General discussion about HAKAI

A DIY digital music streamer with exceptional performance

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Sopper
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Re: General discussion about HAKAI

Post by Sopper »

fatjulio wrote:Are people using Volumio as just a renderer (controlling it from another app, like Lumin, Bubble etc), Should I just use that and not worry about it's library?
Yes, i wouldn’t worry.
I’m using Linn Kazoo as control point, which tells Volumio to get the songs from my NAS.
Minim shows the control app my music
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Re: General discussion about HAKAI

Post by Lego »

fatjulio wrote:Are people using Volumio as just a renderer (controlling it from another app, like Lumin, Bubble etc), as opposed to it finding the music to play? I've just put a Hakai together and going through the find the library stage. It sees my Synology NAS, but not the shares. I tried manually connecting with no luck.
I can use Bubble Upnp to play music to it. Should I just use that and not worry about it's library?
I have synology and if you use android Hifi cast is very good at finding servers and getting things started for other upnp apps and telling you what's wrong. But for general use I prefer Kazoo. Make sure you've installed a media server on synology
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Re: General discussion about HAKAI

Post by ThomasOK »

This kind of belongs in two places but I decided to put it here. My HAKAI is now running basically to my satisfaction and it is sounding quite good. I still have the J3455 board in it and I am finding it more musical than I remember my KRDS/0 or the ADS/0 that directly preceded it. The N3160N board is on the way (and currently in New York according to tracking) so I will soon be able to upgrade to what David Neel says is a much better board (and which has sounded very good in his clips).

It took a while to get the HAKAI to play stably and it was a step by step process to get it to work. Once I got Volumio on the 300GB SSD (by using the LS-NAS to make the transfer) I still couldn't get the network to find the HAKAI. Switching the Ethernet cable from one port to the other brought it right up so maybe one of the ports is the default you have to use. I configured it and pointed it to the music folder but it showed a red X under the mounted section. Tried a few times but couldn't get it past there. The Volumio app just didn't find the music. But it did let me play some radio so I got some music out of it (but only about a third of the radio stations I tried worked). Then I read the comments about just using Lumin ad it found the HAKAI and my music library and started playing. It had some weird problems like turning volume to 100 only to have it switch back the indicated 41 it started with but not actually lower the volume! Plus it seemed to stop playing. Then I read Kazoo worked and tried it ad found it more to my liking. I created playlists and played a fair amount of music but also found it randomly (or so I thought) stopping play and dumping the playlist. I would put a playlist on random and it would play for a while and then just stop. Since it would dump the playlist I couldn't figure out what it had tried to play. Also sometimes when I switched tracks it would die and kill the playlist again.

Finally this weekend I figured it out by making a short playlist of five albums that had all played and running it for a couple days - no problem. I added a bunch more and started to have problems. So I started with the short playlist and added an album and tried to play it. If that worked I tried another, etc. and noted when it locked up. Aha! I had read that the Gigaport wouldn't decode high res off the HAKAI, but I didn't see anywhere a warning on what this caused. At least in my case it stops playing and kills the playlist whenever I attempt to play a high-res file. It is quite consistent and happens with anything over 44.1/16. Even one Porcupine Tree album I have in 48/16 causes the problem. And the whole bunch of King Crimson and Porcupine Tree stuff I have in 96/24 won't play.

So now I have a playlist with about 500 tracks all standard resolution and it is playing without a hiccup using Kazoo as a controller. So what I really need now are more clips form Sopper of the RME vs the Gigaport to see if the RME is actually better as it appeared from that one set of clips. If it is, it seems like it would also handle all the high-res files and even has the auto-dark feature (right up my alley). So how about it! Any other thoughts on all this are welcome too.
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Re: General discussion about HAKAI

Post by tokenbrit »

My memory isn't what I vaguely recall it once was, so I don't remember what music server software you are using on your LS-NAS, but wasn't there discussion that Minimserver sounded best at a certain resolution? I don't suppose that resolution was 44/16; more likely 96/24, but could your server software be setup to output all music at 44/16 so that it doesn't trip up the Gigaport?
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Re: General discussion about HAKAI

Post by lejonklou »

Your report surprises me, Thomas, as I have so far not encountered any problems with HAKAI playing hi-res files. What about mp3's? You get stuck on those too?

As ESI claims Gigaport doesn't handle anything above 16/44 natively, I guess the conversion must be handled by Volumio? I haven't looked further into this, but I find it interesting that for instance Daft Punk in hi-res sounds better than the same album in 16/44.
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Re: General discussion about HAKAI

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ThomasOK wrote:
So what I really need now are more clips form Sopper of the RME vs the Gigaport to see if the RME is actually better as it appeared from that one set of clips. If it is, it seems like it would also handle all the high-res files and even has the auto-dark feature (right up my alley). So how about it! Any other thoughts on all this are welcome too.
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Re: General discussion about HAKAI

Post by ThomasOK »

I did run into another snag - I can't pause playback or it kills the playist. Skip forward, skip back, select another track all no problem, but pause and it dies. I don't pause often as I leave a playlist running all the time and select a different track if I don't want to hear what has started playing (this has happened a bit more since I added a couple of Nirvana albums to the playlist, you have to be in the right mood for them).

