Thursday, May 15, 2014

Re: [fedora-arm] Best hardware for Fedora/ARM Audio "Server"?

On 2014-05-15 15:46, Derek Atkins wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Gordan Bobic <gordan@bobich.net> writes:
>
>> IIRC DreamPlug also has optical audio port.
>
> True, but it's a v5, isn't it? That's not supported at all.

ARMv6 isn't directly supported by Fedora, either, so the
point is somewhat moot.

There is a D2Plug (2nd generation DreamPlug), which also has
audio, but with the CPU clocked at 2/3 of the old DreamPlug
it might actually be slower - but it is an ARMv7.

http://www.globalscaletechnologies.com/t-d2plugdetails.aspx

>> One thing to consider is CPU generation. Don't know about Wandaboard,
>> but Pi is ARMv6 and Trimslice is ARMv7.
>>
>> AFAIK support for everything before ARMv7 has been dropped from
>> Fedora.
>
> Yes, but there is PiDora, which is a respin for v6.

If you're going to look at respins the field opens up a bit,
I guess.

> However you're
> right that something like the Wandboard is more powerful. Looks like I
> can get a Wandboard Solo + Case + Power for about $100, not quite
> double
> the cost of the RPi for about 2x the performance.

Indeed. Do you have a form factor preference, though?
Most solutions like this have some uglyness associated, e.g.
an external power brick. D2Plug is a single brick, just
plug into power socket. But performance could conceivably
be an issue.

>> Look at: http://www.thingiverse.com/search?q=cubieboard
>>
>> For people that have built cases for Cubieboard2 and particularly:
>>
>> http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:151160
>>
>> I am thinking this for a NAS etc box.
>>
>> If you go with the Cubietruck, the Ewell case posted on cubieboard.org
>> not only supports the 2.5 drive, but also a battery if you want!
>
> I'm specifically looking for single-use boxes here. It would be *nice*
> if I could get one box to drive multiple audio zones, but if they are
> cheap enough then having one box per zone would be fine. But I'm not
> looking for NAS or anything else today (actually I plan to build a
> large
> multi-TB NAS server, but it's not going to be ARM-based).

ARM based multi-TB NAS is actually quite doable:

http://www.altechnative.net/2014/02/23/qnap-ts-421-review-modification-and-redsleeve-linux/

I have it running with 4x4TB HGST drives and ZFS (fuse) RAIDZ2.

> So thanks, all. I think I'll order a Wandboard Solo to test this out.
> I can always select different hardware later, or upgrade to the Dual or
> Quad if I find I need more CPU power. But audio processing doesn't
> really require lots of CPU. I was able to do basic DSP functions on my
> 8-bit 6502-based Atari 800 back in the mid-1980s, with only 48K of RAM.
> I'm sure 512MB on an ARM can do much better, provided there is
> sufficient design of the board so we don't get electrical interference.

Depending on the form factor you are looking for, there are
ARM boards out there with PCI/PCIe slots. You could get one
of those and use a PCI/PCIe sound card in it. It would be a
lot more expensive, though.

On the cheap, there are always USB audio options. A USB
sound dongle can be had for about £2, and you could plug
that into any ARM device featuring a USB port (i.e. most
of them these days).

Gordan
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