This is a review and detailed measurements of the IQaudio Pi-DAC Pro DAC for the Raspberry Pi streamer/single board computer. It was purchased by a kind member and drop shipped to me a while back. The Pi-DAC Pro costs £ 44.40 or about US $59.
You have seen one Pi DAC, you have seen them all:
This one has a headphone out which I did not have time to measure.
I tested the PI-DAC Pro using a Ropieee Roon endpoint allowing me to stream test files to it from Roon player. As usual, since my Audio Precision analyzer cannot control streaming platforms, I can only test with unchanging signals. So no sweeps.
Streaming DAC Audio Measurements
As usual, we start our dashboard playing a 1 kHz tone using Roon to push the content to the Pi platform:
Nice that we can get over 2 volts output. But distortion is quite high, causing the SINAD which is the sum of that plus noise to not be that good:
As noted, if I reduce the digital volume in Roon by 3 dB, distortion goes down substantially to a more reasonable value of 93 dB. Alas, other DACs such as HiFiBerry DAC+ Pro don't need such help and produce that SINAD at full output.
Multitone test uses lower amplitude tones and demonstrates the lower distortion:
Jitter shows decent results for a platform like this:
But again, not as good as HifiBerry.
Conclusions
I don't see the value/merit of this DAC. It has lower performance than HifiBerry DAC+ Pro yet costs more. Maybe if you are local to them the transaction cost is lower. Otherwise, I would pass on it.
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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
You know the decapitate panther? Well, some scientific types saw that and have contacted me to borrow it for brain research. They say I have no use for it anyway so why not. I decided to let them have it but need to come up with the money to pay for special transportation to their lab. So please donate what you can so that we can collectively advance our understanding of human, er, I mean panther brain using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
You have seen one Pi DAC, you have seen them all:
This one has a headphone out which I did not have time to measure.
I tested the PI-DAC Pro using a Ropieee Roon endpoint allowing me to stream test files to it from Roon player. As usual, since my Audio Precision analyzer cannot control streaming platforms, I can only test with unchanging signals. So no sweeps.
Streaming DAC Audio Measurements
As usual, we start our dashboard playing a 1 kHz tone using Roon to push the content to the Pi platform:
Nice that we can get over 2 volts output. But distortion is quite high, causing the SINAD which is the sum of that plus noise to not be that good:
As noted, if I reduce the digital volume in Roon by 3 dB, distortion goes down substantially to a more reasonable value of 93 dB. Alas, other DACs such as HiFiBerry DAC+ Pro don't need such help and produce that SINAD at full output.
Multitone test uses lower amplitude tones and demonstrates the lower distortion:
Jitter shows decent results for a platform like this:
But again, not as good as HifiBerry.
Conclusions
I don't see the value/merit of this DAC. It has lower performance than HifiBerry DAC+ Pro yet costs more. Maybe if you are local to them the transaction cost is lower. Otherwise, I would pass on it.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
You know the decapitate panther? Well, some scientific types saw that and have contacted me to borrow it for brain research. They say I have no use for it anyway so why not. I decided to let them have it but need to come up with the money to pay for special transportation to their lab. So please donate what you can so that we can collectively advance our understanding of human, er, I mean panther brain using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/