ANNOUNCE: Squeezelite-ESP32 (dedicated thread)

[sle118]

But still, it’s strange. There is is an ideal diode to enable battery and if battery supply replaces Vcc, it means massive dropout from the wall adapter with indicates a problem with it or its cabling.

I meant to say that "when running on batteries, there was no clipping anymore". That actually was a proof that the power adapter wasn't strong enough to prevent clipping from happening, as battery didn't have the same behavior.

[Prime Heretic]

What is the rating of the power supply that you now have plugged into your SqueezeAMP?

At least something like that https://www.digikey.co.uk/products/e...A30R-120-R-CR1 is recommended. You can go higher in Voltage, I would recommend not to go above 16V. In Watt, you can go as high as you want

Cheers, yes, increased the voltage/amps clipping gone.

[Paul Webster]

Cheers, yes, increased the voltage/amps clipping gone.

That is good news.
What size power supply did you opt for in the end?
Do the speakers get load enough for you?
Probably worth checking for heat / airflow on SqueezeAMP if running for an extended period at high volume.

[Prime Heretic]

That is good news.
What size power supply did you opt for in the end?
Do the speakers get load enough for you?
Probably worth checking for heat / airflow on SqueezeAMP if running for an extended period at high volume.

It's an old Netgear 12v 1A PSU, I have other PSU's but didnt try anything else yet since this sorted the issue and I'd likely have to find matching connectors.

The SqueezeAmp etc is for a secondary room and honestly I'm not audiophile.

Not sure what you mean by get enough load, ohms, sensitivity, watts it's all a bit of a mystery to me, but volume now goes well above what I'd find comfortable given I have neighbours. Clipping is all gone.

It's difficult for me to say how good it all sounds, at the moment I'd say it sounds decent, but I only have one speaker wired up atm since I have to decide where I want things and cut my audiophile quality doorbell cable to length etc..

Monitor Audio Bronze 2's are supposed to be good speakers (what I'm using) but I remember trying Bronze 1's in Richer Sounds a few year back in a proper test and much preferring the Q Acoustics 3050 I ended up with.

I found the Bronze 1's a bit dull, these Bronze 2's I picked up cheap and am using with the SqAmp sound a bit similar but clearly the ESP32 is in the loop so it's hard to judge components without swapping things out etc.. At the end of the day the SqueezeAmp is super tiny so I suspect I should be realistic with expectations. I did muck around with EQ a bit, which brightened things but where I was testing wasn't ideal and as I say haven't spent much time with it yet.

On PSU though, what's important here, the voltage? If I went to say 16v would this then give the ESP32 more room to play? Or maybe the ampage should be at least some value for certain speakers?

[philippe_44]

It's an old Netgear 12v 1A PSU, I have other PSU's but didnt try anything else yet since this sorted the issue and I'd likely have to find matching connectors.

The SqueezeAmp etc is for a secondary room and honestly I'm not audiophile.

Not sure what you mean by get enough load, ohms, sensitivity, watts it's all a bit of a mystery to me, but volume now goes well above what I'd find comfortable given I have neighbours. Clipping is all gone.

It's difficult for me to say how good it all sounds, at the moment I'd say it sounds decent, but I only have one speaker wired up atm since I have to decide where I want things and cut my audiophile quality doorbell cable to length etc..

Monitor Audio Bronze 2's are supposed to be good speakers (what I'm using) but I remember trying Bronze 1's in Richer Sounds a few year back in a proper test and much preferring the Q Acoustics 3050 I ended up with.

I found the Bronze 1's a bit dull, these Bronze 2's I picked up cheap and am using with the SqAmp sound a bit similar but clearly the ESP32 is in the loop so it's hard to judge components without swapping things out etc.. At the end of the day the SqueezeAmp is super tiny so I suspect I should be realistic with expectations. I did muck around with EQ a bit, which brightened things but where I was testing wasn't ideal and as I say haven't spent much time with it yet.

On PSU though, what's important here, the voltage? If I went to say 16v would this then give the ESP32 more room to play? Or maybe the ampage should be at least some value for certain speakers?

The voltage and amperage both matter but in a different way. The voltage is "imposed and fixed" by the power supply and should *not* vary during use, the amperage is decided by the device, depending on what it needs and it varies by the millisecond - device draw whatever they need. There are reservoirs (capacitors) that store energy to deliver amperage on short burst but these are small and if the device needs big amperage for an extended amount of time, then the supply will fail, voltage will drop and bad thing will happen.

Power is Voltage x Amperage, but every device has minimum and maximum acceptable Voltage (SqueezeAMP is 5V to 20V) and recommended ones (12V for SqueezeAMP on normal use, 16V for "power use"), so you can't just say well, 5V x 3A is equivalent to 7.5V x 2A.

Net net, for "casual" users of SqueezeAMP, I recommend 12V and 30W power supply (~2.5A), it's perfect. If you want more, you can move to 16V and 50W (~3A) but it will produce a bit some heat constantly and of course much more when use constantly to listen at high volume.

