'Analog Dinosaur' succumbs to the joys of FBA : enter Raspberry Pi 2/IQ-Audio DAC+!!

[cyclopse]

Just received the Paul Hynes PS I ordered a little while ago. Sat there the whole evening upon firing it up for the first time listening to all the tracks I have on a USB stick - a nice mixture of ripped CDs and paid for high-res FLAC files.
First impressions were very favourable - a huge improvement in the bass, in fact on certain tracks the bass was almost too much - down to the recording I'm sure. Separator by Radiohead sounded the best I've ever heard, Colin Greenwood's playing more noticeable and musical than previous (ripped CD ).
Joni Mitchell - Court and Spark - 24 bit FLAC, an album I know very well was again the best I've ever heard it, lyrics were definitely clearer and the musicians playing became more defined and separated yet more closely intertwined as a band playing together. As others have commented, spending £500 plus on a PS for a £90 DAC does seem a bit crazy but I think this is more to do with the superb value the Pi / IQAudio DAC represents.

Pleased to read you are enjoying the linear power supply. In my case it is just powering the Pi motherboard as digital output is over USB.

Regards

Cyclopse

[Qwin]

I look at what's happening on the file based/streaming audio scene every now and then, but have never followed up on it (So far).

I like the concept of the RPi but the interface for Volumio/Rune kills it for me.

Quite a while back, I briefly had a low (sound) quality iTunes set up on a PC and liked the ability to be able to flick through the thumb nails of album covers to find what I wanted. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you can't do this on Volumio/Rune? From the YouTube clips I've seen, you get lists of names depending how you are searching eg Genre/Artist/Album but you don't get an image until you get down to the track level? Is this really the case?

I use the thumbnails as a search tool not just as additional info about a track. Quite often I remember the Album cover but not the Artist or Title, so its a must have feature for me.

A couple of Aps used with RPi caught my eye recently:

Logitech Media Server

Kodi/XBMC

They integrate in different ways as part of a music system, but both get me the thumb nail browsing.

Anyone experienced in the pro's and cons of these two approaches?

It's worth noting, I won't be using other devices to listen to the tracks and movies/photos are not a consideration.

I like that Kodi installs on the RPi and can display (via HDMI) on your TV and can be controlled and browsed using the TV remote. So no other computer/tablet/smartphone is needed/involved. It can be configured in many ways, but this method has my attention, as I don't own a tablet or smartphone (by choice) at present and buying either adds significantly to the RPi system costs.

My system thinking is a RPi 3 B with Hifiberry digi Pro (i2S top hat) exporting coax digital directly to a minidsp 4x10Hd for Crossover/EQ work, before being exported by the minidsp as analogue to the power amps. Local storage will be a powered USB hard drive.

[struth]

Dunno re roon but i think you do. Certainly do with volumio and my fav moode. Moode can also do tree but i always use the thumbnails

[Rothchild]

I'm also not much of a fan of the pi music jukebox derived interfaces, which is why I still stick with Subsonic (although I will start to dabble with the free fork 'Libresonic' soon) I also very much like 'Iris' as an interface for Mopidy as it also has good cover browsing too.

[Qwin]

Struth - It was Rune Audio I was referring to, linked at the hip to Volumio, not Roon. Had a quick look at Roon but not Moode yet.

Very much like what I'm reading about Kodi and seeing explained on youtube.
Can rip CD's directly from within the app and access iTunes libraries if required (I have 300 albums stored on old HDD) without converting formats, seems very flexible and can work with local, networked or streamed files. And runs well on the Pi by all accounts.

Its very much aimed at multi media, in particular Movies, but its simple to remove (reversible) Movies and Pictures options from the main menu and even get it to launch straight into the music part of the program if you want.

This has rekindled my interest in making a small music server.

[Qwin]

Calling all you guys with Paul Haynes power supplies.

Where are you feeding the power into the RPi ?
Into the stock power socket?

Reason I ask, is there is talk of nasty power switching and protection circuitry in the Pi itself that is best avoided.

Folks using the Hifiberry digi+Pro top hat are feeding power into that board which then supplies the Pi instead of the other way round, its supposed to work better this way by avoiding said nasties. They are also splitting the input to 5v and 3.3v for the digital and analogue elements in some DAC boards.

I don't know if any of this is possible on other spdif boards or DAC boards, but I'm putting the theory out there FYI.

[cyclopse]

Calling all you guys with Paul Haynes power supplies.

