Upgrade Your DAC without Upgrading your DAC! Pi Raspberry Streamer
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- čas přidán 10. 05. 2023
- I've been using my old MacBook Pro for years to deliver digital music to my DAC. I found a far better way that effectively allows me to upgrade my DAC without upgrading my DAC. By using a Pi Raspberry with a high performance digital HAT, namely the Pi2Design PI2AES2.0, I can have noise free bit perfect timing perfect data sent to my DAC via AES instead of USB. And when I upgrade my DAC I will be able to use I2S.
And as a bonus prize, my now redundant MacBook Pro became a NAS to store my digital music library.
I have deliberately not made this a how to video or attempted to review Volumio, because I got the ideas from other people's videos. I don't think it is right to just reproduce what they have done. I wanted to come at this more from the angle of the Hi-Fi enthusiast.
The videos that inspired me most are:
• How do DDCs improve au...
• Another Raspberry PI D...
• Raspberry Pi as an Aud...
I used:
Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 4G
Volumio - image downloaded from Volumio website & flashed onto a Micro SD using balena Etcher.
PI2Design PI2AES 2.0 Pro Audio Shield digital interface board. www.pi2design.com/pi2aes-9802...
TP-Link AC750 so as to avoid noise induced by using WiFi.
I installed OpenMediaVault on my MacBook Pro for the NAS (but you can just plug USB storage into the PI)
I don't have one yet, but I will get a iFi audio iPower MK2 Low Noise Power Supply, 5V model. NOTE!!!! The PI2AES 2.0 runs on 5V, not like the old version of the PI2AES
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What type of your digital files is your music collection comprised of?...are they MP3's (which are compressed and therefore very 'lossy') or 'lossless' high-res FLAC (24Bit-192kHz) or even higher-res DSD which are also 'lossless'.
If you're playing MP3 files, then everything you are doing in chasing Hi-Fi performance or Hi-Fi quality is a total waste of time as your system will always be severely compromised in the quality of it's output due to the poor quality of your source-input (i.e. the MP3's that you use as your source digital files). Even the very best quality MP3 file at 320kbps is very poor and highly compressed compared to a lossless 24Bit-192kHz FLAC file or even higher bitrate DSD files.
You can put lipstick on a turd but it's still a turd!!....(that's effectively what you are doing if your source music digital music files are mostly MP3's).
**** You Sir, win my first every award of COMMENT OF THE DAY *****
Yes - this is a really really good point, and I suspect something that most people do not think about. I would guess that most people's digital libraries, like mine, have evolved over time. My library started out by ripping all of my CDs into iTunes. From there I started buying music on iTunes. I would have just accepted whatever the default formats were. Most of my library is AAC. One of the problems was that iTunes has traditionally not done a good job of handling hi-res. My streamer will handle any format I throw at it, so this problem is now solved. Traditionally what I have done is that music I really like I will purchase other formats - eg, most of my LP collection I have in iTunes anyway, they are just albums I really like.
I'd also only every really thought of quality in terms of bit rate, rather than compression. I'd been a bit put off that most of the options I can see on HDTracks are "only" 96k. But as you rightly point out, even 44.1k uncompressed will be much better than compressed.
So I think the next step is for me to go through my library and replace my favourite albums with Hi-Res. Stuff I listen to mostly on the phone, or very rarely, I'm happy enough to leave as is.
I have used HDTracks in the past. Any suggestions?
Also, it should be possible for me to re-rip all of my CDs into a non-lossy format.
I think all of this sums up the entire point of my video - none of this was really relevant to me back in 2008. My system was completely different. My DAC was the pre-amp in my Rotel RSP-985, and my main focus back then was on Home Theatre rather than Hi-Fi. Now, everything has changed - my system, and my interests, so it is necessary to re-evaluate many things.
Comparative studies show that 320kbps mp3 files are hard to distiguish from 1.414Mbps parent recordings, let alone Hi-res from CD quality. Amps and especially speakers have far greater fidelity issues, especially when handling music, rather than steady state tests.
Just doing a listening comparison test on an an AAC album in my library and an uncompressed 44.1kHz version from Tidal - I can definitely hear the difference. Soundstage much improved.
@@audionautica6843 That's a very good example, now all you need is an actual file and its compressed copy, perfectly level matched and played at random by your assistant , who must not be aware which one is which beforehand either. 10, 20 samples in a row for a statistically significant result.
Thank you - a very interesting solution. I've been around the problem of best way to deal with my digital music collection many times - but I keep coming back to iTunes. My main reason now is that it is the only system I've found that works with a hybrid of locally stored music and streaming (from Apple music) - i.e. you can build playlists with a mixture of both, and both are accessible from mobile devices because anything in your library that Apple doesn't sell gets uploaded to a private bit of iCloud.
