I recently reviewed the Orchard Audio ApplePi DAC. In this review I will be testing the optional "Volume+Clocker" which adds hardware volume control and more precision clock. It retails for USD $99.99 plus shipping and is on loan from the company.
Here you see my test sandwich of Raspberry Pi, Volume+Clocker and ApplePi DAC:
You can see the volume control poking out on the side. Unless I missed it, there was no knob for the volume+clocker. This should be supplied as it costs very little and makes for a more professional and complete package.
For completeness, I will be testing the balanced output of the ApplePi DAC. As you can see in the above picture, the ApplePi DAC ships with mini-XLR balanced connectors. Company sent me a couple of XLR adapters which I used for this purpose. They were massive in size and so, I don't recommend using them. You should get a cable that adapts this to your XLR connector downstream.
For testing, I used my base board Pi with Volumio dedicated (Linux) audio operating system. Volumio is attractive and boots pretty fast (much faster than its competitor DietPi). Alas, as I have noted before, it only supports Apple Airplay for networked playback from my Roon player. Airplay limits samples to 16 bits which is not good. So as before, I tested the DAC using a thumb drive with a few test files on it. Complete testing is not possible since my Audio Precision analyzer cannot directly talk to Raspberry Pi (or any other) networked DACs like this.
Measurements
As usual, I start with my dashboard measurements of a 1 khz tone:
This is very good performance. We see that we have gained a few dB in SINAD due to complete elimination of mains 60 Hz leakage and noise further up in the spectrum. Here is how it now stacks in our recently reviewed DACs:
Testing the jitter reduction ability of the volume+clocker board, we get:
The new setup eliminates some of the spikes (in blue) out of the bare ApplePi DAC. Some random clock jitter remains as we see in the widening of the base/skirt of our 12 kHz tone and tiny variations throughout. None are audible concerns fortunately.
Conclusions
Whether it is the better implementation of balanced output or inherent goodness of balanced output, the performance of Orchard Audio AppliePi is within hair's breadth of state of state-of-the-art DAC. The volume+clocker seems to improve jitter performance some and give you a volume control.
On the down side the whole package is getting quite expensive at $300 plus shipping and cost of the Pi computer. Lack of little niceties such as a volume control knob remains odd. We had the same (and more serious) issue with the original board not coming with the required connectors.
As always, questions, comments, corrections, etc. are welcome.
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Here you see my test sandwich of Raspberry Pi, Volume+Clocker and ApplePi DAC:
You can see the volume control poking out on the side. Unless I missed it, there was no knob for the volume+clocker. This should be supplied as it costs very little and makes for a more professional and complete package.
For completeness, I will be testing the balanced output of the ApplePi DAC. As you can see in the above picture, the ApplePi DAC ships with mini-XLR balanced connectors. Company sent me a couple of XLR adapters which I used for this purpose. They were massive in size and so, I don't recommend using them. You should get a cable that adapts this to your XLR connector downstream.
For testing, I used my base board Pi with Volumio dedicated (Linux) audio operating system. Volumio is attractive and boots pretty fast (much faster than its competitor DietPi). Alas, as I have noted before, it only supports Apple Airplay for networked playback from my Roon player. Airplay limits samples to 16 bits which is not good. So as before, I tested the DAC using a thumb drive with a few test files on it. Complete testing is not possible since my Audio Precision analyzer cannot directly talk to Raspberry Pi (or any other) networked DACs like this.
Measurements
As usual, I start with my dashboard measurements of a 1 khz tone:
This is very good performance. We see that we have gained a few dB in SINAD due to complete elimination of mains 60 Hz leakage and noise further up in the spectrum. Here is how it now stacks in our recently reviewed DACs:
Testing the jitter reduction ability of the volume+clocker board, we get:
The new setup eliminates some of the spikes (in blue) out of the bare ApplePi DAC. Some random clock jitter remains as we see in the widening of the base/skirt of our 12 kHz tone and tiny variations throughout. None are audible concerns fortunately.
Conclusions
Whether it is the better implementation of balanced output or inherent goodness of balanced output, the performance of Orchard Audio AppliePi is within hair's breadth of state of state-of-the-art DAC. The volume+clocker seems to improve jitter performance some and give you a volume control.
On the down side the whole package is getting quite expensive at $300 plus shipping and cost of the Pi computer. Lack of little niceties such as a volume control knob remains odd. We had the same (and more serious) issue with the original board not coming with the required connectors.
As always, questions, comments, corrections, etc. are welcome.
-----
If you like this review, please consider donating funds for these reviews using Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or upgrading your membership here though Paypal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).