Hard wire Iqaudio dac

Hello all,

Is it at all possible to use the Iqaudio dac as not a hat but to connect it to the pi via cables instead? I’m converting an old tuner that is very slim and am struggling with top space, especially after plugging in dupont cables.

thanks

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You could use a GPIO extender/expander cable like this one to deport the hat on the side of the raspberry pi.

Cheers.

Yes, I did the same for the Allo Digione.
Just make sure, you keep the length to an minimum

Instill need to use the gpio on the iqaudio or pi for rotary and buttons etc.

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Then cut out the required wires out of the flat cable and redirect them where you want. For the dac, you only need 4 or 5 out of the 40 wires. Up to you to tweak a bit the proposed solution.

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Anyone considered a sonic advantage to this? HAT are convenient but sitting one piece of audio directly on top of another is generally a bad thing. Just wondering…not starting an “it’s just ones and noughts” row :grin:

Honestly, when you see the noise coming from the GPIO pins, I would only bother about physically separating the dac from the Pi only if you have a specific hat that allows GPIO isolation between Pi and the dac like the kali reclocker or the iancanada Isolator. And that would also require powering the dac part with a clean power source.

As cheap alternative, you still may cut an unetched PCB to a hat size, grounding the copper layer and insert it between the Pi and the dac. It would shield dac from Pi EMI.

This is only my 5 cents.

It’s an interesting 5 cents, thanks