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

[lovejoy]

Completely agree. I've had a useful afternoon of fixing things and doing some comparisons. The Naim CDi belonging to a friend of mine needed some attention as it had stopped playing discs so I did some work on that this afternoon and when I got it working, I sat down and made some comparisons between that and the Pi/IQ. First of all to volume levels. The Pi by default is a LOT quieter, so to get the two to match, I set the PCM output to 96% and using alsamixer set the two boost settings to maximum. Levels are now matched and I don't seem to (so far) be getting any distortion, so that's great.

Now to do some real comparisons. Things are certainly closer than last time the CDi was here and bearing in mind that the CDi is one of the finest CD players I've ever heard, that's pretty good going. My old Audiolab 8200CDQ couldn't hold a candle to the CDi so the fact that the Pi is lacking a little in terms of instrument weight and tonality compared to the CDi pleases me no end. To get there though I changed a few settings:

Upsampling is now off - Soundstage is wider with it switched on, but I think some instrument definition is lost.
Kernel tweaks: Orion - I've been using ACX till now, but Orion is better at decay and puts a bit more space around things
Buffer before play: Off

Everything else is pretty much stock

[cyclopse]

Completely agree. I've had a useful afternoon of fixing things and doing some comparisons. The Naim CDi belonging to a friend of mine needed some attention as it had stopped playing discs so I did some work on that this afternoon and when I got it working, I sat down and made some comparisons between that and the Pi/IQ. First of all to volume levels. The Pi by default is a LOT quieter, so to get the two to match, I set the PCM output to 96% and using alsamixer set the two boost settings to maximum. Levels are now matched and I don't seem to (so far) be getting any distortion, so that's great.

Now to do some real comparisons. Things are certainly closer than last time the CDi was here and bearing in mind that the CDi is one of the finest CD players I've ever heard, that's pretty good going. My old Audiolab 8200CDQ couldn't hold a candle to the CDi so the fact that the Pi is lacking a little in terms of instrument weight and tonality compared to the CDi pleases me no end. To get there though I changed a few settings:

Upsampling is now off - Soundstage is wider with it switched on, but I think some instrument definition is lost.
Kernel tweaks: Orion - I've been using ACX till now, but Orion is better at decay and puts a bit more space around things
Buffer before play: Off

Everything else is pretty much stock

Thanks for the settings suggestion. Yes seems a bit more airy presentation using Orion.

Regards

Steve

[killie99]

Left it running since this morning, still sounding the same so started messing with settings. So far I think the best settings are no up sampling and best interpolation- either of the other 2 interpolation settings don't sound good to me, they both add harshness. Changing sampling rate makes some tracks crisper but on some it makes the track sound a bit hollow, it loses body. I shall continue to experiment but the gap to the mdac has definitely closed substantially from my starting point.

[lovejoy]

If you have upsampling disabled then the sample rate converter settings *SHOULD* make no difference.

[The Black Adder]

If you have upsampling disabled then the sample rate converter settings *SHOULD* make no difference.

This is true... but then you would think it would grey out when the upsampling is set to disabled.

[rallye666]

All my bits 'n pics arrived yesterday, so I was up early this morning in preparation for a long day of trouble shooting!

My Pi appears to not want to talk to my router. It doesn't show up in the wired ethernet connections when I log into the router.

Its a home hub 3 and my broadband is BT infinity if that makes a difference and DHCP Server is set to enabled.

Any ideas on why my pi won't connect?

[killie99]

If you have upsampling disabled then the sample rate converter settings *SHOULD* make no difference.

sorry I haven't got it disabled, I've set it at 16 bit 44.1 which really should be the same as disabled as all my files are that format? I guess that's why I still hear a difference when I mess with the interpolator. I'll try it set at disabled and see if I can hear any difference.

[cyclopse]

All my bits 'n pics arrived yesterday, so I was up early this morning in preparation for a long day of trouble shooting!

My Pi appears to not want to talk to my router. It doesn't show up in the wired ethernet connections when I log into the router.

Its a home hub 3 and my broadband is BT infinity if that makes a difference and DHCP Server is set to enabled.

Any ideas on why my pi won't connect?

Are the lights lighting up on the Pi Ethernet port? Which software player are you running on the Pi?

[rallye666]

Are the lights lighting up on the Pi Ethernet port? Which software player are you running on the Pi?

Nope, no lights on ethernet port, just one red light indication power. Im using Rune audio, but I think I'll reflash my SD card with volumio and try that instead.

[cyclopse]

Nope, no lights on ethernet port, just one red light indication power. Im using Rune audio, but I think I'll reflash my SD card with volumio and try that instead.

I have tested them all and found Moode the best.