Best computer for Volumio

Hi there, :slight_smile:

It’s my first post here and I would like to start by thanking creators of this great project for their work, results are already amazing and I believe that it is just the beginning. Keep up the good work!

Now back to business… :wink: If I were to buy a new single-board computer specially for running Volumio what is my best option? I see that at this moment you support following platforms:

  • Raspberry Pi
  • CuBox
  • Udoo
  • Beaglebone Black

I already have a Raspberry Pi with Volumio installed and while it performs great for 44.1kHz/16bit music (which is the quality of 99.9% of my tracks) I still get an occasional clicks/pops for 192kHz/24bit audio on my asynch DAC (Cambridge Audio DacMagic 100). From what I’ve gathered it is an architectural issue of Raspberry itself (having several devices, like network card, on a single USB hub) and it simply can’t be fixed. Even if it is possible to get hi-res audio running near-perfectly when our Pi is idle, all it takes is some network traffic to break the whole deal.

So… Maybe some other devices are free from that issue? Have you performed such tests for other supported platforms? Or maybe there are some other platforms that handle USB communication differently (Cubieboard maybe)? I am very interested what is your opinion on that and I am sure that this information will come handy for others who plan to buy hardware for running your great distribution.

Udoo or Cubox.

I’m going to order Udoo soon.
It’s packed with features!

Beaglebone Black has got just 1 USB so it’s useful only with NAS Disks.

Hi,

give the HifiBerry i2s DAC a try? That solves issues with the network traffic as now the USB is no longer used for the DAC.
hifiberry.com
crazy-audio.com/

I received mine 2 days ago, soldered the bits in no time and Volumio supports the DAC without modifications.

There are other solutions for i2s Dacs coming as well, such as this audio board from Wolfson:
element14.com/community/comm … CC-Wolfson

1 Like

Why not try a power line adapter for network connection (assuming you have a model B board)? That would free some USB bandwidth.

stick to your dacmagic. It’s really good unit.

Just upgrade to Udoo, Raspberry Pi is struggling with HiRes audio but there is bug fix coming soon from Volumio soon :slight_smile:.

Hi to all

I ordered a Cubox-i to play with a while ago. (I am not a hardware-DIY). Still waiting, they have yet to be shipped.
I’m planning to connect it to a Cambridge Audio DacMagic 100.
(I didn’t find any forum users though aiming at the same setup.)

The provided Cubox-image is tested on a first generation CuBox I suppose?
Or does this not matter?

Jan