Help Diagnose Sound Issues RPi3 + AP ES9023 TCXO v3 [Edited]

Hi Volumio Community!

I would very much appreciate all of your help diagnosing (edit: replaced “debugging”) my RPi & DAC setup. The issue I’m experiencing is constant audio drops during playback. This is noticeable from boot when the the player becomes ready and the initial sound plays I notice drops already. This is true for any sound source (Web Radio, Playing Files from NAS CIFS storage or Airplay).

The setup is an RPi 3+ with an Audiophonics ES9023 v3 (Basically Audiphonics RaspDAC kit inc. OLED, Power Button and aluminium case) running the latest volumio version (although this issue happened on previous versions as well. The issue occurs on any of the network devices be it Ethernet port, internal or external Wi-Fi.

I have another instance of Volumio running on an older RPi B+ with a Cirrus Logic DAC that works flawlessly with only rare sound drops during Airplay and none when playing from attached USB HDD or WebRadio.

Could you please help me with the commands and other tests to help me (edit: removed “and to”) investigate and resolve this issue, please!

Edit: text underlined added during edit