is this still an issue for my use case?
Appreciate any input.
Cheers, Geoff.
geoff2802:
Hi again,
I see that the audio set up in Bookworm is different to the prior O/S:
"For this release, PulseAudio has been replaced with the newer PipeWire audio system. This builds on the features offered by PulseAudio, most importantly in providing better support for audio accompanying video. It reduces latency, which is important in many applications. It manages Bluetooth audio devices better, remembering which ones were in use at power-down, and automatically reconnecting them at boot. Finally, it is designed to operate better in the more secure Wayland environment, where applications are isolated from each other."
Source: https://www.raspberrypi.com/news/bookworm-the-new-version-of-raspberry-pi-os/
Would this be relevant to running MC32 on Pi 5?
Cheers, Geoff.
geoff2802:
Re: Channel count... I found this update to Rasp Pi linux that apparently increased number of channels for PCM to 8 and updated channel mapping way back in 2015:
https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/pull/1166
Awesome Donkey:
--- Quote from: geoff2802 on March 17, 2024, 06:37:54 pm ---Would this be relevant to running MC32 on Pi 5?
--- End quote ---
No, PipeWire doesn't really make any difference. If you care about bit-perfect audio output you should avoid PulseAudio (and PipeWire) as they go through the system mixer and use one of the ALSA outputs that bypasses the system mixer (e.g. hw:, front:, etc.). The limitations you speak of were likely regarding PulseAudio, not ALSA.
Only thing about your requirements to keep in mind is if you plan on listening to DSD content, that DSD bitstreaming does not work over HDMI. You'd have to convert it to PCM (which would be very taxing on a relatively weak Pi 5, especially multichannel DSD content) or connect to the AV processor another way (e.g. USB) or avoid that content altogether.
Regarding install, just install Media Center via the installJRMC script, it makes it very easy.
geoff2802:
Thanks Awesome - this is really helpful.
My only DSD content is a handful of SACDs. I currently don't have any way to rip them so I plan to continue using my Oppo UDP-203 to play them.
I'm after the best possible audio quality and don't plan to use MC to do any DSP as my AV processor provides it. To bypass PulseAudio / PipeWire do you select ALSA outputs in MC audio options or is there more involved?
My only experience with MC is with the trial version I installed on my iMac yesterday. Of course Mac has completely different audio drivers.
Thanks for the install tip. A friend has a spare Pi 4 lying around so I'll install MC on that to try it out. Obviously the 4 has a bit less horsepower than the 5 but will give me a good idea of performance and limitations for my use case. Of course I'll share findings on this forum.
Cheers, Geoff.
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