I don't have any mp3s so I haven't tried them. It is possible it has to do with the LS-NAS UPnP software. I am currently using original Linn Songbox server (not the Kazoo version) as it sounded better to me than the others I have tried. Those are Kazoo server, which I removed as it conflicted with Songbox, and Asset. I will try again with HAKAI to see if I still prefer Songbox and if Asset makes a difference with the high-res files. There are times when I used Asset because it was more stable and functional and the sound is close. For a while Songbox couldn't find much of my music and I couldn't point it in the right direction as the dialog box to choose the folder was all screwed up (I believe because of accidentally installing Kazoo server on the same machine). Even now, though I have access to the full library, Songbox has decided that the album artwork for about 80% of the albums is the cover of King Crimson "Red"! Asset doesn't seem to have that problem. I likely need to clean up and reindex my music library and it doesn't help that Windows has its own ideas about where things should reside which doesn't always tie in with what iTunes thinks.

I haven't tried minimserver because I haven't been able to get it to run on the LS-NAS. I've tried to install it a couple of times and it looks like it installed but I can't seem to get it to run. I'm not really much of a Windows IT kind of guy (nor Linux, for that matter).
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Re: General discussion about HAKAI

Post by Sopper »

Minimserver was not hard to install on my HAKAI NAS, running Open Media Vault NAS software.
Minim watch on laptop to control minim server
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Re: General discussion about HAKAI

Post by matthias »

Interesting that a group of people at the CA forum discovered something similar to the HAKAI.

They explore the Intel NUC category of motherboards, put them into fanless Akasa cases and run the AudioLinux OS completely diskless from RAM.

The price is similar to HAKAI, the performance depends on the power supply they use.

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Re: General discussion about HAKAI

Post by Defender »

I wonder if someone has tried managing the GS108T functionality in powering down unused ports as well as the short cable detection feature.
As ThomasOK has the impression
port 4 is best
port 8 is second
port 1 is third

Fredrik reported
port 8 is best
port 7 is second
port 6 is second

I thought maybe their switches are configured differently?
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Re: General discussion about HAKAI

Post by tokenbrit »

Huh, have I been using the wrong switch all this time? Mine is a GS108 (v3) unmanaged, not a GS108T managed switch...
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Re: General discussion about HAKAI

Post by ThomasOK »

Defender wrote: 2018-11-30 20:31 I wonder if someone has tried managing the GS108T functionality in powering down unused ports as well as the short cable detection feature.
As ThomasOK has the impression
port 4 is best
port 8 is second
port 1 is third

Fredrik reported
port 8 is best
port 7 is second
port 6 is second

I thought maybe their switches are configured differently?
I can't answer for Fredrik but I have not used any of the management features - I just used it configured as it came out of the box.
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Re: General discussion about HAKAI

Post by Defender »

the issue I have is I am trying to get used to tune dem but I think I am falling into certain traps so I dont really trust myself being good enough to state my findings.

However using the powering down ports feature the power supply has more headroom and powered down ports should create less interference or noise on used ones.

With the short cable mode the switch detects if the cable is less than 10m long and powers the signals down as it doesnt have to drive a long cable (not sure whats better in this case)

I tested it and to my ears its a close call but I prefer it with powering down unused ports (maybe expectation bias)

@tokenbrit: yes there are differences in the hardware (power supply and clock)
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Re: General discussion about HAKAI

Post by ThomasOK »

tokenbrit wrote: 2018-11-30 21:11 Huh, have I been using the wrong switch all this time? Mine is a GS108 (v3) unmanaged, not a GS108T managed switch...
Yep. the GS108T is the more musical switch. I don't know if anybody compared the GS108T v2 vs. the GS108T-NAS which is the newest unit.
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Re: General discussion about HAKAI

Post by Defender »

to my knowledge there is only a GS108v1 (all blue) which is wider than the v2 so you can see it at the front there is space between the ports and the left side of the switch.

The version 2 (blue/grey) is not as wide and all ports fill the front space - v2 has one POE port (port1) which is marked in yellow.

The GS108T-200NAS is a version 2 switch and the same as a GS108T-200GES where the NAS or the GES is region marking (North America vs. General Europe)and specifies the power supply plug
GS108Tv2=GS108T-200NAS=GS108T-200GE=GS108T-200UKS

I have a GS108T-200GES which was a nice improvement over the GS105.

If you knnow the IP adress of your switch you can put this IP adress directly into the webbrowser and their web diagnostic/management tool opens.
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Re: General discussion about HAKAI

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ThomasOK wrote: 2018-12-01 16:23
tokenbrit wrote: 2018-11-30 21:11 Huh, have I been using the wrong switch all this time? Mine is a GS108 (v3) unmanaged, not a GS108T managed switch...
Yep. the GS108T is the more musical switch. I don't know if anybody compared the GS108T v2 vs. the GS108T-NAS which is the newest unit.
Yeah, I remember now: the GS108 was (meant to be) a temporary upgrade from the FS605 as I got it on rebate while I was waiting for a deal on a GS108T, but forgot... Other priorities & old age I guess :)
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Re: General discussion about HAKAI

Post by ThomasOK »

Thanks Defender. Good to know the derivation of the model number differences. I never guessed that NAS had to do with North America, I just assumed it had to do with something to work better with a Network Attached Storage unit.
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Re: General discussion about HAKAI

Post by Sopper »

Radio Paradise flac is working again since upmpdcli 1.3.8 and selectable in Kazoo radio:
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Re: General discussion about HAKAI

Post by Sopper »

I have never listened to radio paradise before, but I have to say now; the FLAC version rendered with HAKAI and native control in Linn Kazoo with Upmpdcli and MPD, sounds amazing.
A fun way to discover new music as well.
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Re: General discussion about HAKAI

Post by Paaf »

Totally agree. Great music in a nice mix with super sound.
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Re: General discussion about HAKAI

Post by Sopper »

I have now connected the HAKAI NAS directly to the HAKAI streamer to test.
So far, i am liking it :)
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