Quality of Raspberry Pi4 USB For Streaming

[obsessive9119]

Or use roon and a bunch of RPis. With Ropiee installed you can also use the Pis as shittify connect endpoints, airport endpoints, upnp endpoints and as LMS repeater/gateway to any upnp only devices, roon enabling them. MUCH more versatile and with choice of usb DACs or HAT DACs.

I’m pretty sure the WiiMs do all of that natively. And of course (other than the mini) they’re also “roon ready”

 

[TNT]

The USB isolator only helps if you streamer runs with a grounded power supply. If you use a Raspberry Pi power supply without ground an isolator has no effect at all.

I would like to see both situations measured. Thats way we measure - right - to confirm theory.

//

 

[antcollinet]

I would like to see both situations measured. Thats way we measure - right - to confirm theory.

//

OK - but you've seen it measured here with no isolator (presumably the worst case).

Guess what - no noise.

 

[JohnnyNG]

Just get rpi4 and burn https://ropieee.org/ on card.
You are welcome.

I did that at the end of 2021 (after running a Squeezebox Touch for the previous decade) and it's been updating and maintaining itself ever since. Most appliance-like computer I've ever had.

 

[JakeK]

Some measured here have not been that good:

Review and Measurements of Aoide DAC II Pi HAT

This is a review and detailed measurements of the Aoide DAC II Raspberry Pi HAT DAC. It was kindly purchased by a member and drop shipped to me. He bought it from Amazon and it costs US $39.99 including Prime shipping. It uses an ESS ES9018K2M DAC Chip unlike the competing budget DACs which...

www.audiosciencereview.com

Chapeau ou non? (PCM5102MK non-HAT DAC review)

Hi, Guys! Use of French in the title is not arbitrary. :) Chapeau ou non? literally translates to: “Hat or not?”. However, chapeau is also frequently used as expression of admiration, approval, respect and is short for chapeau bas (literally “hat down”) in a same sense as in English “I take my...

www.audiosciencereview.com

I have a
This is probably the only one I'd consider - but that is the same price as an inexpensive external DAC - and still not SOTA.

HifiBerry DAC2 HD Review (Rpi HAT)

This is a review and detailed measurements of the HifiBerry DAC 2 HD. It was kindly sent to me by a member already assembled on a Raspberry Pi board. The DAC2 HD costs US $99 from company website. Here is a shot of the full assembly: Let's zoom into it: As you see it is based on...

www.audiosciencereview.com

The hifiberry DAC2 HD is the one I use on two RPi streamers even though the difference between that and the 'not that good' ~£15 DAC HATs is probably not audible. It's only £40 plus shipping so what sort of good external DAC is cheaper than that?

I have another question about using RPi4 with an external DAC. Can the DAC be powered by the RPi to save on wall warts for a tidier solution? I'm definitely going to use an Rpi streamer with an external DAC, probably in the form of a Minidsp Flex and I want to minimise cables and wall sockets used. With each speaker and sub needing a socket as well that can be a number of sockets in use! It also looks like I definitely want to replace the RPi3 with a 4 as part of this upgrade path having read about potential issues.

 

[DrCWO]

That seems to suggest there is no problem with USB audio on RPi3?

Roon Bridge has no problem with USB at the Pi 3B

 

[aagstn]

That is a really cool Roon device. I have several Pi 3s with digital hats and screens and Pi 5s connected to dacs USB with screens running Volumio or Moode and this has been my preferred way to stream for 5-6 years. Tried the Wiim units but just hate their interface for music on my server. Volumio gets that part 100% the way I want it.

 

[guyboisvert]

Moode or Volumio are also free ways to turn a RPi into a high quality streamer at low cost
also there are DAC hats available at similar low costs to avoid using a DAC at all

I use both Moode and Volumio and have had great success for years. on RPi 4 and 5

I run straight MPD on a mini-pc (HP EliteDesk 705G5 / AMD Ryzen 3200GE / 16G = cheap!) and i use various MPD clients: RompR Web Interface (running as a podman container), ncmpcpp for CLI and M.A.L.P. on Android. I have music locally (MP3 for Jellyfin WEB) and on an NFS server (FLACs for DAC playback)

I have a few other cool things running on this mini-pc, it has KVM and Podman. I run other containers like Olivetin, Jellyfin, etc. It runs a Home Assistant VM. I have services like MQTT, etc.

Volumio and MoOde run MPD under the hood. I'm testing MoOde player on RPI4 and the most interesting part is that it includes CamillaDSP.

 

[guyboisvert]

The hifiberry DAC2 HD is the one I use on two RPi streamers even though the difference between that and the 'not that good' ~£15 DAC HATs is probably not audible. It's only £40 plus shipping so what sort of good external DAC is cheaper than that?

