Arch Linux

forkenbrock

Member

Registered: 2011-12-06

Posts: 43

SEEKING RECOMMENDATIONS - for Audio Player Build

I'm building a system for playback of 2-channel audio...and nothing else.  I tried Slitaz in the past and it didn't outperform my highly tweaked Windows audio OS, but that was without RT tweaks to the kernel, so I'm giving Arch a try and finding it's more challenging than I had expected.  For some reason it took about 5hrs of rebooting for my machine to recognize the installation ISO and complete the Base install.  So far I have a system that's booting and that's about it, so I thought I'd take a minute to reset and see what you guys recommend, rather than learn the harder way.

I just want a player to open on boot and play music files from there.  Ripping of discs and transferring files to the HD will happen on another OS.  Here is a dump of ideas and questions.  Don't feel the need to answer all of them.  Any feedback and ideas you're able to offer on any of the questions is appreciated.

* Does not need to connect to the Internet, play video files, play multi-channel audio, rip CDs, etc.
* I'd like to run ALSA and OSS.
* Must work with a wide range of machines and generic displays from an ISO disc.  I'd like to avoid forcing the user to go in and make adjustments every time the machine boots, in order to play music.
* Must work with as many Sound Cards and USB DACs that Linux can make work.
* Must be set for RT latency.
* A light Player that can ideally filter/sort through files with Genre / Artist, without having to build playlists.
* Has to also work with NTFS file systems.
* Has to play FLAC and WAV hi-res files and would like to also play DSD format files.
* Needs a sleep function.

* Is Xorg with Vesa the way to go for basic video output?
* Do I need JACK for RT and should I want it for some other essential functions?
* Do I need a Desktop environment or other display packages?  Is LXDE a good light-weight choice?
* What are the packages that I have to have and what might I uninstall for better performance?
* Are there any steps I should take in configurations to make things work automatically when a disc is installed in a new machine, new sound card or DAC, etc?
*  Do I need to download additional packages for the soundcard drivers?

Thank you

Last edited by forkenbrock (2013-02-07 22:08:48)

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: SEEKING RECOMMENDATIONS - for Audio Player Build

Simple playback? No big deal, surely. Why not just grab Ubuntu Studio?

See the ~/.asoundrc in my sig, for how to upmix from stereo to 5.1 properly.

forkenbrock

Member

Registered: 2011-12-06

Posts: 43

Re: SEEKING RECOMMENDATIONS - for Audio Player Build

Hello Brebs, I'm trying to design something more streamlined than Ubuntu Studio.  I will not be adding any functionality for multichannel systems...only 2-channel audio.