DAC recommendations for RaspberryPI

[Thad E Ginathom]

I cant just let things be...

Please continue your researches and experiments!

Much appreciated

 

[mowgli80]

Generally compiling wireless drivers is a breeze ... atleast on ubuntu it is. You can try compiling the latest compat wireless tarball on RaspyFi

 

[indialogue]

Please continue your researches and experiments!

Much appreciated

Haha, you're welcome. Just one more update and I think this thread is going to go into hibernation for a while.

1. RaspyFi has an irritating problem of the MPD daemon crashing on startup, as the Samba connection with the NAS does not become live as fast. However, this has been adequately discussed on the distro forum and is going to be addressed in the next release hopefully
2. Just hooked up the Rpi+DAC to a just-acquired Bravo Ocean headphone amp. Put in a GE 12Au7 tube and connected my Sony XBA4 to it. I have a silly smile on my face right now hyeah:
3. Upgradeitis is a big issue with me, as with any other person in this hobby I guess. The next upgrade is a XMOS I2S + AKM DAC board on Diyaudio that I have asked to be included in the groupbuy for. 100Euro for a top-spec board and another 30-40Eur for a proper machined enclosure locally. Im not, not, not going to buy anything else for this set!!
4. I'm also getting a HD650 for home use, and am relegating the Sony's to travel use. With the Senn HD650s, I cant imagine getting an upgrade itch anytime soon - the HD800 will be very very very far away in terms of affordability/WAF

A new issue to grapple with - after listening to this combo (and the expected improvements in the next set of upgrades), how will I ever be able to listen to my IEMs and Rockbox-IPod without feeling distaste :sad: Another set of expenses - ODAC+O2? :lol: Bye bye bank balance!

The system as it is now:

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

((Yours probably works better than mine, which I am convinced is faulty, but... give your OA Bravo feet, or stand it on four small blocks. Give it air! Of the cooling kind, of course, not the hifi kind: that it should be giving to you ))

 

[vivek.saikia]

((Yours probably works better than mine, which I am convinced is faulty, but... give your OA Bravo feet, or stand it on four small blocks. Give it air! Of the cooling kind, of course, not the hifi kind: that it should be giving to you ))

How does this cooling looks like?

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

I had wondered about running it with the top off. I have a doubt: the entire case is the heat sink, if we take the top off, could we be reducing the heat dissipation?

 

[dheerajjotwani]

Because I cant just let things be, I decided to try out the Squeezeplug distro to see how that fared. Surprisingly, there were stark differences.

Firstly, the network issues that I had with RaspyFi went away - WiFI suddenly became rock-solid, ping times improved etc. Was very surprised because under the hood, it seems like both were using the same Realtek firmware. Did not have the skills to go check if there were other differences

Secondly, sound quality dropped drastically. There were pops and hisses (despite my using USB output) and the sound was muffled. After a firmware and system upgrade (which was technically not necessary), the USB DAC stopped being recognized.

So now I've hurriedly gone back to the RaspyFi distro and am going to let things lie as they are, and get a better WiFi dongle instead.

Surpsisingly, I was reading up about this online, and there are several reviews of RaspyFi (in comparison to other distros), where claims of better audio, soundstage etc are made. Based on my limited testing, it does seem to be so

if I understand this correctly.... squeezeplug had better wifi but choppy usb audio even after upgrade and raspyfy is a let down from tall claims?

tapped on Note II cdma

 

[indialogue]

if I understand this correctly.... squeezeplug had better wifi but choppy usb audio even after upgrade and raspyfy is a let down from tall claims?

Sorry for the late response. You understood my point about squeezeplug but got my point on RaspyFi wrong. I wanted to say that except for its WiFi stability issues, RaspyFi had much better sound output than squeezeplug. Hope that clarifies things.

 

[dheerajjotwani]

Yup makes sense now. In its architecture squeezeplug is designed as a backend serving device to house and serve your media. A precious nugget called squeeze slave was coded in so this could moonlight as a player too. So I guess thats where the limitations came in clearly. I have been using squeezeplug distros created by truehl since sheevaplug and dockstar days...

RaspyFi is a super solution.

tapped on Note II cdma

 

[indialogue]

RaspyFi is a super solution.

And quite actively developed with several team members, which is important in distros. Squeezeplug looks to be a one-man show, and is therefore necessarily limited in bandwidth that can be applied for tweaking. The RaspyFi guys are working to port the distro to other platforms such as Beaglebone, Wandboard etc., so it will continue to pick up steam in terms of developers and users.

