Raspberry Pi HiFi

I love the IQaudiO Pi-DAC Zero with added headphone amplifier on my desk, but it has no touch controls:

I don't know whether a pi suffers in the same way as laptops and PCs do, but I found the audio-out tended to pick up all manner of onboard chirps/clicks/pops which become more annoying when you turn it up beyond normal PC listening levels ...

I get excellent results using this cheap USB DAC

I have runeaudio on my Pi 3b, headless, and can control the music by the app which I have on my phone. The Pi3 is connected to a Marshall speaker by an audio lead, and I select the music from anywhere in the house. Also with runeaudio you can stop, skip, shuffle or play 1 track over again .

I also have musicbox on a Pi Zero W, but it doesn't have the same features.

Yeah the built-in headphone plug is not good for serious audio. The Pi doesn't have an audio chip, the sound is software generated by controlling PWM (pulse width modulation) output pins. So definitely use either hdmi (full resolution digital audio output), an audio board with digital output connectors (RCA or optical), a DAC board with analog output, or a USB DAC.

I was assuming I'd need a dedicated DAC board.

One thing puzzles me: how do the various supposed "hifi" boards such as manage when they're running off the same crummy USB PSUs as the Pi?

Daniele

For the player side I'd be more tempted to get a cheap Android tablet and run SB Player on it controlled via one of the other Squeezebox apps on it or another device. Then use the Raspberry as a "Logitech Media Server" "Slim Server" "Squeezebox Server" or (what ever it's been called this month...).

Tablet for the player over Raspberry Pi? No faffing about with seperate DACs or screens, finding a suitable and nice enclosure, making it all work etc. Not as rewarding of course.

And having a squeeze server means that you can have multiple players connected each playing what they want (or synced).

The fi from a tablet is not exactly going to be very hi, is it? That's the whole point of a DAC.

It's important to have line out to an amplifier, and controls on the device (I definitely don't want any kind of network control).

Daniele

Il giorno domenica 12 novembre 2017 13:07:26 UTC+1, D.M. Procida ha scritto:

I have this:

works well. For touchscreen, distro to install etc. google is your friend.

Bye Jack

tablet

It's better than native Pi but that's not difficult. B-) The headphone out on my tablet or phone is perfectly acceptable, or you could possibly Bluetooth it to a digital amp and not "drop" to the analogue domain until you get to speaker driving. Or maybe connect a USB DAC to the tablet.

Just options.

players

Headphone out is as near as damn it line level and will be controlled by the tablets volume up/down buttons. SB Player is the bit that takes the stream and instructions (volume etc) from the Squeezebox server, it has no stream selection interface. You then have choice of apps to control what the server sends to any given "Squeezebox". This app can be running on the same device as SB Player.

Just options.

Even if you got aptX support over A2DP (probably not on a pi?) isn't that still sub-CD audio quality?

From experience with PC platforms I would suggest either an add-on DAC or an external USB DAC.

The audio quality is far superior with a reasonable HiFi system.

I'm not a great fan of mini headphone jacks for high quality audio nor of DACs built into PCs (including sound cards) or mobile devices.

Cheers

Dave R

Additional regulation and filtering.

I'll believe it when I see the specifications.

Unless the iTunes library has content stored in a loss less @ 44.1kHz or greater format I doubt that is an issue.

I didn't claim any particular DAC did it, but I did describe how one gets clean power from noisy power.

In one case, I double-regulated a noisy +12v bus down to 5v and filtered at both steps--and got clean, quiet 5v.

I know. I also meant, and perhaps I should have specified: "for any particular DAC." But yes, I implied that most probably don't have it.

Wanna play with vacuum tubes? They all said that they sounded better. :)

BTW, a recent issue of Everyday Practical Electronics did talk about making an amplifier using vacuum tubes and Raspberry Pi. I think it's October issue.

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