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Bedroom Pi Setup

Techville

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Nov 22, 2020
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Hi,
I have a small bedroom (15 sqm). I would love a basic audio setup but it needs to be compact. I have some of the components, just not sure what I need for the rest. Would appreciate some advice. I'd like to be able to stream from my phone/tablet to speakers, through Spotify (and maybe use volumino)

What I already have:

Q Acoustics 1010 speakers
https://www.hifix.co.uk/q-acoustics-1010-speakers
86dB
6 ohms
15 to 75 Wtts


Spare Raspberry Pi 2 and Pi 3

Hidizs AP60II player & dac (which I currently use as a dac on my desktop but could repurpose)
https://www.hidizs.net/products/ap60


What I think I need:

A cheap Raspberry Pi dac and amplifier. Do I need something a HIFIBERRY AMP2, and also a dac, any recommendations? Can I even reuse the Hidizs dac which I have.

Sorry, for the basic questions, I have read around but still unsure
 

somebodyelse

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There are many options, but a hat amp like the AMP2 or the ones from JustBoom or iqaudio should be an easy solution that works with most if not all of the available Pi based player software options. These certainly win on size if that's your main consideration. I've not seen any measurements of the amps, but other HifiBerry products have had reasonable measurements - not great but nothing particularly wrong with them.

Other options would be something like the recently tested Loxjie A30, or a separate DAC and amp. We don't have many measurements at the bottom of the amp price range yet so it's hard to make recommendations. What's the budget?

On the software front you can try out the usual suspects - PiCorePlayer, Volumio, Moode, Rune, Ropieee, HifiBerryOS and probably a few others if you search. It's as much a matter of finding one that has the features you need and an interface you like as anything. The only cautionary note is the potential pop/crackle issue on the earlier Pi models (<4) if you use USB audio - it doesn't apply to the hat DACs or amps. You'll often see this blamed on limited bandwidth over the shared USB interface, but that's wrong - it's a rather complicated latency issue that depends on the software you're running. Full technical details in the Raspbian kernel bug report so far as they're known. I've never had this with PiCorePlayer despite trying to provoke it. On Volumio I've only had it with the BruteFIR plugin, although one of their devs reports it in other scenarios in the bug report. BruteFIR causes it on Raspbian too (unless you pin it to a single cpu core) - I can't comment on the others.
 

renaudrenaud

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In the bedroom I have a pi with PicorePlayer and the X400 card, installed into an IKEA photo frame.

Screenshot_2020-11-22-14-30-55-849_com.alibaba.aliexpresshd.jpg
 
OP
T

Techville

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Great, thanks for all the info. What I can't get my head around is that its 2 x 30w output, is it really that loud ? I remember my first denon amp many years ago, it was 2 x30w and could easily fill a small room. A tiny Pi & hat can deliver similar volume (not quality) ? Wow.

I know you should carefully match amp and speakers, my speakers are

86dB
6 ohms
15 to 75 Wtts

Does that work well with the x400 ? It stated from 4 to 8 ohms but wasnt sure how well it drives my 6 ohm speakers


I think I'll order this, unless there are similar alternatives
https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32847562883.html?spm=2114.12010615.8148356.2.64fb6404cE8hCc
 

panulee

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did you proceed with that order? Got it? How is it? How does it sound? tia
 
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