So I wanted to be able to stream music to my 1985 Luxman L-510 integrated amplifier. I’m very interested in the idea of shortening the signal path and getting clean power.
I ordered a very nice little DAC from Audiophonics, based on the ES9023 chip and with a dedicated clock.
I hooked it up with a Pi 2 B and fastened it in a 2$ acrylic box I found in a gift shop. Drilled holes for LAN, on-board sound (only to make it fit near the side of the box), micro-usb power, and of course the DAC terminals.
I wanted to keep things very simple for this project, so I decided not to build a power supply. Instead, I got hold of an “ifi iPower” supply. This is not a linear power supply; rather it uses some sort of active noise cancellation technology. It’s a gadget really - I ought to run a test comparing the performance with my mobile phone charger… In any case, the Pi+DAC gets loads of power - no hickups. I simply soldered a micro usb cable to a female 2.1 DC connector.
The thing plays perfectly! I’m using the Spotify module as well as streaming high-res files from my NAS.
Sound quality is vastly superior to my previous setup which included a cheap synchronous usb dac hooked up with the laptop.
Feel free to comment. Have a nice day everyone!
/Niels from Denmark
