Deathmatch: Pi2 Design Mercury 3 vs Holo Audio Red

Yeah, I've never had issues with Ropiee on any pi or on Red. Now volumio or moode on the other hand, they are the reason I moved to Roon...

 

Yes absolutely. They are the worst, completely unusable imo.

 

Roon is minimum $150/yr, that’s not a very fair comparison. I know there’s a paid variant of volumio and I’m not sure what it adds but afaik the basic version is still free. Moode is free as well though donations are appreciated. When I tried Roon a few versions back it had the best desktop interface, very Apple design inspired, but honestly it wasn’t anything I preferred to just using Tidal + connect. I haven’t run volumio in forever so can’t really judge it. I run an old version of moode which works for me but I just want a minimal phone interface to start playback and then don’t see it again until the next album or whatever.

Instability is often due to sketchy microsd cards, don’t trust Amazon even if it’s sold by them because they co-mingle stock in the warehouse.

 

I don't see how moode is bad at all. I run 2 different pi4/PI2AES one fed by a 4tb WD old ass spinny hard drive and another with a 2tb SSD I put in a external exclosure thingy. I haven't had a problem all year. I don't stream though.

 

I found that the optical isolation with etherregen makes a bigger difference than many other things I tried with the pi2aes. I have had positive experiences with volumio enough to support them, even though the free version has more than enough functionality. I do think that people who haven't tried it in several years should try the latest version ( it's free after all!)

 

I have two Pi2AES, one is sitting on my desk for 6 months with lights always on. It may be that Ropieee Roon endpoint in Pi is uniquely stable OS but it is auto updated by Roon and I do not touch it.

 

Maybe a PIAES 2.0 should be added to the death match. Could be a three-way fight kinda like a Three Stooges episode!

I'd be more than happy to send one to Marv to put on the loaner tour.

 

Jokes aside the only reasons me, as an early adopter, had problems with my PIAES, with Moode, was because of user error. Not really knowing what i was doing or trying new stuff. Had a few issues with Volumio though.

 

I should say that my setup does not involve streaming services. I have a separate media server so my pi2aes does not have any direct attached storage. I found Moode to be more stable than volumio but both would often lose connection with my server and both had trouble loading cover art. I just find them very slow - which is the root cause of the missing cover art. Now all of this is when I have the pi2aes set up to index and play the files - i.e. it just sees my server as another hard drive.

When I run moode as just a dlna endpoint it ran better but that isn't asking much of the os.

I just find it odd and telling that other solutions on the same hardware run so much better than volumio or moode. I run full raspberry pi os with a full linux version of jriver and it is faster than either of these two "small" os'es.

Maybe running them from a usb drive or from a m.2 drive would improve their performance.

 

Back when I used it (3+ years ago), Volumio frequently got corrupted and needed a reflash. Super annoying.
Ropieee(XL) is way better in that way. I also like the interface better.

This is what I use on my Magna Mano Ultra mk3.5 now.
This streamer is fantastic, but expensive for a Pi based device. I guess half the cost is in the (excellent) Farad Ultra 3 PSU.

 

5 minute video?! You could easily padded that out to 30 minutes for the algorithm and maximum wastage of my time

 

That sounds like a networking issue. ETA: this isn’t meant to impugn your network, just that something wasn’t working right.

How moode and I assume volumio work is the Pi handles all of the behind the scenes server stuff like library indexing, networking and playback while the front end is handled by a web app. There’s some dependence on the server speed to load data and send it to the web app but basically the interface is going to be as fast as the device that runs that web app and the network it’s running on. Unless you’re running truly ancient hardware or have a hoarder sized library both should be reasonably snappy.

You’re running jriver on your setup in much the same way that you dinged moode for doing with dlna.

That said you should run whatever software you like and I’m glad you found something that works well with your setup, but there are thousands of people who run those other distros who don’t have the problems you did.

 

Volumio and moOde do handle the libraries the same way. Only on first indexing if you have a large library are things slow, after that, they are fine. When indexing, newer faster Pi's take shorter amount of time. The Pi 2's used to take a few hours to index my 400+GB library. The newer CM4 takes about an hour or maybe a little more (I have not timed this at all, but it does seem like that). After indexing takes place, there is no actual performance issues. moOde even gives you the opportunity in the settings to clear all the cache files if you want. Boot times are also slightly faster with new Pi modules, although a minute is pretty quick anyway. I think the older modules would take about a minute and a half.

The biggest drawback of moOde is the constant updates. There is an incremental update in the OS built in (finally), but that will not jump major versions, only minor versions. So the only way to get the major versions is to re-flash. There is some way to save certain settings and re-load, but I could never get that to work correctly.

 

No. I have a very simple setup. Just a computer acting as network storage and the Pi in another room. The Pi sees the music folder on the computer as a network mounted drive. Both are connected to the same network switch. Really can't be simpler.

Again, no. I never run Jriver on the Pi with dlna. Jriver on the Pi treats my network storage as a local folder and handles all indexing, and decoding locally. I ran Moode with dlna to avoid using it to decode files and index my library.

Despite my earlier post, I wasn't trying to start a pissing match and this isn't me being a jriver fanboi. Volumio and moode are the only two distros that I know I couldn't live with long term unless I went exclusively with dlna. Most of the others I have tried are perfectly fine.

Anyway, apologies for the thread derailment.

 

How does holo compares with Shanling ET3 as streamer?

 

For those who have heard both the Mercury V1 and the V3, how big of an upgrade to smoothness of the upper mids and highs is there on the V3 versus the V1?

 

Thanks so much for the quick response!