We have been working hard on a project last months. It is a DAC module “prepared” for Odroid C1+/C2 and works great with Volumio!
In the kit is included a 3.5" touch display and remote control. This for controlling volume, digital filter, inverting phase, turning on/off the display.
As usual, balanced outputs is a must but we know many of you guys use unbalanced RCA so we threw them in as well =)
Technical details
Input
PCM up to 32-bit/768 kHz
DSD up to 11.2 MHz
Output
DR, S/N: 115 dB
THD+N: -107 dB
Ripple: +/-0.0032 dB
Digital Filter: Five types of High Quality Sound Filter Option
Hi,
to get this working on Volumio 2 it would need drivers/ modules to be added to the kernel I compiled for Volumio 2.
Which drivers/ modules did you use and where do I find them?
To get it working on Volumio2 with Odroid you only need to enable I2S from the webgui. There is no need to compile anything if you are using this module with Volumio2. Ive tried it sevaral times and it works out of the box, at least with the Odroid C1+ Image.
I bought this DAC and and connected it to a ODROID-C2 computer with volumio and, for the moment, half of the things are not working, and there are a lot of bugs.
I can locally play MP3/FLAC but not DSD…
If I use dlna I get some DSD files working, but DSD256 doesn’t play fluently, there is cuts all the time even with max. buffer, and when I stop the song there are other songs that start automatically from the sd card at a higher volume (this is a quite annoying behavior)
The output of the dac is quite low (I’m using the XLR outputs), and the sound quality is poor, comparing with other dacs I tried. Is like the music is not as clear as it should be.
The screen and remote control are completely useless, I can only change the volume, and there is no other information, why put such a screen only to change volume??
I hope you can give me more information about how to get this DAC working, as there is no user manual, and also tell me what are the limits, can I really read native DSD256 with it? What about using DoP?
Hi Jose,
thanks for your feedback, let’s wait for G2Labs to reply to your questions about the DAC.
I can say to you that DSD is not supported, but Dop is. So you want to enable DoP in the UI. However, when you use it via DLNA, the audio will resampled and converted by the source sending it, so I would suggest trying different audio sources to play via DLNA.
Let me know how your testing goes with that.
I see that there is still no response from G2Labs. Didn’t have time to test after this weekend but I will try again.
Michelangelo do you know if any special driver is needed for this DAC? apparently no, but I didn’t manage to play DSD even with DoP enabled, and I don’t find how to configure Volumio. Should I try to do something directly by SSH?
I would like to play DSD256 files directly from the eMMC memory of the ODROID C2 and see if the cuts that I hear with jwriver+dlna are due to the bandwidth of the network, or to the live encoding.
Sorry for late reply. Please in future contact us via our email for faster repsonse. You can find our email adress on our site.
I will try to reply to all you questions accordingly.
When you play MP3/FLAC you are playing a format the outputs from Odroid in PCM/I2S format.
Standard I2S has 3 signals: DATA, LRCLK, BCLK and in many setups there is an additional signal called MCLK which is used for most modern DAC chips and also in this case. Theese PCM/I2S signals are produced internally inside the Odroid in combination of your software and driver. They are then fed on PINOUT in this order:
GND
I2S Data in
5V
I2S MCLK
I2S LRCLK
I2S SCLK
I2S Data out
When it comes to DSD it is more or less same concept but signals are in other format and called DSDL1, DSDR1, DSDCLK.
To make the DAC play DSD you wull need to feed the DAC in a specific order for the DAC to understand the signal. On same pinout as PCM/I2S you will need this configuarion instead:
GND
[low]
5V
[low]
DSD L1
DSD DCLK
DSD R1
Im not aware of what software and driver can produce DSD in this specific order. If you used a USB to DSD module you could hardwire as above configuration and you will see that it would work t play DSD. Unfortunately my software knowledge is limited and it is mainly the hardware we sell. This can seem as a grey zone but the DAC and hardware can play both PCM/I2S and native DSD. As explained you need to use correct software in comvination with correct driver to make it work.
Hope this explained you DSD question.
If you get DSD to play sometimes as you mention I presume you are using DoP which is DSD over PCM. Some software (maybe your dlna client) does play DSD over PCM which in fact is a reformat of the DSD to PCM format. I dont really see the point in this because the advantage with DSD is the hardware format compared to PCM/I2S. When software reformats it to play it is no advantge in soundquality.
So you will need to separate what is file format, hardware format and check you settings of what settings you are really using and why you are getting theese different “problems”. The DAC module itelf is more or less a straightforward simple design, it is usually the software where most of the problems is. All our DAC as tested in our facilities to play all kind of formats and settings before shipped.
You then are talking about the output. The output stage is a buffer stage only without any more gain what the DAC chip produces. This is one of the main thing we advertise. Important is to have a clean 12V power because the output is more or less “colored” from 12V power. If you still feel that volume is low, please check you software and software mixers to see that volume is not low because it shouldnt be low, especially not with XLR.
Regardin the screen.
If you checked the manual you will see exactly what the screen is for. Nothing more, nothing less than we are advertising.
Screen is for volume, digital filter and setting default startup value. Without screen its a bit difficult to see what filter is active. It is also from here you need to swtich to DSD filter if you want to play DSD. Use the right arrow to scroll around the filter settings.
Also if you play different DSD frequency you will need to manuelly change filter accordingly since there is no autofunction for that.
Maybe I explained a bit too much but I dont know you level exactly so it was better to explain too much than too little.
I’ve sent the message at the forum because I think it will be useful to have the information here, thinking about future users of this DAC, and because I bought the DAC at Volumio’s shop.
I’m quite new in this “audiophile world”, so maybe I make some mistakes, but I will try to explain what I think about this configuration. Note that I’m engineer and I have a medium/high knowledge of embedded systems, so I hope this will help.
Regarding the PIN configuration and the driver, that’s a question that Michelangelo should answer, I don’t know if those odroid PINs are configurable. It would be great to be able to activate native DSD function without modifying the hardware.
Regarding DoP, it is not the same as D2P. Even if the “transmission” changes, the final sound is not altered if we use DoP, as the DAC himself should recognize the DoP data stream and play it as regular DSD, as I think we can do with HifiBerry + Raspberry or HiFi Shield + odroid. It doesn’t make any sense to me to use different hardware configurations to play DSD (DoP) and PCM. We should be able to play both DoP and PCM with the same wiring, and this is not working.
I guess dlna client uses D2P and it converts the format to PCM, and because of this, we can play DSD music by dlna, but not directly with Volumio, as it sends DSD using PCM streams without format conversion.
About the screen, understood, but is a pity that we cannot use it for the odroid, and that after soldering the DAC we lose the HDMI.
About the filters, one more question, do I have to change to DSD filter when using DoP? If I do that I only get a loud white noise, but not music.
