Hi to all!
I’m Gabriele from Rome. This is my first post on volumio forum.
I am desperate to find a non expensive solution that can be suitable for my desiderata.
I have a qnap nas (with dlna twonke media server), and old vintage ampli ioneer Sa-8500.
In this period i’m reading tons of articles about the potential of rasberry pi like media center with internal dac, and i i’d like to find teh best solution to have a media center with good dac strem the music from qnap and attach, if it possibile, a dvd player that reads my mp3 cd’s!
Once i burn volumio on sd card on rasberry Pi, it can automatically recognize the dac card (i think i’ll buy hifiberry dac) and dvd drive to strem music from my nas or to play it from a cd?
If i want to connect also a display to view music live streaming, volumio can send data to the display?
Which hardware configuration do you suggest me?
Rasberry Pi B+
Hifi-berry + (without solder anything ok?)
Which power supply to avoid jitter?
Which dvd drive (or cd or bluray drive if you know taht is better)?
Which display?
Thanks for your patience i’m a newbe of rasberry and volumio!
Usually yes if you get a supported card. Hifiberry DAC+ for RPi B+ works.
Not by default. Volumio by itself is ‘headless’. You can use any device with a browser to see the (web)application.
There are other solutions like using the HDMI output or a specific LCD, but those are not ‘out-of-the-box’.
Or do you mean watching music video’s? That is not streaming music If you are looking for ways to look-and-listen to streaming video, there are other solutions more suited for that task.
Using a RPi B+ and a Hifiberry DAC+ is just a snap-on (no soldering).
If you order your Pi with the standard power supply, you will probably be fine.
My guess is that most USB DVD drives will be recognized and can be mounted automatically.
I wouldn’t go for a display but use the webinterface or any MPD client.
Special note on jitter: A good powersupply can lower the jitter. But in this case, you are using a directly connected DAC which uses the power supplied by your Pi. If you really want to improve sound quality than the DAC should get its own power supply (or even use an external DAC with own power/clock/etc). Get a good quality signal cable from DAC to amplifier. My guess is that you will gain more there than with the power supply. Also connecting a display will require more work from the Pi, more devices connected and so probably an increase in jitter. Same goes for the USB DVD drive (how do you power that one? Maybe get the 2A power supply to feed the USB DVD drive).
I think power supply is more important than cables. Cables make no difference on the measurements nor in blind test. On the other hand, power supply make differences which are very obvious, like a continuous noise out of a guitar amplifier., when they are bad.
I am not an expert, but as far as I have understood, the datasheet of most of the dac chips are more than excellent, even when the chip costs a few euros. For instance the high end wm8741 chip alone costs less than 20 euros.
On the other hand, feeding the dac with a voltage as constant and exact as possible is still expansive. I tried the dac of a colleague, with good specs, but taking the current on the usb, and it was not really better than the soundcard of my laptop…
Patrick, I misunderstood what you said. You are right: a good cable is necessary and an expansive cable is useless.
As for the linear power supply, it is important for the dac, because of the analogic output. But it is useless for the pi since the output of the pi to the dac is digital : if the output is 0 or 1, a small variation from 1 is still a 1. As long as the pi is stable, the power supply is OK I think. Of course, if the dac takes the current from the usb of the pi, then precise voltage on the dac is necessary.
@Gabriel
For the dvd, recall that volumio ( or more precisely mpd) can read a cd as a whole. You won’t have access to the individual tracks. Thus impossilble to shuffle, to avoid a song that you don’t like or to repeat a song that you like. The solution is to stream from an other application (for instance vlc) and then forward the stream to mpd. But this requires some work. It does not come out of the box.
Laurent.
finally i bought rasberry 2 and hifi berry.
Now i think i 'd like to use rasberry not only for audoiphile solution, i think volumio is the best but i can also stream movies from volumio or can i installa volumio and install another service for movies streaming like, i don’t kno, dlna server on a volumio distro?
If i use my samsung internal dvd reader with a cable ide to usb are there some possibilities that volumio recognizes dvd reader?
ps: i will use rasberry power supply that give energy also to hifi berry, i hope will have no problem with jitter, i will report problems i will
If you are looking for ways to look-and-listen to streaming video, there are other solutions more suited for that task.