Musings of a *IX guy

After I upgraded Ubuntu to 9.10 my Squeezebox Duet could not see my music library on my Ubuntu server.

I checked my router for DHCP clients to confirm the Squeebox Duet and controller were connected and I was surprised to see a DHCP connection from my newly upgraded Ubuntu server as it should have been a static IP. I seem to remember I had the same problem last time I upgraded – anyway as the Squeezebox expects to see the Ubuntu server running the  music library daemon on a static IP I assumed this was the problem.

Reverting back to a static IP address after upgrading Ubuntu

From the tool bar – System – Preferences – Network Connections

Select  Wired connection 1 – Edit

Check the IPV4 Settings tab for the correct IP address then click apply.

Open up a terminal and restart the network

sudo /etc/init.d/networking restart

Check with ifconfig -a that the required static IP address has been applied.

Squeezebox stil not finding my music library

Now I had the right IP address on my Ubuntu server the Squeezebox still would not find the music library.

I checked on the Ubuntu server if the squeecenter daemon was running ( ps -ef | grep squee ) – it was not. I attempted to restart it :-

sudo /etc/init.d/squeezecenter restart
Restarting squeezecenterNo squeezecenter_s found running; none killed.
start-stop-daemon: stat /usr/sbin/squeezecenter_safe: No such file or directory (No such file or directory)

Oh dear – time for a Google search. Apparently the 9.10 upgrade to MySql broke it and I needed to download the latest ( beta ) version 7.4.2 of squeeboxserver ( the new name for squeezecenter ). You can get it from

http://downloads.slimdevices.com/nightly/?ver=7.4

In Ubuntu if you click on the Debian installer package link then an installer will start up – ask you confirm you want it installed and warn about an older version available in the repository which would be more stable. After installer I started it up :-

sudo /etc/init.d/squeezeboxserver start

As I was using squeezecenter rather than squeezeboxserver I had to configure it to tell it where my music files and play list were. To do this connect to http://localhost:9000 , type in your squuebox network login ( or register if you don’t have one ) and then follow the instructions to point to your music and playlist files.

Over the years I have built various DIY Hi-Fi equipment, one such item is a power amplifier which I have been using since I built it over 20 years ago ! One channel started playing up and eventually stop producing sound all together.

The power amplifier consists of two Maplin Electronics 150 watt Mosfet amp modules , a hi-grade power supply with a toroidal transformer and a soft start / speaker protection module , all built from kits.

One of the Mosfet amp modules had blown and rather than try to fix it I thought it would be a good opportunity to update the amp modules to something more modern. The power supply and the soft start / speaker protection unit were all good quality so I wanted to keep them.

I started looking for DIY Hi-Fi kits , the ones at Maplin looked too low end so I searched the web.

There seems a great deal of interest in Class-D amplifiers which brought back memories for me as I built one for my college project years ago when they were not generally used for audio amplifiers. I found a very interesting range of Class-D amplifier kits at 41HZ however I did not fancy soldering surface mount devices and the kits that did not have surface mount devices did not  suit my power supply.

I eventually found some pre-built Mosfet power amp modules at Class-d designs who are in the UK and despite the name of the company the modules are not Class-d which is fine for me as efficiency is not a problem as I have a pretty beefy PSU.

The layout of the components in the module enabled me to re-use the L-bracket heat sink from the Maplin modules ( there are finned heat sinks on the outside of the case to carry away the heat ).

The picture below shows one of the new modules in place with one of the original Maplin modules on the left , the soft start /speaker protection unit at the bottom and the power supply at the right. As you can see the new modules are quite a bit smaller. The sound is as good or better than the Maplin ones – although I’m not a “golden ear” person !

Power Amplifier with one new module

I tend to rebuild things over the years but keep various bits like PSUs and cases so things can look a bit untidy.

Below is my pre-amplifier which I use with the above poweramp – it has been re-built a few times and I’m thinking of rebuilding it again.

preamplifier