I’m using Plexamp 4.6.2 on a Raspberry Pi 3B running 64 Bit RaspOS Lite.
The Raspberry is connected via USB to my DAC (Asus Xonar Essence One) powering my Headphones (AKG 712 Pro).
BTW: I love Plex and all their products peace out to Elan, I’m so thankful to have Plexamp in my home - great stuff!
What I recognized: Using this setup with full focus to the music for a longer time, I recognize quit clear some kind of micro dropouts after a while.
It’s not really a full dropout, it’s more something like a drop off everything above 3000 Hz for 1/10 sec or so… hard to explain but easy to hear
I changed the power supply, I changed the Raspberry device to another model (Rpi4b2gb) and I changed the USB cable… without any positive effect. The dropouts are coming back in each setup.
Today I changed from USB to SPDIF, using the HiFiBerry Digi+ Board - Yeah, that did the trick Clear sound, no more dropouts.
BUT: Using the same DAC with the same USB cable together with my MacBook running Plexamp… The sound is clear as well (and sounds quite similar to the Raspberry btw)!
Question to the Dev Team: Is it possible that Plexamp has an issue using USB stack on ARM hardware?
Does any one know this behavior?
Is there a way prioritize something on the Raspberry to handle audio processing more resilient?
only brief dropouts I’ve had seemed to be related to heavy cpu and network use during early pre-caching of tracks (there are Plexamp settings to address this) … issue you’re describing sounds different, like it takes a while before it shows up?
sometimes posting Plexamp logs (from the Pi, located in ~/.cache/Plexamp/log) that include the approximate time the issue occurred can give clues
And as always check syslog for any kernel-related message which may offer a clue.
I use Plexamp headless exclusively with USB interfaces and I’ve never noticed such a thing. If possible try swapping the DAC for another one just to see if it’s specific to the model.
I have experienced dropouts, for quick fractions of a second up to a couple seconds, usually right after a sweet fade within the first 5 to 10 seconds of a track,. I am using Digi+ clone, opitcal out, into a modi multibit dac. For me what made this stop on a raspberry pi 3b+ was switching my micro sd card. I upgraded the card to a extreme sandisk and this fixed the issue. I think the card was not fast enough to handle.
Thanks for the reply. I can confirm, that such a dropout occurred more often, according to the cpu load - there seems to be an interaction. Thanks for the hint.
But I have to investigate a little bit more into this topic, because these dropouts are noticeable even with a low cpu load (but more rare).
And will check how this deals with the DAC I‘m using, as mentioned from Elan.
It turned out that my Asus DAC is somehow sensitive on the USB port… With a very cheap long USB A/B „printer“ cable, the effect grows and with an expensive short „audio“ USB cable, everything works fine
Strangely enough, the cheap long printer cable connected to my MacBook works very well… Anyhow, It works now - problem solved.
That makes sense. Printer Cables are usually either USB1 or USB2. The old USB1 has around 12mbps total data transfer. USB2 is around 480MBPS. Technically 12MBPS is enough for most music, but also not, depends.
peace out to Elan, I’m so thankful to have Plexamp in my home - great stuff!
