Non USB DAC for Raspberry Pi

[Natural Sound]

I stumbled upon a neat little I2s DAC for the Raspberry Pi. It incorporates a PCM5102A Burr-Brown chip operating up to 24bit/192kHz. The DAC board connects to the on-board sound connector P5 (you have to solder an 8-pin header to the Raspberry Pi).
http://www.hifiberry.com/dac

You can even enable a software filter if you are so inclined.
http://www.crazy-audio.com/2013/10/changing-the-output-filter-characteristics-of-the-hifiberry-mini-dac/

And if you'd prefer to use your external non-USB DAC instead the same company is working on a S/PDIF output board for the Raspberry Pi. The digi board uses the same P5 connector mentioned above.
http://www.hifiberry.com/hbdigi

 

[Zimmer64]

Great find. I will order one and try it out.

 

[Zimmer64]

Got the Hifiberry yesterday, soldered and installed it as directed on their web page. No issues there. Then I put volumio (beta 1, 1.1 does not work) (http://volumio.org/) on a spare SD card, booted the Pi and was instantly in business  8)

The thing just sounds awesome! No harshness or brightness, just a good sound quality way above its price point. A lot better than my Airport express. volumio has an easy to use browser interface and even supports Airplay. Definitely recommended as a price worthy alternative and a keeper for me.

Best

Michael

 

[BNAL]

I was just looking at that Dac this morning. I have a Pi and want to give it a try. Thanks for the information.

 

[Natural Sound]

Got the Hifiberry yesterday, soldered and installed it as directed on their web page. No issues there. Then I put volumio (beta 1, 1.1 does not work) (http://volumio.org/) on a spare SD card, booted the Pi and was instantly in business  8)

The thing just sounds awesome! No harshness or brightness, just a good sound quality way above its price point. A lot better than my Airport express. volumio has an easy to use browser interface and even supports Airplay. Definitely recommended as a price worthy alternative and a keeper for me.

Best

Michael

Good to hear Michael. Mine has not arrived yet. But I'm in the U.S. so I expect it will take a little longer.

 

[JamieMcC]

This looks really interesting, I know my brother has a Raspberry Pi which is gathering dust for a while perhaps I can talk him into loaning it to me for a while. 90% of my listening is done via pc or ipad with Airplay.

 

[John EH]

Great find.  I saw that a while back and contemplated it for a bit but decided I have too many Pi's and DAC's around here now as it is.

The RPi works great with USB DAC's now however it didn't so much in the beginning.  They seem to have the bugs worked out of the USB bus now with the latest kernel updates.  Easy enough to run an external DAC if you first do

sudo apt-get update

then

sudo apt-get upgrade

then

sudo rpi-update

then

sudo shutdown -r now

 

[Natural Sound]

Great find.  I saw that a while back and contemplated it for a bit but decided I have too many Pi's and DAC's around here now as it is.

The RPi works great with USB DAC's now however it didn't so much in the beginning.  They seem to have the bugs worked out of the USB bus now with the latest kernel updates.  Easy enough to run an external DAC if you first do

sudo apt-get update

then

sudo apt-get upgrade

then

sudo rpi-update

then

sudo shutdown -r now

Yes, the new firmware update does seem settle things down a bit. The "click and pop" problems seem to have been taken care of anyway. I'm running a VA labs USB DAC and a Raspberry Pi out in my shop. I mainly use MPD to connect to my networked file shares and radio streams. In addition I occasionally use pianobar which is a lightweight command line program for Pandora. It sounds pretty damn good but knowing what I know about the shared USB implementation on the Pi I think the firmware is a band-aid. The HiFiBerry DAC connects directly to the PCM/I2S bus on the Pi's BCM2835 chip. Eliminating the shared USB port from the audio stream could potentially translate into higher quality sound. At least thats how I understand it anyway. 

Understand that I am not affiliated with the folks at HiFiBerry. I'm just intrigued with their product.