[Prime Heretic]

The voltage and amperage both matter but in a different way. The voltage is "imposed and fixed" by the power supply and should *not* vary during use, the amperage is decided by the device, depending on what it needs and it varies by the millisecond - device draw whatever they need. There are reservoirs (capacitors) that store energy to deliver amperage on short burst but these are small and if the device needs big amperage for an extended amount of time, then the supply will fail, voltage will drop and bad thing will happen.

Power is Voltage x Amperage, but every device has minimum and maximum acceptable Voltage (SqueezeAMP is 5V to 20V) and recommended ones (12V for SqueezeAMP on normal use, 16V for "power use"), so you can't just say well, 5V x 3A is equivalent to 7.5V x 2A.

Net net, for "casual" users of SqueezeAMP, I recommend 12V and 30W power supply (~2.5A), it's perfect. If you want more, you can move to 16V and 50W (~3A) but it will produce a bit some heat constantly and of course much more when use constantly to listen at high volume.

That's cool thanks, very informative.

Hmm I suppose I could put a multimeter in the loop as well and check what it's pulling in amps in different use-cases, I have a 12v 6.5A here I was going to try at some point.

Do you know if any analysis has been done on the Squeezelite-ESP32/SqueezeAmp? The various audiophile forums often do graphs and such, would be great to see how it stacks up.

[philippe_44]

That's cool thanks, very informative.

Hmm I suppose I could put a multimeter in the loop as well and check what it's pulling in amps in different use-cases, I have a 12v 6.5A here I was going to try at some point.

Do you know if any analysis has been done on the Squeezelite-ESP32/SqueezeAmp? The various audiophile forums often do graphs and such, would be great to see how it stacks up.

A multimeter will not tell you much as these peaks are fast

[sle118]

That's cool thanks, very informative.

Hmm I suppose I could put a multimeter in the loop as well and check what it's pulling in amps in different use-cases, I have a 12v 6.5A here I was going to try at some point.

Do you know if any analysis has been done on the Squeezelite-ESP32/SqueezeAmp? The various audiophile forums often do graphs and such, would be great to see how it stacks up.

SqueezeAmp is based on a TI -TAS5754M chip, using something really close (I think) to reference design. You could definitely have a look at TI's technical document to see the various response curves. In short, the higher the voltage, the less harmonic distortion you get at higher volume. Depending on your speaker, you might be operating the amplifier in a higher distortion zone with a 12V power supply. For quality on larger speakers, I would tend to use 16V or so.

Here's the link to the datasheets

https://www.ti.com/lit/gpn/tas5754m

Here's the response curve at 12V


And at 18V

[schmurtz]

ANNOUNCE: Squeezelite-ESP32 (dedicated thread)

You should send a copy to JohnAudioTech. This guy has many technical tests to review an amp and like to comment amp implementations.
It could be good for the notoriety of the project too [emoji6]

Just a question about my two last posts : Did I post at the right place ? Because I feel like f***ing transparent [emoji28] (or may be I said only nonsense ?)

[Paul Webster]

Not sure what you mean by get enough load, ohms, sensitivity, watts it's all a bit of a mystery to me, but volume now goes well above what I'd find comfortable given I have neighbours. Clipping is all gone.

That was an autocorrect that I missed.
For "load" read "loud" and clearly it did.

[philippe_44]

Hi, just received my ESP-A1S module, I've been disappointed by this hardware because the jack earphones output implementation is bad : you hear a lot of buzzing/noise from the Wifi/bluetooth !
I didn't notice same problems with the amp speaker output but my test are currently not on qualitative speakers.
Some questions about ESP-A1S :

• How to switch between jack and amp speakers output ?
• I didn't understood where to put the buttons configuration ? At the bottom of the NVS editor ?
• Not possible to put the right settings directly in the firmware (to be ready just after flash) ?

I've not noticed the noise on the headset but I've been trying to get rid of the loud plop when switch on/off the DAC and it does not want to go out (it's hidden by the amp GPIO though).
To get automatic switch, you have to set the GPIO that is set when jack is inserted. Can't remember it from top of my head, but you have that on the github site. Then you have to set the NVS parameter that enables the auto switch of the DAC/amp

Ah and some remarks about the use of the use of the awesome Squeezelite-ESP32 :

1. A favicon and a name based on the player name could help to find the right tab in the navigator (when you open too much tabs like me)
2. I found really difficult to configure the screen in the proper way, a list of examples depending the screen resolution could be awesome.
   Because screen configuration can be made in too much way (in the "squeezeesp32 plugin", in the "display" settings of the player and in "Music information screen").
   If you just want artist name, song name, progress bar and an artwork it is very complicated ! By the way "artwork" X Y = position or size ?
3. Squeezelite-ESP32 really deserve a documentation with table of contents and search