 

[indialogue]

So an update. Got the Asus USB-N10 wifi dongle as recommended by dheerajjotwani, and wireless performance has improved - ping times are reduced, drop in audio is rare etc. As a test and because I had to burn in a new pair of IEMs, I let the tube amp and the RPi stream 320kbps music from Linn Radio for nearly 3 days. Whenever I picked up the IEMs, music was running and that too smoothly.

Only negative is the ridiculous packaging of Asus - the dongle was less than 2% of the whole package - what a waste of space, plastic and resources!!

The wireless connection still cannot handle streaming of 24/96 files - upwards of 3Mbps bitrates, but I don't know if the blame is with the RaspberryPi for that or the distance/obstacles affecting WiFi signal strength or the throughput of the NFS share on the PogoPlug from where my music is shared. I would have experimented to isolate the issue but 24/96 was just an experiment anyways - I honestly doubt I would be able to make out any difference in a blind test

In other news, have received my HD650 - this is THE sound I've always wanted!! My little Bravo Ocean seems to be able to drive it to enough of a volume for me. There is some hiss at high volumes (more perceptible when listening through IEMs due to their low impedance) but its already at unhearable levels when it starts, so I'm not too bothered.

Just listened to a couple of test tracks - Tick of the clock by the Chromatics, some Aphex Twin, Nitin Sawhney and wow - not a single note seems to be missing at low or high-end of the spectrum. It is also scary - if this is what mid-fi sounds like, what will a Audeze LCD-2 sound like?? My ears and wallet shudder

 

[Thad E Ginathom]

if this is what mid-fi sounds like, what will a Audeze LCD-2 sound like?

In a year or two, I hope to be able to tell you

I am, mind you, keeping the ambition pegged at the LCD-2, and not permitting myself to think about the LCD-3.

 

[dheerajjotwani]

Fantastic going !

tapped on Note II cdma

 

[dheerajjotwani]

@indialogue

hey. i went ahead and tried RASPYFI with the udac. playback from ramplay is perfect but from my nas, there is a bit of clicking at times. happens with you too? which kernel profile have u set it to? any other observations?

 

[koushikp]

@indialogue

hey. i went ahead and tried RASPYFI with the udac. playback from ramplay is perfect but from my nas, there is a bit of clicking at times. happens with you too? which kernel profile have u set it to? any other observations?

Playing the udac 1 with raspyfi for many months now... Source is nas... no disturbance or clicking sound ever

 

[dheerajjotwani]

Thanks koushik... I wonder what the issue is? Cant seem to be able to put my finger on it.

Do u find the booting time to be long? I have tried several distros on the rpi platform and RaspyFi by far takes the longest to reach a workable stage when mpd starts registering as a service

tapped on Note II cdma

 

[koushikp]

@dheerajjotwani... strange actually... After initial hiccups in setting up the raspyfi I have had no issues... Are you sure there is no issue with the DAC itself? If not, then most likely it's a version issue on the raspyfi, I will check which version I have, once I got it started and I was satisfied with the result I never upgraded fearing something might go wrong.. U can maybe try and install an older version if possible...As far as boot time is concerned I don't think it's long enough for me to notice, haven't compared against other distros... but that is a matter of personal perception... I will time it and let you know...I am using a common class 4 SD card

 

[dheerajjotwani]

Thanks man...

I have used the same udac for a similar setup on vanilla debian on a goflex home dock and it works well without any clicking.

Now the clicking I mention is not continued but intermittent. Comes maybe every 5 or 7 minutes and is very faint but annoying knowing its there.

I am using the release v1.0 from the website. Its the most recent release and would be great to give yours a try. So much so as if you could make a tar of your rootfs and upload, will restore and boot of that using a spare sd card.

To eliminate causes I have tried a sandisk class 4 sd card and a samsung class 6 sd card. No visible changes in using either.

tapped on Note II cdma

 

[indialogue]

Just a short update. Have move from RaspyFi to the newer Volumio distro (made by the same RaspyFi team). I dont have Golden Ears (yet!) so cannot make out if there is any difference in SQ, but there is much better system stability and the web UI is much more responsive. This is beta 1.2 version and apparently the Volumio team is coming out with a big update on the Web UI so the team is very active.

I cant recommend this distro enough!

 

[koushik]

Hey Indialogue,

Thanks for the update. Very helpful for me in this phase.

What is your file storage - NAS or USB drive? How easily can they be accessed? Can you provide some pics of the interface please?