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

[Marco]

Oi daftee (Mr Matthews). Did you see this post:

Welcome to the club, mate! Are you using yours with the IQ-Audio DAC? *That* is where the magic lies....

Btw, I'm using mine now with Paul's SR3DR linear PSU - my goodness how that transforms the RPi from something that sounds superb, to something that sounds UTTERLY STUNNING! Doubtless, you'll be building your own PSU for it, and if so, it'll be interesting to compare them

Marco.

[anthonyTD]

Thanks, yes, using the IQ audio Dac+, and a dedicated linear power supply i built, had an interesting conversation with the guy who designed the DAC too.

Welcome to the club, mate! Are you using yours with the IQ-Audio DAC? *That* is where the magic lies....

Btw, I'm using mine now with Paul's SR3DR linear PSU - my goodness how that transforms the RPi from something that sounds superb, to something that sounds UTTERLY STUNNING! Doubtless, you'll be building your own PSU for it, and if so, it'll be interesting to compare them

Marco.

[Krisbee]

Thanks, Chris... Getting anxious about this now.

No need for anxiety ... Just take it step by step, and possibly put some audio files on a USB stick to test the setup before going on to use any NAS shares if that's an area you feel you need to read up on.

[Marco]

Thanks, yes, using the IQ audio Dac+, and a dedicated linear power supply i built, had an interesting conversation with the guy who designed the DAC too.

Excellent. We must 'compare notes' later!

Marco.

[Krisbee]

Any idea if this would work using ipeng and squeezecenter on a ZyXEL NSA310 nas drive, thanks.

I probably should have said before, but if you'r new to using the RPi and intend to purchase, or already have purchased, the latest quad core RPi, then there's a good case for running LMS on the RPi 2 itself along with squeezelite and simply use your Zyxel NSA310 as a file server. As Soulman said the performance of LMS on the Zyxel may not be too hot. Nor will you get the latest version of LMS running, and if things like the BBC iplayer plugin are of interest to you, then you may well have problems playing the new BBC radio HLS streams on the Zxyel.

This means using something other than the picoreplayer on your RPi.

[montesquieu]

Programming? What programming?

Let's try to be positive folks, before the technophobia sets in! Using a Rpi+Volumio+DAC is not rocket science. If you can read and follow a clear set of instructions and , if necessary, ask for guidance in a coherent manner on forums like this, then there's absolutely no reason why this should be for geeks only.

Forearmed is forewarned, so I'd encourage everyone to at least give this a quick read:

http://theaudiostandard.net/thread/5...reamer-project


Keep in mind the following:

1.You need to start with a wired connection before you can get a wireless connection working.

2. If you're using a i2s based sound device like the IQaudio DAC or one of the hifiberry products, you need to activate i2s on your Rpi via Volumio before you can use the device.

3. Your audio files can be on a USB memory stick or USB HDD directly connected to the Rpi ( in the later case you may have to think about a powered hub, or tweaking the Rpi config to provide max power through it's USB ports) , or on another computer/laptop/NAS device made available to the Rpi via a Windows/OSX/Linux share.

4. Take care with info entered on Volume about your NAS shares. The “remote directory” name should not begin with a slash “/”. See the example in the reference above.

Please. please don't be put off by anything you've read here.

Success! I managed to edit the config.txt file on Rune Audio to enable the Digi+ board, am getting sound out now.

I'll go back at some point and see if any of the above helps with Volumio but for now it's working quite happily with Rune Audio.

Funnily enough the SPDIF output on the RPi is connected via a length of ANVx that probably cost more than the whole RPI setup + NAS combined.

I'll compare sound with £3k's worth of Audio Note transport later, but they are of course doing very different things, in particular this gives me access to a whole bunch of FLAC files that I haven't otherwise been able to play.

[Krisbee]

Success! I managed to edit the config.txt file on Rune Audio to enable the Digi+ board, am getting sound out now.

I'll go back at some point and see if any of the above helps with Volumio but for now it's working quite happily with Rune Audio.

Funnily enough the SPDIF output on the RPi is connected via a length of ANVx that probably cost more than the whole RPI setup + NAS combined.

I'll compare sound with £3k's worth of Audio Note transport later, but they are of course doing very different things, in particular this gives me access to a whole bunch of FLAC files that I haven't otherwise been able to play.

Great! Enjoy the new sounds ....

[Stratmangler]

Any idea if this would work using ipeng and squeezecenter on a ZyXEL NSA310 nas drive, thanks.

Yes!

[Marco]

Success! I managed to edit the config.txt file on Rune Audio to enable the Digi+ board, am getting sound out now.

Marco.

[Stratmangler]

I probably should have said before, but if you'r new to using the RPi and intend to purchase, or already have purchased, the latest quad core RPi, then there's a good case for running LMS on the RPi 2 itself along with squeezelite and simply use your Zyxel NSA310 as a file server. As Soulman said the performance of LMS on the Zyxel may not be too hot. Nor will you get the latest version of LMS running, and if things like the BBC iplayer plugin are of interest to you, then you may well have problems playing the new BBC radio HLS streams on the Zxyel.

This means using something other than the picoreplayer on your RPi.

The LMS level that Zyxel support is 7.7.1, and it's been edited to remove the heavy lifting stuff, so transcoding on the fly is a no can do scenario.
Serving 24/192 files is not a problem - the NSA310 is more than up to the job.
It also runs the latest iteration of Triode's iPlayer plugin (v1.3.1alpha3) without encountering any issues.

The only issues you're likely to encounter are network related, either on wifi (I don't have wifi problems here, but the house is only a 2 up 2down terrace) or using those Godforsaken ethernet over powerline adapters.
The only truly dependable connection is wired ethernet!