Building a streamer using Rpi 4, 4gb or 8gb RAM?

[lithiumnk]

Which LPS are you using for the RPI4?

Allo shanti 5v3a out to pi2aes/rpi4

 

[Smadhu]

Allo shanti 5v3a out to pi2aes/rpi4

Can you pls detail out difference between meanwell PS AND allo Shanti? As far as I have read difference is very marginal. I have been on fence but curious to make a comparison.

 

[lithiumnk]

Can you pls detail out difference between meanwell PS AND allo Shanti? As far as I have read difference is very marginal. I have been on fence but curious to make a comparison.

Differences are the same for any smps vs lps. There are many variables which affect the final sound. Best is to try in your system.

 

[Credoh]

I have Nirvana and very pleased with it. The good folks at Allo suggested that Shanti may only be worth it if you have a very resolving system

 

[Credoh]

Hello,

I want to try my hand at building a roon endpoint using Rpi 4.
Wanted advice from someone with experience on Rpi, does the amount of RAM matter, 4gb vs 8gb, I know more RAM is always good in the PC world but is it the same with Rpi. Should I splurge for the extra 4GB RAM if budget permits?
THanks,
Bhaskar

For audio only and as Roon endpoint I've used 2GB and never once had any performance issue

 

[Credoh]

I have built my own streamer using RPI4 with 4Gib. Only 200 MiB is being used. I am using the official 64bit Rasbian image. I have built my own distribution (without using any of dietpi, volumio, moode, etc). This that I have done

1) installed apache, mpd, lirc, libusb-dev, shairport-sync (for airplay), samba-common samba-server, php php-mysqlnd php7.3-mysql php-fpm php7.3-xml, mariadb-server mariadb-client, toilet figlet fortune, cowsay, flac, metadsf, php7.3-sqlite3, php7.3-mbstring, php7.3-gd, php7.3-curl

2) installed my own software mpdev, pistop, indimail-mini from my repositories at

mbhangui - Repositories

C Programmer. Author of IndiMail, indimail-mta . mbhangui has 9 repositories available. Follow their code on GitHub.

github.com

3) removed all useless stuff (cups, nano editor, pulseaudio, etc)

4) installed rompr for a web interface for playing internet radio and music (But mostly I use cantata player on my macbook and linux laptops)

5) setup nfs-server and a central mpd store which provides the music directory to all mpd clients (concept known as mpd satellite servers). This way the music database gets updated on the PI4 server automatically with a "auto_update" entry in mpd.conf. So if I add new music, the same is available instantly to all mpd clients in all my rooms. This PI4 has a 4Tb hard drive connected to it on the USB3.0 port.

6) connected a USB IR receiver to the PI4 using which i can play, pause, stop, shutdown. The 0-9 buttons is also used to rate the songs. When I shutdown the PI4, all satellite players also do a shutdown. I also use a concept known as karma. Every song I play gets a karma for it's good deeds. If it gets played often, it's karma increases. If I skip a song because i don't like it, it's karma decreases. A dynamic playlist feature presents me with song that I love. All songs that I play gets scrobbled to last.fm at https://www.last.fm/user/mbhangui

7) All satellite mount the hardrive of PI4 using automount automatically as soon as anyone access the Music folder.

8) I also have a allo usbridge on the network to which I have connected a allo Revolution dac, both powered by Shanti. The PI4 is powered by Nirvana SMPS. The allo usbridge and all my satellite players run stock 64 bit raspbian or Ubuntu 20.04. I don't use any of the distributions like volumio, moode, dietpi, etc. Some of these fiddle too much with the OS. example. The volumio mpd is crippled. It doesn't have mpd sticker support, which allows one to store song ratings, etc. The moode forces your device to be on an old kernel. DietPI runs too many things in the background to do simple things like disk cleanup, etc.

9). By removing all unwanted stuff, the CPU usage decreases and more memory is available for Music.

View attachment 62893

Very impressive sir - and far beyond my tech abilities. How Does this custom build fare vs the usbridge pls?

 

[mbhangui]

Very impressive sir - and far beyond my tech abilities. How Does this custom build fare vs the usbridge pls?

I have done the same custom build for usbridge also. The usbridge is a satellite server of my main PI4. It does only audio playback. Things like serving music files, etc are all offloaded to the raspberry PI4. So I;m running exactly the same custom build on both PI4 and usbridge.

The only difference being
1) The PI4 is the master server. It mounts the physical hard disk and makes it avaible on the network via NFS4 protocol. The music player daemon on PI4 also acts as the master MPD server and makes available its database to all clients on the network. So to add new music, I just have to put it on one hard disk and the same becomes available to all satellite players in all my rooms.

2) The usbridge is just one of my many clients. WHen it boots up, it mounts the Music disk and the MPD acts as a satellite server.

By having the file serving and audio functionality separated, any hard disk latency and noise, etc is eliminated. The CPU of the usbridge never gets tied down serving disk IO. Also both the PI4 and usbridge run a 64bit kernel and 64bit OS and not the 32bit install of volumio, moode, etc.

The custom build also runs mpd at realtime priority, making the playback bettter than the stock installtion that one gets by installing 32 bit setup of moode and volumio.

The only disadvantage of this setup, is I have to have the PI4 always running to play music on any of my satellite server. If the PI4 server is down, I'm limited to airplay and spotify on the satellite servers.