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Raspberry Pi Music Player Questions

Rocky Bennett

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Jan 6, 2019
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Hello All,
I am new to this forum but I really enjoy the informative discussions that revolve around DACs and the science behind the music that we hear. As a brief introduction, I am old and on a fixed income. I recently put together a very simple little kitchen music player that I enjoy when I drink my morning coffee and do my kitchen chores. My goal for the system was to have something small and simple and easy to play. The key factor for all of my equipment choices was cost and ease of use. The system is based on a Klipsch Heritage The Three tabletop speaker. https://www.klipsch.com/products/the-three

The music player itself is built from a Raspberry Pi 4 running Volumio software and hooked to an old MusicStreamer II+ DAC that is hooked to the speaker through RCA style wires. I found the DAC in an old box in the garage and the cables that I used are Audio Quest Cinnamon USB cable and Audio Quest Cinnamon RCA cables. The cables were also in an old box in the garage so the only expense to the project was the Raspberry Pi and case, an Argon One V.2 https://www.argon40.com/argon-one-v-2-case-for-raspberry-pi-5.html

At this time I am using a stock Raspberry Pi power convertor and here is where my questions begin. As I stated I am old and I am on a fixed income and I am really happy with the sound that I hear, it is warm and clear and undistorted, to these old ears. (At this point I will point out that 100% of my listening is derived from an attached hard drive that contains wav files from my ripped CD collection at full 16 bit 44.1 khz resolution.)

So given the above information and background does anybody think that I should upgrade my power supply to an ifi iPower or do you think that I should upgrade my DAC to something like a Topping D30? These are hypothetical products, I am open to suggestions, but would any of this increase my listening pleasure? Although the system is warm and clear I think that I might be able to increase the clarity and/or the overall sonics of my music playback.

Of course I might be just grasping for straws and this system might actually be optimal as it is, considering that it is a simple tabletop stereo with no real separation or hi fi features.

Any and all suggestions are welcome. Thank you in advance.
 
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Rocky Bennett

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Yes it does but i have not tested it. I really should just try the internal DAC but I have not really read any reviews on the Klipsch DAC itself. But thanks for the input, it will not take anything but a little time to try out the internal Klipsch DAC just as an experiment.

Thanks
 

tw99

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Don’t need to change anything in my opinion. Even if a d30 is technically better it’s unlikely you’d hear it. Changing psu is simply pointless.
 
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Rocky Bennett

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Jan 6, 2019
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Thank you all for your replies and opinions. In order to be semi-scientific about my quest I switched to the Klipsch internal DAC last night using the existing Audio Quest USB cable. Wow!!! The difference was night and day, my MusicStreamer DAC being night and the Klipsch being day.

Immediately the warmth and mid-bass that I heard with the MusicStreamer was gone, replaced by a bigger, brighter sound. The internal Klipsch DAC has more air on the top end and a much more detailed sound. Additionally the Klipsch DAC has a bigger stage than the MusicStreamer.

The sound from the MusicStreamer set up had a warmth and intimacy that was very comforting, and the bass was much (MUCH) more substantial. The MusicStreamer had a soft top end and a more focused sound stage.

I can not say which one of these set ups I prefer so I will give it a few more days and trade out the current Klipsch DAC for an old Schiit DAC that I have laying around and maybe replace the Audio Quest USB cable with a Wire World USB cable that I have in a box.

If anyone is interested I will post back my results, otherwise I will just keep playing with the system until I get the sound just right.

Rocky
 
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