Reviews

NanoSound Player: the most convenient Volumio complete player

What if an I2S DAC had an OLED display, touch buttons and remote control?

Well, that would be considered the ultimate I2S DAC when it comes to convenience. And that’s exactly what the NanoSound DAC does: it is an excellent sounding i2s DAC (same chip as Hifiberry DAC Plus) but with some uber-interesting extra features.

It features:

  • integrated  OLED display for now-playback informations,
  • 6 buttons for controls (next, previous, pause\ play, volume + and minus, power on\off)
  • handy infrared remote control, with plenty of available control options (you can even turn the player on and off)

Also, thanks to its optional Amplifier, you can use your NanoSound Player to drive your loudspeakers without the need of a second Power supply (it’s so efficient that it can squeeze out 5W from a single 5V power supply, and power the raspberry PI, Display and amplifier with it).

 

 

Frankly, as soon as I saw it, I immediately fell in love with it: as you know I am really convinced that a big deal of the music listening experience is how you actually interact with the player, and the NanoSound gives plenty of options to interact with the player without even touching a phone or a PC. I know there are many people out there which would feel more comfortable in interacting with Volumio with physical buttons, or with a remote control.

Not to mention that this is the only DAC for the Raspberry PI which integrates an on\off switch. And it just works, even remotely with the IR control.

Last but not least: an OLED display that reports playback informations in real time.

And what about the sound? Nothing to worry about as it uses the widely adopted TI PCM5122 (the same used by Hifiberry DAC+). It’s not a giant when it comes to sound quality, but it’s indeed an excellent sounding package.

The NanoSound has been launched on Kickstarter (achieving a great success, kudos!) and when I saw it I immediately thought it could be the best all-round complete player with Volumio.

That’s why we partnered with NanoMesher to provide to Volumio users a complete, ready to play device: welcome the NanoSound Player.

You can tailor it to your needs: choose to have it with a case (black or white) and if you want, you can add the Amp to it. It will come to you ready to play and no further software fiddling will be needed: just install the companion plugin and the Infrared button, display and buttons will just work.

Nostalgics of SqueezeBox, buttons aficionados, remote control lovers: the NanoSound Player is the ready-to-play Volumio device for you. And this is the device I can mostly recommend to people curious to try Volumio and Raspberry PI as their audio player but they are frightened about it to be too complicated.

And the good news are not over: you can receive up to a 20% discount on the NanoSound by simply writing an honest review on it

As usual you can find the NanoSound Player on our shop or, if you already have a raspberry PI, you can just have the NanoSound DAC

author-avatar

About Michelangelo Guarise

Passionate. Heretical. Deeply in love with Technology and Music. I live in Florence, Italy where I teach Interaction Design and Marketing. I'm Volumio's founder and CEO, and I love every second of this great adventure. My audio gear is some strange mix of valve and digital amplifiers, all self built in some cold winter sleepless nights. And I just can't turn that volume knob down.

Related Posts