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

[Qwin]

Marco - like you I only have file copies of music I own in the tangeable form, like CD's.

My present system, although maxed out in capacity would do a half decent job with this ripped stuff and CD quality varies tremendously.

I think there are a few changes around the corner for FBA though and its the ability of the Rpi to cater for these that has got me digging into functionality and compatibility issues. I think we will see an increase in DSD music releases and also in high definition downloadable material. To date I have never downloaded any music as compressed and lossy does not do it for me. The high res stuff comming through really does look to be the final nail in CD's coffin though. I can see the distribution chain breaking down when it no longer makes enough profit for them to bother with. There will still be small bands doing CD's to flog at the venue but even that is turning file based as it costs less to produce and is allways available, they will never run out of stock like with CD's so I think it's inevitable. Blue Ray is the media to use and sound quality is superb but no one seems to want to go that route.
I am hoping the Rpi will keep pace with these changes as they continue to role out, as replacing just this part of your FBA system to the latest model is not too painfull on the pocket.
You can never be future proof, so at some point I will have to get my feet wet and join the club.

[JohnMcC]

One further question: anyone tried the RPi with the IQ dac+ and the Pi Amp plus? Looking on the Tindie site you could put together a decent little set-up for £150 (depending, of course, on the quality of the amp).

[Marco]

Macro, what case is your Pi and DAC housed in? I''m curious to try one against my highly modded SB and wondered if there was a starter kit witch case Pi, DAC, PSU etc......

Also look here, Neal: http://shop.pimoroni.com/collections/raspberry-pi



Marco.

[NRG]

I like the 2.8" screen on the Pimoroni site, wonder if Volumio is usable on such a small screen directly connected to the Pi....

[Rothchild]

This is what I (still, 2 years later) run on my Pi: http://www.madsonic.org/ it will play FLAC and Wav straight out of the Pi but also give you an interface so you can log in to your Pi from anywhere on the internet and stream your music (and if your bandwidth is limited you can transcode down to mp3 so that you still get a good stream) great way to combine HiFiPi and a 'your music anywhere' solution.

[NRG]

Neat Marc, there seems to be a number of ways to use the Pi.

Spotted another screen: https://www.tindie.com/products/ozzm...-raspberry-pi/ But will it be usable with the IQAudio DAC? Are the GPIO pins passed through shared?

[r100]

I read somewhere some use a sabre dac with it as well. you need an external clock though so adds expense. It is all things to most people it seems, but I get confused easily with ll the different bits so will just have to struggle on with what Ive got for now. Would like to hear on though.

I have a 40 EUR Sabre DAC on my Pi and it sounds 99.5% as good as my "high-end" Sabre DAC. The 0.5% difference is because I can't believe it sounds so good never mind da Jitter !

[NRG]

The IQAudio DAC is out-of-stock until the end of April but there's the HiFiBerry one that uses the same PCM5122....hmmmm, they also do a digital amp board! Class D, plug straight into the Pi, decisions, decisions.

[montesquieu]

Coming late to this discussion, very interesting though.

I have asyncronous USB input now on my Audio Note DAC (kit 2.1x with upgraded components to essentially 4.1x spec) ... I wonder if the Pi could be made to work with it? Essentially would need either USB output or co-axial.

2TB NAS seems very reasonable in price these days - I have a couple of hundred CDs-worth of autorip MP3 files to download from amazon (should be far more but most CDs I buy tend to be from marketplace vendors), ripping a few thousand CDs could be a pain though and I probably won't bother .. I briefly had Spotify when I owned a SB Touch but it was useless for Classical music as very little in my specialist areas was available. Though I suspect I'd mainly use it to play rips of things like rare 78s which people have put up online.

Overall the user experience on the Touch (and the various phone apps) was pants for Classical mainly due to the database problem, even with no more than 100 or so CDs ripped - J.S. Bach being treated as different to Bach, J.S or, indeed, from Bach JS, with additional confusion about what constitutes a 'work' - classification at the 'song' level is a pretty poor basis for a useful taxonomy. But there are, I believe, better answers to this now through purchasing different database services. Ripping and manual tagging are only for trainspotter/OCD types - I remember a teacher I once had kept a meticulous, beautifully handwritten card index for his massive collection of cassettes .... not for me then or now!

SQ-wise, I found the Touch, even with an upgraded PSU, to be markedly inferior to the Audio Note CDT2/II transport - when added to the data management issue, it all meant that I just gave up on the whole streaming malarkey. (several times I actually).

Beyond the technical questions though, my main objection to all this is really philosophical - if music is found, started or stopped at a click, from a line in massive database, doesn't it cheapen the listening experience? I certainly found that with Spotify. As a musician myself I can't really be going with music as sonic wallpaper. The effort of manually selecting, opening, placing a physical object on or inside a device, operating that device, reading sleeve notes or libretti, and prior to that physically purchasing and owning something tangible, all this brings something to the listening experience that scrolling down a list on a screen can never provide.

[Canetoad]

The IQAudio DAC is out-of-stock until the end of April but there's the HiFiBerry one that uses the same PCM5122....hmmmm, they also do a digital amp board! Class D, plug straight into the Pi, decisions, decisions.

I have a HifiBerry DAC+ and have done comparisons to using the Digi+ and Caiman II external DAC. The Caiman is definitely better! That's using an RPi B+. I haven't tried it with the RPi 2. I will at some point.