[size=150]ABACUS-Electronics AroioDAC[/size]
https://www.abacus-electronics.de/produkte/streaming/aroiodac-rpi-hat/aroiodac.html
I found this DAC by fortuity.
It sounds noticable better than the original HIFI-Berry + pro which has a very similar design with two extra clocks. But this one has a professional 4 layer board with extra analog and digitalground in the middle (can be split up byjumpers on the bottom for feeding it with extra power supplies).
Also it has other types of capacitors all over the board.
With 69€ it costs slightly more than the “original” one with the thin 2 layer board - but the 4 layers are worth it, i think.
It also has 6 blue shining LEDs which indicate the 3 power regulators, 1 for DAC is active and 2 for the crystals to indicate which one of them is currently active.
Just set Volumio to I2S “HiFiBerry plus” for this one.
Has anybody else tried it out ?
Best Regards
Josef
Hi, Josh
thanks for this information. You did make me curious about this Dac and i will try him on my next soundcheck 
So ,i come back later to give my experience here…
Hi @Josh2000, I just bought this DAC after reading the subsequent test results from @judydudi’s fantastic soundcheck thread. I popped it on my RP3B+ and it sounds amazing. Though I have to admit I’ve not tried any others before this, aside a very crappy (temporary) usb solution. Thanks to you both for finding and providing feedback on this DAC.
Now I’m trying to find out the best way to power this. I’m not sure if I should or can power the pi and the aroioDAC separately or if I am to power the Pi through the DAC or visa versa. If either of your have any advice here it’d be appreciated to help guide my research. For the moment I am just using the original pi power box. I get the impression that getting 5V linear power supply is a recommended upgrade.
EDIT - I found this, https://www.abacus-electronics.de/pub/media/wysiwyg/AroioDAC/aroio_dac_connections.pdf which explains how I can power this independently. If I understand correctly, I can keep the Pi powered by the original power supply. Then disconnect the jumper and use a linear power supply to power the DAC. What I might do to save space is get a linear power supply with two outputs.
using the osa isolater with Aroio DAC works fine.
AroioDac is a Master Mode I²S Dac. This is to be set on the Isolater board.
good hint @Josh2000, the weakest link in the chain of my soundcheck are the speaker.
On the other hand, i like to show that the choice of the dac board matters even in the case of setups that are favorable…
A Photo and a list of changed parts of your modified AroioDac would be great, josh2000