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

[Marco]

Hi Bernie,

Have you tried plugging the HiFi Berry DAC directly into your power amp, minus a preamp, and then simply control the sound levels via Volumio?

Marco.

[r100]

great ! do you think the RPi 2 will sound different with the same DAC ?

[Marco]

Ah I see... Well in that case, to address Neal's earlier dilemma, I would wait until the IQ-Audio DAC comes back into stock, as for me using it direct, like I am, is the way to hear it at its best and retain maximum resolution

Just squirt the signal straight into a power amp - nice and pure

Marco.

[Marco]

edit : My bad, it does !

Lol - scratch my previous post, then!

Marco.

[r100]

I deleted my previous post because I was wrong.. apparently Bernies DAC does have HW volume control... sorry

[r100]

Re Hifiberry

One thing is bugging me me... The HiFiBery doc it says

• Hardware volume control. You can control the output volume using “alsamixer” or any application that supports ALSA mixer controls.

How can it be a "hardware volume control" when the volume is actually set by the alsamixer which is software ? I don't get it ??

[struth]

The new HiFiBerry DAC+ board comes with an integrated volume control. The older non + uses software

[Canetoad]

Hi Bernie,

Have you tried plugging the HiFi Berry DAC directly into your power amp, minus a preamp, and hten simply control the sound levels via Volumio?

Marco.

No Marco I haven't. May be worth trying at some point.

If you're using Volumio to control the volume are you sure it's using the DAC+ hardware control or doing it in software?

Never mind, I revisited the settings for Volumio and it's selectable hardware/software.

[Canetoad]

great ! do you think the RPi 2 will sound different with the same DAC ?

I thought I could hear a difference between the B+ and 2B in my system using the HifiBerry Digi+. The 2B seemed a bit less congested.

[Audio Advent]

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.

Doesn't have to be either/or. Raspberry Pi is so cheap that you can get a system together which integrates with your current network (if you have such a thing already set up for other computer related purposes) and sounds great for the price of a crap CD player. I would see it as broadening one's options for experiencing music. There's plenty of bands/musicians/composers out there making their own music and only releasing their stuff via digital download, there are lots of hobbiests making recordings at recitals or making field recordings and putting them on the web for download, there are lots of freebees for experiencing high-rez audio and of course there are many high-rez audio stores which don't provide physical formats - having a FBA player that's easy and cheap just gives you another format player, like you might have a cassette player to hand for the odd thing you come across.

I think it's a nice, neat solution whereas normal PC/laptop permanently set up will just be a bit too over the top for most people and their homes and something like a Mac Mini too expensive.

Philosophically, does listening to the radio cheapen the listening experience? It's not much different other than you didn't even make those few clicks! Someone else even did that for you. One listens to the music and how you then associate with that music is kind of up to you. I find it makes no difference at all - if I love the music then whilst I'm listening to it, I still love it and value it. If it then makes you think of another piece you want to hear then you're not distracted in finding it as might be the case when searching for the physical copy. Just brings a different experience, not better not worse. (I'm only speaking from the point of view of playing stuff from my laptop... don't have any Pi yet).