Received Cubox -i4 Pro yesterday

[John EH]

Installing logitichmediaserver and squeezelite on it was a snap.  Opted to install Ubuntu 11.04 (only real choice on their site precompiled for Cubox) and am now upgrading to 12.04 LTS Ubuntu.

My HiFiMeDIY DAC was plug and play although I did have to add a dependency or two or three to make it work with squeezelite

sudo apt-get install libasound2 libflac-dev libfaad2 libmad0

Working like a champ and it sounds really great too.

But I have to tell you the company is a train wreck when it comes to fulfilling orders.  Real mess.  Their Facebook page and Forums are ate up with unhappy people.  That being said I think most everybody is happy after delivery.  The device itself is kinda cool. 

They either a) suck or b) got too much demand they couldn't fulfill.  Not sure which yet. They have seemed to have gotten smart and stopped current orders and make it clear you are getting a backorder.

Anyway, sounds good, the form factor is kinda cool and the rest.......we'll see.

John

 

[John EH]

Been an interesting few days with this demon.  There are basically 4 OS'you can easily install.  Android Jelly Bean but that will only let you run Squeezeplayer which is a client, not a server so it can't freestand.

Debian is broken for me anyway.  I can't get networking enabled.

Haven't tried Fedora and went with Ubuntu.

Basically installed base version from Cubox which is older than dirt.  Installed Squeezeboxserver and Squeezelite and then upgraded to their Long Term Support version 12.04.  It worked like a champ.

Also you can install Arch but you need to be really geeky with Linux to function there.

Then I screwed around and bought a bigger faster SD card.  So then I install Ubuntu, Upgrade it then install the Squeeze services.  Broken.  Doesn't work.  I suspect I should have installed and upgraded again.

Anyway I had flashed an image of my old install so I just went back and installed it on the new bigger SD card and then went to my Linux machine and enlarged the partition to fill the whole card with a program called gparted.

Cubox hardware is cool and from an audio standpoint sounds GREAT through the DAC but the distributions that are compiled for it are just not there yet.  You just can't go grab any linux distro because it is an ARM7 architecture.  I need to wait it out and let the real geeks develop more.

I suspect in 6 months there will be a lot of OS choices and their stability and ease of use will improve but for now unless you are a command line geek (I enjoy that stuff but am not a master) I'd steer clear for now.

But.  It is fun, and it does sound good.  Took me two or three days to get a good install but I'm still running into bugs.  Fortunately none of them are showstoppers for me. and are not related to audio playback.

 

[John EH]

Just for the heck of it I detailed my steps getting Logitech Media Server and Squeezelite running on the Cubox.  Sounds great!

http://www.hagensieker.com/styled-22/index.html

http://www.hagensieker.com/styled-23/index.html

http://www.hagensieker.com/styled-24/index.html