And I know, it's open source and everyone can participate, (I say that because sometime communities are not kind when you drop too much ideas), I just drop my thoughts when they are fresh

What part of configuration do you feel is complicated? The setup with GPIO ot the layout from LMS? None are overlapping, they are just different configurations, but don't do the same thing
The layout piece is really almost the same as a SB or a Boom and wrt to GPIO/interface, @sle118 is working on a more friend webUI.
And X,Y is offset, not size
And dropping ideas is 100% fine, we might not have the time or disagree, but discussion is always open

You should send a copy to
https://www.youtube.com/user/JohnAudioTech] JohnAudioTech[/url]. This guy has many technical tests to review an amp and like to comment amp implementations.
It could be good for the notoriety of the project too [emoji6]

Just a question about my two last posts : Did I post at the right place ? Because I feel like f***ing transparent [emoji28] (or may be I said only nonsense ?)

I will look at that - and no, you're not being ignore

[Prime Heretic]

And I know, it's open source and everyone can participate, (I say that because sometime communities are not kind when you drop too much ideas), I just drop my thoughts when they are fresh

Just to say ESP32 and SqueezeAmp are fantastic, currently working from home and my half configured setup with one bell-wire single speaker is running right now behind me in the lounge and it does sound great to my non-audiophile ears. Thanks for all the work on this everyone.

SqueezeAmp is based on a TI -TAS5754M chip, using something really close (I think) to reference design. You could definitely have a look at TI's technical document to see the various response curves. In short, the higher the voltage, the less harmonic distortion you get at higher volume. Depending on your speaker, you might be operating the amplifier in a higher distortion zone with a 12V power supply. For quality on larger speakers, I would tend to use 16V or so.

Here's the link to the datasheets

https://www.ti.com/lit/gpn/tas5754m

Here's the response curve at 12V
[ATTACH]31493[/ATTACH]

And at 18V
[ATTACH]31494[/ATTACH]

Interesting, I'm using an 8 ohm speaker (Monitor Audio Bronze 2), so it'll be a bit less than the 4 ohm in your graph, but trying to interpret that graph which I'm not massively clear on, it seems that at 12v and when the volume is at an equivalent of around 15w some harmonic distortion can appear?

And at 18v that moves to around 30w, if so it seems big wins for moving up the voltage? If so at 8 ohm I'm probably looking at up to say 25watts ish.

On the Monitor Audio site it says "Recommended Amplifier Requirements: 30 — 100 W" (https://www.monitoraudio.com/en/supp...e-5g/bronze-2/) so maybe I'm pushing it a bit and ideally a less wattage speaker would be a better option, maybe less ohms too?

Anyway ordered this, 16v 8a, complete overkill but it was the same priced as the 2a ones.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/233701995442

If you haven't got something in a drawer somewhere it seems there's a bunch of good brand used PSUs on ebay for very little money (relatively speaking), people obviously just want rid since they take up space.

To be honest I think I'd probably be happier with a used Sony PSU than a brand new unknown brand one, well especially at the £10 mark!

You should send a copy to
https://www.youtube.com/user/JohnAudioTech] JohnAudioTech[/url]. This guy has many technical tests to review an amp and like to comment amp implementations.
It could be good for the notoriety of the project too [emoji6]

Ah just checked he's US not UK, if UK I would have messaged him and sent him mine as a loaner if he was happy to do it.

[sle118]

Interesting, I'm using an 8 ohm speaker (Monitor Audio Bronze 2), so it'll be a bit less than the 4 ohm in your graph, but trying to interpret that graph which I'm not massively clear on, it seems that at 12v and when the volume is at an equivalent of around 15w some harmonic distortion can appear?

You got that right. Also, distortion level isn't linear throughout across audible frequency band, so it's hard to say how this will be perceived. If you have a 20V supply, you could give it a shot and see if heat is going to be an issue. It is always possible to mitigate that with great sink, etc. But then again, the sound from 16V may be perfectly acceptable for you, given the loudness constraints where you live.

[mboxler]

This is probably a "who cares" question, but I can't figure out how the TAS5754M works the way it does in the SqueezeAmp.

The chip appears to be a combination of an I2S to single-ended DAC and a differential input/output class D amplifier. The schematic (shown in Figure 80 of the datasheet) clearly shows the DAC_OUTA connected to SPK_INA+ and DAC_OUTB connected to SPK_INB+. SPK_INA- and SPK_INB- are grounded. However, when measuring the SPK_OUT voltages on the SqueezeAmp, there appears to be inverted voltages on SPK_OUTA- and SPK_OUTB-.

How is this occurring? Are you passing the DAC_OUT voltages through inverting op amps to the SPK_INA- and SPK_INB- inputs?

Thanks again for developing this great little all-in-one streamer. It is amazing!

Mike

[philippe_44]

I still do not recommend to use more than 12V for casual use. The TAS produces much more heat while idle at that voltage. This is the reason why I did the boost version so that 12v is the voltage whether you use battery or wall adapter.