Heads-up - Daphile

[Thermionic Idler]

I thought I'd share a new discovery I made last week, which looks good enough to be a perfect solution to what I've been looking for in a music server for literally years.

The application is called Daphile - the link is here: https://www.daphile.com/ and there is a big thread over on diyaudio about it: https://www.diyaudio.com/forums/pc-base ... er-os.html.

It's designed to run on a small PC (system requirements are minimal) and the install includes the Linux OS - it's dead easy, just run the downloaded ISO and connect from another computer using a browser, or use the iPeng app, that works as well. It presents the hard disk as network storage, so it's easy to load files onto it from another machine and sort out automated backups. It supports the main streaming services - Qobuz, Spotify and Tidal as well (I think). And it also does gapless playback properly.

Cost? Nil, as it's open source.

We tried it over the weekend as a proof of concept, firstly on a Linux virtual machine and then on an old Acer laptop that I fished out of storage. You just have to be a bit careful when installing it as it WILL wipe all your data from the target PC. We were so impressed with it that I'm now designing my own music server solution around it - to be started once I'm done with the Beast OTL's.

[gninnam]

Shouldn't the title be 'Head-Less'

Shame it doesn't run on a Raspberry PI as old PC's/laptops tend to be big and noisy (plus I don't have any in the house as all in use).
Does sound to be a good solution though.

Looking forward to your journey.

[Neal]

Looks to be a form of customised LMS and Squeezelite...

[Thermionic Idler]

Plan is to run it on a fanless NUC board with an SSD - in fact I bought the board itself last week in preparation.

[Ray P]

Dave, Interpolating from your recent post about Soekris DACs, I suggest you consider keeping the Daphile stuff and the DAC in seperate boxes, that way you can try different DACs idc.

Ray

[Ray P]

If anyone is looking for a computer to run something like Daphile on, something like this might be a good buy?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Fanless-Ultr ... 1438.l2649

You only have 4Gb eMMC for the install (no 'disks') but I think that should be sufficient. Music library external, USB drive or NAS. Just plug your USB DAC into one of the USP ports.

[JohnG]

Good Link Ray
I hope to put into use during 2019 a earlier recommendation received, utilising a two box set up using a NUC type fanless computer with the Audiolinux software, using eitr type connections at the interfaces, Laptop > NUC > DAC. I believe the Audiolinux can be a functioning software being driven solely by the SSD on the NUC, I believe this will have the capability to further enhancing the operation.
I have been involved in a discussion on this subject in Computer Audiophile, where other threads on there discuss it further.

[Ray P]

John, I have Audiolinux running on a NUC, installed on the 4Gb eMMC. I found the easiest way to install it was to boot the NUC into Ubuntu from a USB stick and then gunzip/dd the audolinux image onto the eMMC. I don't have any additional storage installed as I'm using the NUC as an HQPlayer NAA (Network Audio Appliance).

I'm also using Audiolinux on my main HQPlayer computer. This a high-power HP workstation located remotely in the house. I need the powerful computer (it has an Intel i7 4790 processor supported by GPU processing via CUDA on the Nvidia graphics card) because I'm experimenting with HQPlayer's upsampling of FLAC to DSD (upto DSD512), which then gets streamed to the NAA for rendering. On the main computer I've started to use the RAMboot option in Audiolinux to run it entirely in the computer's memory and I also have a mirror of my music library on a HDD so that music to be played doesn't have to be retrieved over the network from the NAS. It's all working really well.

[Ray P]

Dave, sorry to usurp your thread about Daphile with talk of Audiolinux and HQPlayer. Whe the 13E1 amp is done and I turn back to my DSD decoder project I'll start another thread; in the meantime I'm happy to field any questions via PM as best i can.