Volumio Primo: ANALOG OUTPUTS - Best Settings

Anyone tried out several settings on volumio primo’s analog outputs?

Resampling? Yes/No

Filter (fast/slow roloof or minimal-phase)?
Filter cutout frequency (47K, 50. 60 or 70K)?

Suggestions, aditional information?

BR,
Paulo Nunes

@ded could you help him…

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Hi Paolo,

Please forgive that I can only answer in theorie here - because unfortunately I don’t own a Volumio Primo myself yet.
There is an ES9038 based DAC inside the Primo, so I think I can still contribute a bit of my own experience. (I anyway own 2 Allo Katanas (THD and SQ), an Audiophonics ES9038 DAC and a Kadhas tone boards for testing).
Depending on the internal technical design of a DAC chip, it may make sense to upsample the signal before sending it to the DAC. With the ES9038 this is not the case regarding to my own experience - it upsamples the signal internally anyway and does do that job very well.
I would recommend to listen to a Volumio Primo first without resampling.


The “cut off frequency” question is a completely different topic and there is no “right” setting here, because it is about the largest possible bandwidth to avoid interference, which is absolutely system-dependent.
For example, if your neighbor is a radio amateur, or your laptop power supply or whatever device causes interference, it may help if you set the cut off frequency lower.
(Better is to buy your neighbor a better radio - or connect your own interfering equipment to a far away power outlet).
If I would connect a Primo for the first time, I would also leave this setting on default as long as it does not sound harnish anyhow.

Best Regards

Josef

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… and always take into consideration:

1.) It is ever preferable to listen to sophisticated music on a poor sound system versus listening to poor music on a sophisticated sound system. ( learned that by recommendation of a real musician by heart . BR CS :wink:
2.) Check out what speakers could fit your ears and mind + place them in your living room the right way and feed them with an amp that is powerful enough.
This will be the most time consuming and most expensive part of the solution
3.) Discuss with your girlfriend to have enough distance to the wall for the speakers - before !
4.) Then buy or build a Volumio device,
5.) Frickle around with various settings.
6.) Listen twice.
7.) Reporting another day.

br
Josef

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Speaker and Room interaction is, by itself, a science :slight_smile:

I did try these settings on my Primo. Without knowing what they meant, I didn’t know what to expect and went about it with an open mind.

Some (most?) changes initially resulted in the sound stopping immediately. Sometimes I was able to restart and the music would start with the new setting. Occasionally I’d have to go back to the previous setting and restart.

As you can imagine that was very frustrating. To top it all, I don’t think my gear (Rega IO amp, Jamo speakers and a Klipsch subwoofer) or my ears are good enough for me to notice a difference.

Unrelated to this, but recently my unit started stuttering audio no matter what the source and the dealer kindly replaced it. That took a couple of weeks and I’m absolutely thrilled with the sound with default settings on the replacement.

From my limited experience, I wouldn’t recommend changing either of those settings if you’re satisfied with the sound and not unless you know what to expect from each change.

Perhaps someone can help me understand what each change would do and I’d be willing to give it another shot.