Rasberry Pi Digi+

Aural Robert · 8913

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Offline Aural Robert

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on: November 15, 2014, 04:28:46 AM
I'm gathering up the bits to get a streaming Pi going and was wondering if anyone has tried the following add-on board for the B+?

http://www.hifiberry.com/digiplus

It also has the option of an output transformer. Is this worth having? Or is it a ymmv thing?

I'm already in for the BH DAC, and this option with the B+ supports S/PDIF, and bypasses the shared usb resources etc that I've read about. I actually have NO experience in streaming yet, but just put a 4TB NAS on my network and am getting that configured this weekend. This is intended to serve as my source. I was thinking of getting the BerryDAC but with my BH DAC coming it seems redundant.

Any comments and suggestions are welcomed and appreciated.

Aural Robert
... dialog, dualog, discussion, dissension, it's all talk ...

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Offline STURMJ

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Reply #1 on: November 15, 2014, 04:24:23 PM
Can't say about that one, but the Wolfson sound card is another option (they are working on a b+ compatible version) I used one and it sounds great, looks to be a little more versatile too.



Offline mcandmar

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Reply #2 on: November 15, 2014, 04:50:28 PM
Now that is interesting, vs the DAC boards you are only using it as a digital transport.

The SPDIF transformers have pros and cons.  Advantage is isolation from the Pi, which when you consider the less than ideal quality of the power and grounds on USB power supplies that come with the Pi i would consider it a must.  Disadvantage is they can add a bit of jitter to the signal.   Which is the better option really depends on your power source, and DAC your connecting to.  Another alternative would be to use the optical connection instead, which has the same pros/cons as the above.


M.McCandless


Offline John EH

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Reply #3 on: December 20, 2014, 08:56:05 PM
I just bought a Digi + and listening now on a Raspberry Pi B+  I tried to put it on a Pi A+ but can't get it to work on the A+ for some reason or another.  The folks at HiFiBerry are stumped too.

Listening via Volumio, optical out to my Schiit Bifrost.   Man does it sound sweet on my Bottlehead Foreplay and Dynaco ST70 w/ LS3/5A's.



Offline Natural Sound

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Reply #4 on: December 21, 2014, 05:37:11 AM
Are you guys able to hit 24/192 with network file serving? I couldn’t with the Hifiberry DAC (non the digi.) I suspect it has to do with the USB/Ethernet scheme on the Pi. I had to abandon a Pi based NFS server because of this. 



Offline John EH

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Reply #5 on: December 23, 2014, 01:40:09 PM
Are you guys able to hit 24/192 with network file serving? I couldn’t with the Hifiberry DAC (non the digi.) I suspect it has to do with the USB/Ethernet scheme on the Pi. I had to abandon a Pi based NFS server because of this.

The DAC is i2S so no problem with ethernet/usb on NFS.  I just discovered the issue you are having though.  I set up a 2 Pi's with Digi+ and DAC+ and neither one will cleanly play 192/24 or 96/24 for that matter from network shares.   I'm playing via MPD and added this to /etc/mpd.conf and also overclocked the Pi to 900 MHz and it works but forces your lovely 192/24 to 44.1/16

format "44100:16:2"
buffer_before_play "100%"

On the exact same Pi's though Logitechmediaserver and squeezelite output the correct resolutions with no pops or clicks, etc.

This is all fine and dandy but to my ears MPD forced to 16 bit sounds better than LMS / Squeezelite at the proper resolution.  Weird.