Where are you feeding the power into the RPi ?
Into the stock power socket?

Reason I ask, is there is talk of nasty power switching and protection circuitry in the Pi itself that is best avoided.

Folks using the Hifiberry digi+Pro top hat are feeding power into that board which then supplies the Pi instead of the other way round, its supposed to work better this way by avoiding said nasties. They are also splitting the input to 5v and 3.3v for the digital and analogue elements in some DAC boards.

I don't know if any of this is possible on other spdif boards or DAC boards, but I'm putting the theory out there FYI.

I used to use the micro usb socket with the supplied adaptor. Recently I changed to using pins 1 and 5 on the GPIO header. I also use an Audioquest Jitterbug in between Raspberry Pi and USB DAC.

Regards

Cyclopse

[MikeyFresh]

Struth - It was Rune Audio I was referring to, linked at the hip to Volumio, not Roon. Had a quick look at Roon but not Moode yet.

Very much like what I'm reading about Kodi and seeing explained on youtube.
Can rip CD's directly from within the app and access iTunes libraries if required (I have 300 albums stored on old HDD) without converting formats, seems very flexible and can work with local, networked or streamed files. And runs well on the Pi by all accounts.

Its very much aimed at multi media, in particular Movies, but its simple to remove (reversible) Movies and Pictures options from the main menu and even get it to launch straight into the music part of the program if you want.

This has rekindled my interest in making a small music server.

I've got an RPi3 running Moode, and also an ODROID C2 running Kodi, both very stable, my preference for audio is definitely Moode.

Speaking of building a small network attached server, I recently decided to use an RPi3 as the basis for that too.

I installed AssetUPnP on Raspbian and it has turned out one of the best builds I've ever done: inexpensive, small footprint, tiny power draw, and best of all it sounds fantastic streaming to the above mentioned end point/renderers, as well as a Sonore microRendu in my hi-fi room. All PCM bit depth/sample rates as well as DSD64 have been flawless.

Here is a picture of that RPi3 as music server connected to my Apple router, just add a USB storage device (my HDD not pictured) and you've got a NAS on the cheap:

[Qwin]

I must look further into Moode, several people have said good things about it.

People talk about how simple and compact the Pi is, but then show it with a load of wires and boxes attached, which looks messy, takes up space and doesn't fit well with other gear on the equipment rack. (Generalised comment)

I'm looking toward a single box solution:

A 5v tracking linear power supply, Pi board with spdif card and USB 1TB HDD for local storage, all in one compact case, this would be my goal.
I'm also considering mounting some USB sockets for data and separate 5v power sockets on the back panel. This would allow additional devices to be attached, like a CD/DVD drive for ripping CD's or another HDD for back up. Thought about building in a CD Drive, but it makes the case a lot larger, a USB CD Drive could sit on top of the main unit on the occasions when it was needed.

I would disconnect all the pin1 5v connections in the USB sockets, so there would be no chance of overloading the USB power system and power all items directly from the beefier 5v linear supply.

This has all been buzzing round in my head, it started to gel when I was working on a power supply for my Pro-Ject Phono stage. I was considering whether I could fit the supply into a Half width case, to match the Phono stage and the thought crossed my mind that it would also make a cool case for a Pi based music server.

I need to wrap up some projects and turn these thoughts into action.

[Marco]

Hi Ken,

People talk about how simple and compact the Pi is, but then show it with a load of wires and boxes attached, which looks messy, takes up space and doesn't fit well with other gear on the equipment rack.

Answer: operate it wirelessly from the router. If both the RPi and router are within close proximity, then it's not an issue. I think it sounds better too, used wirelessly, minus any ethernet cable.

That's how I've been using mine recently, and I've had no problems. The only cables visible are the interconnects and (in this case very thin) connecting power cable, as happens with any other hi-fi components

In fact, in my current set up (used in conjunction with home-cinema system), the RPi is hidden on the rack behind my Sony AV amp, and connected to that with a 0.3m pair of interconnects (always use the shortest cables you can with the RPi, for best sound), so you can see hee-haw!

As an aside, I'd always recommend that folks fit a proper case to the RPi (I use the Pi-Case+, see here: http://iqaudio.co.uk/search?controll...submit_search= ) as it improves the looks of the unit and also adds weight, helping to increase stability, especially when cables are connected.

Oh, and another thumbs-up for Moode, especially the latest version with improved sound-quality kernels

Marco.