 

[SammyJ]

Hmmm,
Really interesting.  I've been wanted an excuse to mess with RPI for a bit, sounds like this is it.  Just picked up a Model B with the Hifiberry kit.  Planning on grabbing good external RCA connectors.  I'll report back with some results.

Just out of curiousity, how is Airplay in terms of audio quality?  Just haven't done any research on the topic.

 

[JamieMcC]

Just out of curiousity, how is Airplay in terms of audio quality?  Just haven't done any research on the topic.

I have been very happy with the quality of Airplay, music streamed with it is certainly much better than any of my other sources in the house. My CD player or dvd player come nowhere close to retrieving the same amount of detail.

I use Airplay for streaming cd's  (ripped to lossless) to a Marantz NA7004 (which acts as my dac) feeding into my Bottlehead Crack. Controlled via pc or ipad,  fwiw I prefer the sound via Airplay to that of the same music fed via usb connection.

 

[Zimmer64]

Re Airplay: I have not done any blind test with the RPI / Hifiberry, but to my ears there is no difference streaming the same file from the NAS vs. sending it via Airplay.

 

[John EH]

Got the Hifiberry yesterday, soldered and installed it as directed on their web page. No issues there. Then I put volumio (beta 1, 1.1 does not work) (http://volumio.org/) on a spare SD card, booted the Pi and was instantly in business  8)

The thing just sounds awesome! No harshness or brightness, just a good sound quality way above its price point. A lot better than my Airport express. volumio has an easy to use browser interface and even supports Airplay. Definitely recommended as a price worthy alternative and a keeper for me.

Best

Michael

Did you have to do anything to asound.conf or any other config file to get it to work?

 

[Zimmer64]

Volumio did not read the m4a files off the NAS at first. Found the solution in the volumio forum. I had to change the mpd.conf. There is an entry for the decoder "ffmpeg", which must read enabled "yes". The default was no and there is nowhere in the GUI to change it.

Here is the forum entry: http://volumio.org/forum/m4a-support-t14.html

Michael

 

[John EH]

Volumio did not read the m4a files off the NAS at first. Found the solution in the volumio forum. I had to change the mpd.conf. There is an entry for the decoder "ffmpeg", which must read enabled "yes". The default was no and there is nowhere in the GUI to change it.

Here is the forum entry: http://volumio.org/forum/m4a-support-t14.html

Michael

Looks like no issue then with hardware, just with software.  I generally stream music from Logitech Media Server (squeeze plug) so I don't see an issue.  May order one and play with it.  Thanks.

 

[SammyJ]

Anyone using OS X with RPi Model B to to create the SD for Volumio?  I can't get it to work for the life of me, but the same card, using NOOBS works fine

 

[SammyJ]

OOOOK, so I got it to work by using a Windows 7 PC.  Seems like its an issue with OS X I guess?  Oh well

 

[Zimmer64]

PI filler did it for me on Maverick: http://ivanx.com/raspberrypi/

 

[SammyJ]

Thanks Zimmer, I'll check that out next time there's an update. 

Volumio uses shairport, which I've heard adds a decent bit of distortion.  I don't have my music in a NAS setup just yet, but will likely have to do that soon.

 

[SammyJ]

Just an update, Pi Filler worked well with Mountain Lion.  I'll have to check out the source and see what its doing differently than the listed instructions at some point.  Thanks Zimmer

 

[John EH]

Just an update, Pi Filler worked well with Mountain Lion.  I'll have to check out the source and see what its doing differently than the listed instructions at some point.  Thanks Zimmer

I never had luck with Pi Filler or Pi Copier.  I just use dd commands in Mac.  Granted a little slower but never fails.

if you use

dd if=/path/to/image.img of=/dev/rdiskx bs=1m

it will work like a champ.  In Mac you can type

dd if=
and then drag and drop your file in the terminal and it will complete the path.