Presenting: wooden Volumio build with matching Amp

Hi everyone,

just want to showcase my custom Volumio build I have been working on in the past year. The case is milled from oak wood, the DAC is a ES9018K2M.
The amp ist based around an LM3886. I made the housing from sheet metal that I intentianally rusted on the outside.

I drew everything up in Onshape, the design is available here: https://cad.onshape.com/documents/5bde43b7c86d74c1d4da4259/w/d020c9d4c969d7b36d69b367/e/034110cee59e74d892b76194

I plan on putting all the details about it in my blog, just did not yet get around to do so.
fullsetup.jpg
volumio_electronics.jpg
volumio_final.jpg

Edit: the blog entry can be found here https://bashtelorofscience.wordpress.com/2020/03/02/i-made-a-volumio-music-player/

1 Like

few more fotos:
volumio_backside.jpg
DSC04812.jpg
milling_volumiocase.jpg

2 Likes

nice and original job!
thank you for sharing

That looks great. Good imaginative use of materials.

Good job. Matches very good the shape of the amp. Wood is a perfect material to build a case. :wink:

Hi DedeHai,

Cool work.

Could you please post a photo where one can see how and where you connected the I2C connection.
I think i have got the same board here but don’t find it.

Thank you in advance.

Best Regards
Josef

I have this board with ES9028Q2M also and if used properly sound quality is very good. I need to mention some things found on the way - first, original data cable is much to long and board is not working with it - needed to shorten it to about 80mm. Second, power supply part of board is very poor design - DC power supply voltage higher than 12V is risky - can overheat or burn out voltage stabilizer chips, anything lover produces clipping distortions at op-amp output. Best solution if you don’t want to modify power schematic is to replace op-amp with good reel-to-reel device (OPA1612 is the best in my opinion) and supply board from stabilized 12V source. Sound quality difference between NE5532 that come with board ( I checked - not a fake) and OPA1612 (genuine also) was very noticeable.

very nice set up, waiting for your blog and the details of this build! Kudos!

Thank you all for the positive feedback :smiley:
I finally finished the complete write-up on this project including all design files on my blog:
https://bashtelorofscience.wordpress.com/2020/03/02/i-made-a-volumio-music-player/

I hope it is more or less clear what I did, if not please let me know and I will clarify.

Great build and write up! Going to open up the drawer and fish out this DAC to play with - thanks for the motivation!

Hi DedeHai,

Thank you very much for this highly interesting article.
This is really extremly helpful.

Did you find out the i2c lines by using the datasheet of the ES9018k2m chip and a microscope ?

Best Regards
Josef

Not sure what method @DedeHai used, but there a long thread over at DIYAudio with tweaks for this board :slight_smile:

Glad it is useful to you. Yes I did use the datasheet but no microscope necessary. I already knew that the chip has an I2C control interface from other forum posts, also at DIYaudio and looking at the layout there were these two lines with pullup resistors so they were hot candidates. Being an electronics engineer designing and probing such circuits to me is daily business :ugeek:

Thanks for the link @ashthespy I do have an account at DIYaudio, I will post the link to my writeup there, may be a useful addition even though I did not read that whole thread.

I finally took the time to document the amp shown in the fotos. If anyone is interested on how I built it: https://bashtelorofscience.wordpress.com/2020/12/06/100w-hifi-stereo-amplifier-with-custom-case-based-on-lm3886/