introducing soundcheck's tuning kit - pCP (sKit) 1.0

 I'd like to introduce the first release of soundcheck's tuning kit - pCP (sKit) .

sKit provides a small and potentially growing number of little tools that'll help to setup piCorePlayer 7.0+ and Rpi4  and 3 in line with the advanced tuning recommendations outlined in my Audio Streaming Series.

The underlying idea is to take quite a basic operating system like piCorePlayer and tune it that way that it'll provide you with the best possible performance -- challenging most other (audiophile) OSes and streaming solutions out there.

This is not just another of these meanwhile numerous "audiophile" operating system out there though. In principle these do nothing else then applying this or that tweak you'll also find on this blog for years. The idea is to provide you with a tuning kit instead. You take it and apply it to that standard operating system installation yourself. And sKit supports you on that. 

You'll put yourself in the driver seat. And you control the pace.

sKit already goes slightly beyond the earlier outlined Audio Streaming Series scope. You should still go through the Audio Streaming Series step-by-step though. sKit doesn't cover all settings yet. At the relevant spots inside the Audio Streaming Series I refer to sKit.

sKit 1.0

I hope you'll enjoy the results.

SC

The Audio Streaming Series - Update 2021

 Hi folks.

A hopefully better 2021 to all of you.

volume control - linear - pro-audio style

Ever thought about volume controls (VC)? 

...how they work? 

...digital volume controls in particular?

or... 

...do you simply slide your VCs up'n down enjoying the sound level getting up'n down !?!? 

Audio meets IoT (DIY)

I am running RPis and (HAT) DACs for years by now. One thing's been bothering me all the time. 

The powering scheme. The handling of it to be exact. I've still been pulling plugs all the time for that very purpose. Pulling plugs in a lab is one thing, doing that in a living room is simply not acceptable on the long run. How do you tell your wife or kids how to turn on that DIY monster-stereo !?!? Push that plug, next this one and finally that one. Simply not possible.

I finally thought to get some Wifi controlled mains plugs in place. Neither Dect, infrared nor bluetooth controlled devices made it on my wishlist.

Let see what IoT (Internet of Things) projects are offering...

RPI - All lights off

I just thought it would be nice to share with you

how to get a lighthouse tower like the RPI to pretend being dead.

Unfortunately even the most current RPI operating systems 

doesn't offer such a trivial and nice tweak via user interface. 

That leaves us only one option: Commandline intervention!

 

CD - RIP

(Latest Update: Oct-2020)

Anybody out there still ripping CDs? Or is it just me. ;)




Recently I figured that some tracks were missing. No idea when and why this happened. OK. Quick decision taken. Re-Rip the affected CDs. Yep - I still keep my CDs in the attic.

Gee Wiz... Re-Ripping a track "quickly" turned out into a major exercise (nightmare).

This article gives some background info and directions related to CD ripping and CD tagging.

networking - RPI dongle your net

I'd like to share an - IMO - nice alternative network setup solution for the RPI3 (It'll also work on the Pi Zero).

The solution will nicely add to, or you might also call it  - enhance -, earlier described networking solution.  

networking - my audio data highway

Years back I mentioned that the network and associated components do have quite an impact on your audio performance. 
Meanwhile this became common knowledge in - let's call it - audiophile minded circles. 

As usual, I prefer reasonably (priced) highest performance solutions. 
Usually a healthy mix of DIY efforts and commercial stuff gets me there. 

Today I'd like to introduce my "currently" preferred "audio" streaming network solution.

Raspberry PI - I2S-HATs @ 384k

Today I'd like to share how to introduce 352k8/384k upsampling 
by running LogitechMediaServer as server and squeezelite as a client.

This post, from a hardware perspective,  pretty much relates to my 
RPI I2S HAT DAC projects I've been running over at DIY-Audio.

Some DACs (TI PCM51xx family) have shown a slightly improved performance 
while running upsampled material. That's the main reason for writing all this up. 

Linux USB Audio - Trouble Shooting

(Latest update: Mar-6-2022)

USB audio interfaces are pretty much commodity products nowadays. Usually these are plug'n play

on whatever rather recent system.

In the early days people were facing a lot of hiccups with USB audio. This situation has greatly improved over the last 10 years though.

However. From time to time you still see discussions popping up about this or that issue related to USB-audio.