Hi everybody,
I’m brand new in this wold, so I write here to have information and suggestions about my project.
I have a good hifi equipment (don’t like to enumerate it, I think it’s too selfish ) and very recently I’ve bought an external dac to connect my pc to the amplifier. It’s a topping d30 xmos and I think is a best-buy for the price.
Now I’d like to create my own net streamer and I thought about raspberry pi and volumio.
My idea is to recycle the box of an old satellite receiver, pimping it up with a new custom front panel.
Inside, the raspberry, an external Sata to USB adapter and a capable hdd, a simple display with track information and the power supply.
My questions are:
can I use my external dac and the pi just as transport?
Can I connect the dac to the pi via usb as an external soundcard?
Could I use any kind of just output dac hat to connect the devices trough the spdif optical interface? Which ones?
Yes, either via USB directly or using Spdif via a Hat board.
Yes, but the Pi isn’t the best USB signal provider when it comes to audio.
There are a few Hat boards that you can put on top of the Pi which provide an optical spdif signal. A good option to look at is the Hifiberry Digi+ Pro especially when you have a good hifi setup.
By default the Pi does a bad job in providing a
decent clock signal for audio, so look at boards that have their own clocks to generate a proper spdif signal.
Finally, using a good (preferably audio grade) power supply is important to get better results.
Maybe take a look at some youtube videos from Hans Beekhuyzen who has several Pi related reviews and tutorials on several audio subjects.
Thank you for your reply and your suggestions.
I think I’ll start with a simply pi and the USB dac.
Then I’ll take the digi +
Is it just a transport, isn’t it?
Any other suggestions or links for the power supply?
I have another question:
I’ve read something about the audiophilia of the different releases of the pi.
Some people say that the pi 2 in the best in terms of USB transport and background noise.
The Pi 2 does not have radio’s for Wifi and Bluetooth and it is these radios that could cause interference. But you would like to get the processing power if the Pi 3 as it is much more powerful than the Pi 2.
When you connect the Pi 3 via ethernet, you could turn both radio’s of.
But in your case when starting with using the USB bus to connect to your DAC, you should not connect any other devices to the USB port including the ethernet port as it is in fact a USB to ethernet adapter so it depends on the USB port as well.
When you use a HAT board like the Digi+ as transport to your DAC, you can use the Ethernet again and switch of the radios
Hi all, I have another question…
I’m trying to fillup my buying-chart and I would like to add to my project a display.
I read something around internet but I’m still very confused: I’m looking for a display as big as maximum 4" to be placed on the faceplate showing-up the volumio UI. It doesn’t matter if would be touch or not. I’m looking for system stability on a pi3b+.
) and very recently I’ve bought an external dac to connect my pc to the amplifier. It’s a topping d30 xmos and I think is a best-buy for the price.