For home replay I do just have unbalanced SPDIF from PC to my amp (over CAT5, yikes - it works ok over 10 metres if you use one wire for signal and all the others for ground - I'm sure it will be jittery as hell though but it sounds fine).
Also I have no Apple hardware, my current approach works a Windows PC for iTunes and Android phone for Apple Music. I'd happily break free of iTunes if I could find another way of seamlessly combining playlists of local and streamed tracks.
Hmmm - nothing really comes to mind about your playlist conundrum. Maybe someone else will have some bright ideas. Thanks for watching!
Is the pi2aes usb agonist? Can you connect/chain a DAC to a pc or console as USB DAC > pi2aes > host? What would the PC detect it as?
Excellent interface, perhaps an idea to rethink iTunes,
Always liked J River, works work with Debian.
A DAC with LAN is the way to go... in this age of massive data heaps, everbody should have a NAS anyway for backup and also streaming, so the NAS is where your music is stored, and a connected DAC plays it.
So I think you would call this a DAC / Streamer combo, and yeah there are good options out there for that too.
Estoy buscando una SOLUCION a "instalar " un Radio Fm o receptor de frecuencias Fm (93.5 en mi país emisora deportiva y noticias) por internet a un Amplificador Fosi audio ZA3.
Será que lo podré lograr con un Rasperry.
... y de paso será posible hacerle o existe un Control Remoto (como el de las TV) para controlar dicho Rasbperry, .. espero no estar pidiendo mucho, jeje
Hey man thanks for all theses informations, I have a few questions though, ( I don't think I got everything right english is not my mother tongue). Also I know nothing about this hobby, just getting started. But basically I am currently playing music from my computer sending qobuz tracks to my audio gd R28 NOS going to my Arya stealth headphones, I am looking for a clean source, would that solution will work for a headphone set up? Also I am not sure i get how you connect all this, could my laptop send the information to the raspberry related by I2S to my dac/amp? Does that make sense? I wish you a good day, thanks again, bye!
You DAC looks quite interesting, and I see it has an I2S input.
So to answer your question we need to think about where your music actually comes from, and how it gets into your ears. So what we have now is this:
Internet (Qobuz)->laptop->USB->Dac->Headphones.
So effectively all your laptop is doing is converting Qobuz from the internet into USB to get it into your DAC.
The problem is that USB is a terrible interface for clock reliability. The best interface for a DAC for clocking perspective is I2S.
Now I have to say firstly I think the single biggest thing that matters in musical enjoyment is that you are using Qobuz. Just changing from AAC or MP3 files to Lossless files and changing nothing else makes a HUGE difference. Hopefully you have already noticed that.
So I don't think that you are going to get an astronomical improvement.
But you will get an improvement by improving the digital signal going into your DAC so as to minimise jitter etc...
You could do this by using the same hardware I am using, or there are other ways of doing it. I am using Tidal, not Qobuz. I am running Volumio on my Pi Raspberry board, and I am pretty sure it supports Qobuz instead.
So what you would do is not use the laptop anymore, but use the streamer, and so what you would then have is this:
Internet (Qobuz)->Steamer->I2c->DAC->Headphones
Now the noisy USB interface is gone and you have a high quality I2C interface to your DAC.
You would need to check the pinouts are the same from the streamer to the DAC!!!!
I hope this is of help.
@@audionautica6843 First of all thanks for taking the time to awnser me, you got everything I try to do, so yes I know I2S is better than usb, the question is, how do I command the raspberry pi and make it play the music I want? with my pc? my phone? but then I have to use usb right? that's what I dont understand. Thanks again for your time (btw my usb on the R28 NOS has galvanic isolation)
@@mickouzz It will depend on the software you have on the raspberry pi. I have Volumio, and it has a Tidal/Qobuz connection. So I open up Tidal on my iPad, and tell it to connect to Volumio. So I control the pi rasberry through my iPad. But it has nothing to do with the signal chain - it just tells the pi rasberry what music to play.
@@audionautica6843 ok huge thanks, btw do you know if that works for PC ? I don't have an IPAD and it would be easier not getting my phone full of music :D (I use the offline dowloaded files from qobuz,)
@@audionautica6843 ok huge thanks. so your ipad is comanding the pi to play the music with bluetooth? or what ever usb connection? Do you think it works with windows? I would like not to use my phone (dont have an ipad) so I dont have to download all my qobuz offline library in to my phone which would be anoying. otherwise great news!
I think the problem is that you are using a laptop. With a desktop you can get a professional sound card with AES and SPDIF. Then you don’t have to buy stupid little audiophile boxes.
Yes, that would be a good way to go too.