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Improve Raspberry 4 streamer

Jinjuku

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The Sonore is way out of my budget range. I am simply looking for a wifi solution with minimum other traffic while avoiding yet another switch mode power supply to run it.
Any recommendations?
Yes:

Stop chasing ghosts.

I run multiple Pi's (3 and 4's). I have a Wifi connected Riopee XL endpoint for JRiver and a bog standard 15 watt power supply feeding my SMSL SU-9 with another bog standard 18 inch USB cable from Belden.

The sound is pristine.

Given the mindset I'm seeing you'll never be happy with a Pi, it's always going to bother you about some imperceptible 'gremlin'. Just continue to save and get a Sonore.
 

Jinjuku

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Here is what my Pi that run's DNS, Ad-blocking, Radius, TFTP, untangle is currently sitting at:

top - 21:41:06 up 1 day, 7:18, 2 users, load average: 0.14, 0.08, 0.02
Tasks: 139 total, 1 running, 138 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie
%Cpu(s): 0.1 us, 0.2 sy, 0.0 ni, 99.8 id, 0.0 wa, 0.0 hi, 0.0 si, 0.0 st
MiB Mem : 3838.7 total, 3308.4 free, 79.1 used, 451.2 buff/cache
MiB Swap: 100.0 total, 100.0 free, 0.0 used. 3612.4 avail Mem

PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND
17168 pi 20 0 10296 2840 2464 R 0.7 0.1 0:00.42 top
649 pihole 10 -10 86768 16848 10768 S 0.3 0.4 6:19.96 pihole-FTL
13693 root 20 0 0 0 0 I 0.3 0.0 0:21.77 kworker/u+

Audio represents a similarly low workload.
 
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Jinjuku

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Here's a better look:

1648432238383.png
 

antcollinet

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Thanks for your interest and ideas on my quest. Having worked through the "why"
I need help on the "how" to achieve my goal.I am looking for a usb powered wifi dongle to act as a bridge between my Pi player and my USB Dac. I prefer not to use the Pi internal wifi for reasons some of you have mentioned.
The USB cable connector casings are electrically connected together thereby joining the DAC to the Pi or IMac if so cabled.
What can you recommend?
You need to check that whatever software you are running on the Pi still has the stock USB wifi support. If it does, then any USB wifi dongle supported by Raspbian should work fine.

If not, then you should probably check on the relevant distribution support forums, which are supported.

There will be absolutely no audio differences between wifi dongles.
 

reprap

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You need to check that whatever software you are running on the Pi still has the stock USB wifi support. If it does, then any USB wifi dongle supported by Raspbian should work fine.

If not, then you should probably check on the relevant distribution support forums, which are supported.

There will be absolutely no audio differences between wifi dongles.
Thanks.
I am using Pi Core light 8.1.
The two Pis are connected by ethernet cable to my main home router along with five other wifi Macintosh devices.
The pi player is connected at present by USB cable to my Pontus 2 Dac.
The plan is to experiment with a wifi bridge to the Dac to see if there is any improvement.Does that make sense?
 

Apesbrain

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Does that make sense?
Sorry, not really. If you want to eliminate a visible wire, you can move the RPi player closer to the DAC, tuck the USB cable behind your cabinet, and have the RPi connect back to your server via wifi. That's a somewhat common configuration.

If you don't like the wifi built into the RPi, there are any number of USB wifi dongles supported by piCorePlayer. I've used the Edimax EW-7811Un. Or, you might look into HomePlug.

Nothing about this will "improve" the resulting sound quality.
 

gaburko

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Yes:

Stop chasing ghosts.

I run multiple Pi's (3 and 4's). I have a Wifi connected Riopee XL endpoint for JRiver and a bog standard 15 watt power supply feeding my SMSL SU-9 with another bog standard 18 inch USB cable from Belden.

The sound is pristine.

Given the mindset I'm seeing you'll never be happy with a Pi, it's always going to bother you about some imperceptible 'gremlin'. Just continue to save and get a Sonore.
This is interesting. I had a rpi3 and it was feeding my RME adi dac directly from the USB. It was getting its internet connection via cable. I then upgraded to the allo digione signature hat and the sound clearly improved. When I moved to the rpi4 there was no difference between hat and no hat. I think the problem up to version 4 was the fact that the USB and ethernet were on the same bus.
 

5-pot-fan

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This is interesting. I had a rpi3 and it was feeding my RME adi dac directly from the USB. It was getting its internet connection via cable. I then upgraded to the allo digione signature hat and the sound clearly improved. When I moved to the rpi4 there was no difference between hat and no hat. I think the problem up to version 4 was the fact that the USB and ethernet were on the same bus.
I have long assumed that the old Pi3 ethernet/USB issue was real and can say that my Pi4 does a good job feeding data from an old hard drive thru a DAC and onwards, with no apparent flaws. I have experimented with Volumio, piCoreplayer and Moode and sometimes swap between the latter 2 without being aware of any SQ differences. The biggest issue (as for many of us I suspect) is the room and the speakers, so the next step is a miniDSP and the time needed to experiment with room EQ.
This ASR site does not cure upgradeitis but does provide many useful pointers to what to do, how to think about your system and what not to waste your money on in your search for potential improvements.
Thank you Amir!
 
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