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

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Originally Posted by Ashmore

Thanks Will, that's very helpful. I did notice yesterday that the DAC+ is listed as an option in the picoreplayer output dropdown, which gave me to think it'll just be a click and select. I notice the software was updated just last month - perhaps a recent addition? Or I could be wrong and I'll have to do the putty thing. Either way I'm sure I'll get it going.

Incidentally after I wrote last night, continued listening changed my impressions somewhat of this improvised setup. It definitely improved quite a lot in the two hours or so that I listened. I promise I didn't have enough beer to distort my perceptions....

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...perhaps it wasn't just beer ;)

I'm pretty sure I'm on the latest piCorePlayer upgrade, and am using the latest Squeezeplayer from Triode...so it's still going to require Putty & SSH to get into the alsamixer, with the ip address I'd reckon you'll be SSH'd to your Pi within 30 seconds...the great thing about getting into the ALSAMIXER is it's 'real time', you can slide the master 'PCM' volume up and down to find the sweet spot for your pre-amp...it took me a day to realise this :doh: I'd assumed that it required a reboot to change the settings...

The nice thing that piCorePlayer provides is the 'sudo alsacfg store' command, which commits your settings to the config file for restoration on reboot :)

I won't bother going into the sound quality of the pi-DAC+, enough has already been mentioned, the other thing that is wonderful when using the piCorePlayer/pi configuration is that it's connectivity and performance amongst 4 other SBdevices, synced or not, is bullet proof! It can't be crashed, or corrupted, and laughs in the face of power cuts...es los testículos perros!!! ;)

I'm just listening using PiCorePlayer outputting over I2S and I've not had to touch the command line...

BTW if anybody is on a Mac and they get the error: Error Opening Terminal: xterm-256color when trying to run alsamixer from the command line you can fix it by editing .config with

nano ~/.config

then adding:

TERM="xterm"
export TERM

control o to write it out, hit enter
control x to quite

Hi,

Burn in should take around 40-50 hours before the Pi Dac hits it's peak 😋

Mile.

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Originally Posted by NRG

I'm just listening using PiCorePlayer outputting over I2S and I've not had to touch the command line...

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You don't need to, unless you're using the pi-DAC+, and even then it's just to perfect its output levels, so there's no need...just want! ;)

http://www.iqaudio.com/downloads/IQaudIO.pdf scroll down to page 7 & 8...ALSAMIXER volume and digital filter settings for the pi_DAC+

Battery or Linear PSU? Hmmm, I don't know! I can't decide, it's swings n roundabouts, there are subtle but identifiable differences especially at the top end but which is preferable or 'correct'.....?

Also, there are differences between players it seems; going from volume / moOde to PiCorePlayer / Max2play changes the presentation...I'm leaning towards Max2play at the moment purely on functional grounds....

Does anyone know of a confirmed date for the IQaudIO DAC to be back in stock? I know the website says mid to late April.

If anyone knows it will be Gordon@IQ don't believe anyone else - he is the man

When: A Tweet from IQ says very soon. On 4/4 3 weeks was stated by IQ so during this week maybe.

I see most people make their Raspberry discussion on this Marco thread. So how many have tried something other than Volumio as they player / sound generator source. I appreciate most folks think in terms of the hardware (cos its what they can see and relate to) BUT software is equally important, not just the appearance but how it sends the file to the DAC and instructs the DAC.


piCorePlayer
Rune

any other candidates and stories of discovery from AoS?

Hi Alan,
I switched to using Moode Audio having had an issue with having to reset the output volume after every reboot in Volumio - There are only some very subtle differences in the menus between Moode, Volumio and Rune Audio, the underlying player in each being MPD, so the core playback mechanism is the same in each case and I certainly heard no difference in quality between Moode and Volumio. I would expect PiCorePlayer to sound different due to its relationship with the LMS/Squeezebox Server but I've never done a direct comparison between the two.