poor Squeezelite sound on Odroid C2

General Discussion
1

I’ve been thinking of presenting a cool “magic show” for my older friends and neighbors: “playing” an invisible, ghostly record on my old turntable.

Here’s the gimmick: Squeezelite running on DietPi plays with pops, skips, warbles and virtually everything else an old analog record used to – worse, even! [ It would be a cool magic illusion, but listening to perfectly ripped music is not actually fun at length. ]

On the other hand, playing the same files (whether FLAC, OGG or other types) in something like VLC sounds “perfect” . . .

My setup:

  1. oDroid C2 with HiFi Shield+ – outputting to RCA jacks (at the moment)
  2. DietPi V148
  3. Squeezelite v1.8.5-823
  4. Logitech Media Server Version: 7.9.1 - 1491548882 on a different machine [no apparent bottlenecks: high-powered server, hardwired network; other (real) Squeezeboxes sound fine]
  5. This configuration often tends to play up to about the first 5 minutes reasonably well, then it starts sounding horrible – pretty much without exception. Pausing playback helps for a moment. Restarting Squeezelite or the whole system works for a couple moments longer.
  6. Nothing appears within /var/log/squeezelite.log (0 bytes)

So, a few questions:

  1. How can one best go about updating Squeezelite within DietPi? (DietPi-distributed Squeezelite is at v 1.8.5 Meanwhile, https://github.com/ralph-irving/squeezelite/archive/master.zip is at 1.8.6) I prefer troubleshooting with the most recent version if possible.
  2. I installed Squeezelite using DietPi’s installer. Is it maybe better to install manually to get latest version?
  3. Where the heck does DietPi keep the Squeezelite config files? [The only thing I can find is the log file . . .
  4. Program file(s) seem to be at /usr/bin:
    squeezelite_arm64
    squeezelite_armv6
    squeezelite_armv7
    I am hesitant to exchange these with newer ones given I can not find configuration files.
  5. How does one change the name of the Squeezelite player? squeezelite -n does not persist, and I doubt squeezelite -N will remember where I’ve stored a file (given that there seem to be no config files anywhere)

Thanks in advance for any insights!

2

Answering a couple of my own questions!

3 + 6. The config file is at: /etc/systemd/system/squeezelite.service

[ I’m not sure why a search for files containing “squeezelite” on my own DietPi system did not let me find this! I found this information at https://dietpi.com/forum/t/dietpi-software-details-for-all-installation-options/22/39 ]

The aforementioned file is where the player name and ALSA params can be set persistently.


Separately, (new DietPi user here! :wink: I just found out about dietpi-process_tool

I used this to set “Nice” and Schedule Policy / Priority for Squeezelite (aka “Squeezebox Lite”). On the off chance the processor was somehow not giving enough attention to Squeezelite I set nice to -18 and policy to FIFO and priority to 95. This gave just about all computing resources to Squeezelite. Music played nicely for a few minutes longer than before. [ Not sure this is related to the settings change. ]

I am setting “Nice” and Schedule Policy / Priority back to defaults and will play with ALSA params and report back.

3

Hi,

I’m face to the same matter and have also a theory on the root cause (see my topi : https://dietpi.com/forum/t/squeezelite-terrible-sound-with-odroid-c2/1474/1 )

have you solve the problem ?