Crackling / pops on USB DAC

[betocool]

Hi guys,

been using RuneAudio 0.4 beta on a Raspberry Pi 3 for a few months, and I'm very happy with it. Kudos to the great job, it's a very nice interface and player.

However, sometimes I get on some tracks a bit of crack/pop noises playing FLAC files (44.1/16) over NFS/Wifi. I notice that especially while listening on headphones. Other times I don't really pay any attention. I'm using an Amanero based USB DAC, and I wonder if that may be the issue? The wifi seems to be pretty stable, haven't had any problems there.

I read somewhere something about a USB driver upgrade, but I think that was for a RPi 2/B?

Any help or comment is appreciated. Happy to provide more information if needed.

Cheers,

Albert

[hondagx35]

Hi Albert,

welcome to RuneAudio.

You can try to update the kernel as described .

Frank

[betocool]

Hi Frank,

thanks for your help and quick answer.

I did resize the partition and did the upgrade, as expected, that worked well.

There's still the odd crackle/pop while playing the FLAC's from the network. I'm pretty sure the digital files are ok, I rewinded to the same spot I heard the noise before and it didn't happen twice. In all fairness though, they seem to happen less than with the previous kernel.

Any log message I can have a look at if any data packets were dropped somewhere?

Cheers,

Albert

[betocool]

So, further news.

I had a look at the RuneAudio debug info. Only 28 packets lost on Wifi. Not the world.

I also had a try at increasing the buffer size and the amount of buffer being full before playing to 4096Kb and 30%.

That seems to have done the trick. Had a listen yesterday on the tracks I knew came up with faults, and they sounded all perfect. No noticeable delay on play/pause/stop either. Good stuff!

Still, is there any way I can check if any audio packets were dropped somewhere?

Cheers,

Albert

[hondagx35]

Hi Albert,

change the mpd loglevel to verbose and check the log file
/var/log/runeaudio/mpd.log for errors.

Frank

[betocool]

Hi Frank,

I just checked the mpd.log file, there seem to be no packets dropped or anything. I still have to have a quiet dedicated listen, but I think increasing the buffer size and amount before playing helped significantly.

Thanks a lot!

Alberto

[IgorGIV]

Hi, betocool!
Had the same problem with my RPi3 and usb dac. The problem was in built-in WiFi, which has very poor performance (you can search about it and it's performance tests in internet). So i changed my connection from wifi to wired (ethernet), and it solved the problem. No more crackling / pops.
Hope it will help to you and others.

P.S. Sorry for my Eng, but my native is Russian. And i hope i was understandable.

[truckinve]