Hey Folks!
My RPi B+ showed up in the mail about a week ago, and with all of your hard efforts, it is running .3 alpha with no problems. I found that you really want to properly eject your card when you flash it, the system corrupted if I just pulled it, no exceptions. Once I figured that out, it ran like a charm.
I am using the headphone jack directly out to my tube amp, and while it isn't world-changing, it really sounds just fine for casual listening. I picked up the HiFIBerry DAC+, and am very much looking forward to the 0.3 beta, and the DAC+ support. I am *excited* to hear the difference between the two! In the meantime I find that using the headphone jack when the DAC+ is installed, even if I am still on analog output, keeps me from getting any output. Probably not an issue in a few days; hopefully I'll get to use the DAC+s RCA outputs. Again: excited.
All in all, I've found this rig to be very stable. Clean sound, though I don't have enormous libraries, or extra high quality files. Most of it is at 320kbps and 44100hz. I really appreciate the software volume defeat, it completely removes the background hiss. I have everything on a thumb drive, so power needs aren't high. It's a SanDisk 64Gb formatted in NTFS. With four USB ports, future expansion should be easy. I had trouble formatting the thumb drive to Ext4 *and* keeping sudo rights for the thumb drive itself. NTFS works just fine. With 9.2k files and 60 gigs of music, the initial map of the files is pretty fast, a minute or two at the most. Everything after that is blazing fast, no noticeable lag time for searches or queuing up tunes.
I live off-grid, in the woods where I charge my battery bank as rarely as possible, which is why this was such an enticing system. Very low wattage. It would be nice to have standalone wireless, and be able to turn off the router. But I understand that's not what this system is built around, and with it's simplicity and robustness, it has ended up being the most minor of disappointments. Totally worth it. I *do* find that the system has a hard time booting up after it's been turned off cold. I turn my battery bank off every night, so if I haven't been using it in the evening it gets shut off mid stream, and I usually have to reflash the disk. I will learn to turn it off properly, but it would be nice to see the system more immune to power outages.
I've found that a Kindle Fire, 1st gen, tends to constantly (every ~20s) reconnect, along with the spinning arrows and the dimmed screen. Not an issue as such but it always sets me back to the top of the Library Screen, so it's hard to navigate to the bottom of my music library without getting booted back out. It's only an issue on the Kindle. A desktop with a wired connection and Chrome browser works seamlessly, as does a MacAir over wireless and a Firefox browser. In fact, I've been very impressed with the WebGI in general. Ones I've seen in other applications are always clunky, slow, and ugly. RuneAudio is beautiful, fast, smooth. Very very like. The only request is larger buttons; I have fat fingers, and this is sometimes difficult after splitting a bottle of wine. Again, I turn the power off to everything at night, so putting everything on the house on static IPs has made life much simpler, and less electronically argumentative.
This is my first foray into Webradio, and Dirble is dizzyingly large. It's like watching the ocean and having the ocean watch back at you. I'll wade in slowly.
This has been fun and educational, and I have a pretty sweet system now. So, a HUGE thanks to the developers for the vision, hard work and long hours. I really appreciate it. Thanks to the moderators for running a great forum, and to all the savvy contributors that make this a positive place to be. You all are awesome people.
All the Very Best!
-Fishstix
