Linux for the

Computer Audiophile

October 31 to November 2, 2014

Ran Perry

Music Lover, Sane Audiophile, Linux Geek, CTO,

Open Source Supporter

www.gtaaudio.com

Audiophiles are not computer-philes

Limited exposure at audio shows & magazines

“Voodoo-ism”

Challenges

The iTunes Problem

No support for FLAC, OGG, DSF, DFF, Opus

Terrible tagging, Memory hog

Requires 3rd party add-ons to work properly

The Direct Access Problem

ASIO - Steinberg developed the Audio Stream Input/Output (ASIO) architecture to create a low

latency, high performance with direct access interface.

No need for ASIO in LinuxIt's proprietary as well....

The Bit-Perfect Problem

How can I tell if my OS plays Bit-Perfect

audio?

The Latency Problem

How can I ensure that my audio is getting real time

priorities?

The 3rd Party Driver Problem

OSX - Mavericks

Broke

3rd party proprietary drivers

The Desktop / Laptop Problem

Power Supply

Screen

What is Linux?

An open-source operating system

Tesla Model S

What Linux

can do forus?

Google search returns 468,000 results for “audiophile linux”

That is a good start

:-)

USB Audio

USB Audio Class 1 standard (1998)24 bits/96 kHz max

USB Audio Class 2 standard (2009)32 bits/384 kHz max

Android

Android Lollipop will support UAC 2.0

Native support

32 bits / 384 kHz (UAC 2.0)

Linux goes up to 768kHz

DSD 512

DoP DSD256

DoP – DSD Over PCM

ALSA

Advanced Linux Sound Architecture

http://www.alsa-project.org/

Architecture

JACK

Jack Audio Connection Kit

http://jackaudio.org/

PulseAudio

http://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/PulseAudio/

Audiophile Linux

http://www.ap-linux.com/

Daphile

http://www.daphile.com/

VortexBox

http://vortexbox.org/

Voyage MPD

http://linux.voyage.hk/voyage-mpd

Prediction

The Desktop / Laptop will eventually disappear from the

serious audiophile's system

Embedded Systems

Raspberry Pi

BeagleBone

ConsumerStreamers & Music Servers

Aurender

Bryston

Auralic Aries

AuraNAS

“From the start we felt it was critical that the auraNAS® be a deliberate product and we knew we could not use a general

purpose closed OS. We started with a minimal Linux instance and added in only the required functionality and nothing more.”

Wyred4Sound

Weiss

Demo

Direct Hardware Access

Apps

DACS

Questions?

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