I have another question about using RPi4 with an external DAC. Can the DAC be powered by the RPi to save on wall warts for a tidier solution? I'm definitely going to use an Rpi streamer with an external DAC, probably in the form of a Minidsp Flex and I want to minimise cables and wall sockets used. With each speaker and sub needing a socket as well that can be a number of sockets in use! It also looks like I definitely want to replace the RPi3 with a 4 as part of this upgrade path having read about potential issues.

I wouldn't do that but it seems to support 1200 mA total on USB3

https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=289047

 

[guyboisvert]

So, excuse potentially daft question, are we saying the RPi usb out, with any mature software, (picore, volumio, moode etc) will give identical, or near as damn it, performance?

Identical, digital is digital... RPi, as any PC or Streamer, will just send data using Async USB. The receiving DAC design must include a receiving memory buffer and respect the USB spec for noise handling, etc.

 

[TNT]

Guess what - no noise.

Perhaps even lower artefacts if one was used.

//

 

[antcollinet]

The hifiberry DAC2 HD is the one I use on two RPi streamers even though the difference between that and the 'not that good' ~£15 DAC HATs is probably not audible. It's only £40 plus shipping so what sort of good external DAC is cheaper than that?

Where are you seeing it for that?

HiFiBerry DAC2 HD

The HiFiBerry DAC2 HD is a high-end digital-to-analogue converter for the Raspberry Pi (newer models with 40 pin GPIO connector). DAC2 Pro or DAC2 HD? If you’re just looking for the best audio quality – the answer is easy: the DAC2 HD. It offers lower distortions, higher signal-to-noise-range...

thepihut.com

Are you sure you're not confusing it with the Non HD?

I have another question about using RPi4 with an external DAC. Can the DAC be powered by the RPi to save on wall warts for a tidier solution? I'm definitely going to use an Rpi streamer with an external DAC, probably in the form of a Minidsp Flex and I want to minimise cables and wall sockets used.

The mini DSP flex can't be powered from USB as far as I know. It is powered from a non USB socket.

 

[antcollinet]

Perhaps even lower artefacts if one was used.

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"Even more inaudible" - one of the more pointless phrases.

 

[TNT]

"Audible" is not relevant on a science review oriented forum only measurement is. What you hear might not be the same as what your neighbour hear... so back off :-D

//

 

[antcollinet]

"Audible" is not relevant on a science review oriented forum only measurement is. What you hear might not be the same as what your neighbour hear... so back off :-D

//

Science has stuff to say about human hearing capabilities also.

Human hearing has neither infinite sensitivity, nor infinite bandwidth. The noise measured without the isolator was at least an order of magnitude below the threshold of hearing for all humans. And that is assuming there is no other sound actually playing to mask it.

Otherwise you are in the territory of club level music volume (you know - so loud your mate has to shout directly into your ear, and you still can't make out what he is saying) while simultaneously claiming to hear a feather landing on the back of a kitten.

 

[JakeK]

Where are you seeing it for that?

HiFiBerry DAC2 HD

The HiFiBerry DAC2 HD is a high-end digital-to-analogue converter for the Raspberry Pi (newer models with 40 pin GPIO connector). DAC2 Pro or DAC2 HD? If you’re just looking for the best audio quality – the answer is easy: the DAC2 HD. It offers lower distortions, higher signal-to-noise-range...

thepihut.com

Are you sure you're not confusing it with the Non HD

Sorry that's the DAC2 pro that I got for around £40.

HiFiBerry DAC2 Pro | HiFiBerry

Couldn't see any point getting the HD. Not sure what the difference in sinad is but pretty sure it's not audible.

 

[ampguy]

I don't get it. All my 5 Roon endpoints are 3Bs/4s, only cost about $40 each + case. Why spend $140+ for a rpi streamer?

 

[TNT]

hear a feather landing on the back of a kitten

Mate, we all have different ways of selecting gear. You yours, me mine. I'm after technical perfection irrespectable if I think I can hear it or not. How about that?

//

 

[somebodyelse]

With older Pis the usb and ethernet shared an I/o channel, ergo the usb connection was unsuitable for audio.

This is a persistent misunderstanding of what was going on in issue #2215. The USB network adapter was a minor factor in whether or how often the pops and clicks might occur. What software was running was a much bigger factor - brutefir was a reliable trigger on both volumio and raspbian unless it was pinned to a single cpu core. With the same hardware running piCorePlayer I never managed to make it pop/click despite streaming the highest rate PCM and DSD files I could find on 2L's free samples, so it certainly could be suitable for audio.

 

[antcollinet]

Mate, we all have different ways of selecting gear. You yours, me mine. I'm after technical perfection irrespectable if I think I can hear it or not. How about that?

//

No problem - you do you.

But how much are you prepared to pay for those inaudible improvements?