You’re welcome! 
Review and Measurements of Allo Katana and ApplePi Raspberry Pi DACs
audiosciencereview.com/foru … dacs.4164/
I bought the Lusya/Sodial ES9038Q2M DAC hat. The sound quality is incredible, it has one of the best highly rated chips, its available with an optional mini lcd display, rotary volume and remote control. It’s very similar to the Audiophonics. Best part is it only costs around £40 available on ebay Amazon and lots of other places.
Good luck
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Hi,
question is not which dac is the best for raspberry and volumio. Question is your goal for quality. I’m using a musicalfidelity v-dac. A few weeks ago i got an new PSU for it and it sounds really better! My raspberry is also powered by a better PSU. Look for: ifipower
Getting better sound by using a new PSU was first.
Second would be trying a MODI 3- or MODi Multibit- DAC by schiit-audio.
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Hi,
What PSU have you bought?
Thanks
This thread is specifically about I2S DAC hats, and their applicability to the R Pi 3B+
No USB DAC is going to be good on a Raspberry Pi 3, the USB ports are compromised for audio use.
Sorry, you’re right. Did’t mentioned it: the V-DAC is connected by S/PDIF, using IQAudio Digi+ for I2S-connection.
Using the USB-Ports is no good idea. Don’t waste your money buying cables that didn’t satisfy your needs for sound.
I bought ifiaudio’s ipower PSU. 5V for Raspberry. Don’t use the original PSU, get a better one.
For the DAC 12V is needed. I think, there is more room in the sound and bass sounds deeper.
Give it a try…
May I add findings of project we spent lots time with years ago:
The story is still the same – linear, well regulated PSU to core points of the DAC board – is one major key to good sound.
After our project some DAC board supplier started to add quite good regulators and clocks to their boards so the gap between off the shelf and costly DIY solutions got smaller.
Hi,
Could you please recomand me one good psu for the dac?
Thanks
This is a difficult question, I have done experements with a number of DACs, concluded on the DIYINHK with the ES9038pro chip. Quite nice sounding.
I build power supplies, one for the PI itsself, one for the Kali, one for the display and 5 for the dac, all seperated from each other. Actually the clock on the DAC has its own PSU also.
In my opinion you cannot get the best possible sound, regardless the DAC if you share power.
On the picture you can see the regulators powering the devices. 8 in total until now.
Check out the SuperTeddyReg. It is still available. It’s the best sounding regulator we have come across. You can use one (they are not cheap) at least for the critical analog section of the DAC chip (3V3 at most models - Hifiberry for example designates one 5V GPIO pin only for that, unfortunately with a LDO inbetween to get 3V3 … there we have bridged the LDO and put 3V3 to the isolated GPIO pin). You will need to build the PSU (toroid, bridge and caps - CRC if you like) yourself.
Just some information, i am quite happy with the regulators provided by NEWCLASSD.COM. I have no affiliation, have tried a few and these are quite good.
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Some of you may be interested in a new professional grade soundcard about to enter manufacture. It has an extremely low noise floor and very low total harmonic distortion. Check it out here :
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Me too. I set audiophics in setup. Working but not DSD direct (hardware can).
The Allo BOSS is certainly not a bad thing either.
https://allo.com/sparky/boss-dac.html
Together with the Allo Nirvana SMPS
https://allo.com/sparky/nirvana-smps.html
My current combination