My first network audio player(RaspPi)/choosing the right DAC

Audio Gear DACs
1

Hello,
I have a media PC in the living room which has all the bells and whistles (including large music collection in flac and high quality *.ogg and *.mp3) and I have been hoping to wirelessly stream it to my speakers in the bedroom. I know that the easiest solution is to go with Sonos, but I have been hoping to do it for under 100 GBP (especially given that I already have my speakers from Audioengine which I like).

I have come across Raspberry Pi as offering a good solution and I have purchased B+ version. Then I realized that I also need a DAC and… the life became a bit more difficult. I have searched through numerous fora and I continue to know little. So I thought I would ask you for a bit of help.

What is the easiest/stable solution to make my little dream come true? I know that Volumio will probably provide the best software front-end. However, as regards hardware I have come across the following ideas:
-> Rasp Pi + Wolfson Audio Card - widely recommended as one of the best DACs (in its price range, obviously!). However, many people say that it has problematic drivers, requires soldering and may not fully work with B+ which I have
-> Rasp Pi + HiFiBerry Dac+ - seems like a good solution. No soldering required, allegedly configurable within 1 minute. However, I am told that the drivers are still being updated. I could wait, if it is a matter of a week or two (but not of two or three months).
-> Rasp Pi + Fiio D5 or E7 - I don’t even know if Raspberry will work with this kind of DAC via USB.

Hence my question - am I correct in saying that RaspPi+ together with HifiBerry Dac+ will be the easiest/good price/quality solution, which would allow me to stream my flacs and mp3 wirelessly, without spending ages on the console trying to make it work? Does this solution work with Volumio without any problems? Is there a case available for this setup?

Thank you all for help. If you are aware of other solutions (i.e. out-of-box Rasp Pi+ compatible DACs which talk nicely with Volumio) - please let me know!

2

I have the B+ and the Hifiberry DAC+ (I pre-ordered from them). It works fine for me, but you have to mess around with the config file a bit and update to the latest kernel. There is a version of volumio (1.41) which would work with B+.

I use it with volumio and find it is very good sounding. Enjoy!

3

Hi,
Thank you for the reply!

A little update from my side/research:
-> Wolfson is not compatible with Pi+
-> USB DAC is a bad idea (see the nice explanation at Volumio’s blog)

Which leaves me with:
-> HifiBerry DAC+
-> IQaudIO Pi-DAC+
-> //other less popular and more DIY solutions//

Are there any issues with/differences between Hifiberry and PI-DAC+? Are both supported by Volumio? (I understand that I might need to update to the latest kernel, but I guess that should be “fixed” with the next revision of Volumio)

Thank you,
DA

4

Hifiberry dac+ and Pi-DAC+ use the same PCM5122 chip. I think they are both supported.

There are also two more from Tekdevice, with different chips, check them out here:

tekdevice.com/chapter2/index.php … ommon/home

5

Hi DanteA,

  1. What model of Audioengine speakers do you have ?

2 Have you tried the RPI B+ Analogue Audio out to Analogue Audio In on the Speakers ? I know that a lot of reviews said that the analogue audio out was much improved on the RPI B+ compared to the RPi A & B.

I would try that first and see if the sound is good enough for your bedroom system.

Kevin