Raspberry Pi USB : noisy?

[Beershaun]

Yes. Should be easy to measure a dac analog SINAD output in an analyzer with a pi3 and pi4 as input to quantify said noise.

 

[G-rig]

Yes.. not worried either way, there's no real reason to buy the old raspberry pi unless maybe budget if you wanted to do it as cheap as possible.

 

[Martin]

I used to run Volumio on a Raspberry Pi 3 then on a Pi 4 with Logitech Media Server on my Synology NAS. I now run piCorePlayer with LMS embedded on my 2GB Pi 4. Very stable nice sounding WiFi streamer. Volumio was very laggy on the same Pi 4 even with LMS on the NAS. PiCorePlayer is great. I think Hans is hearing things.

Martin

 

[G-rig]

Don't worry about Hank, never even heard of him, bit to be honest a lot of people in the hi-fi audio game like to over analyse things and create problems that don't exist. It's a fun field to be interested in but personally I'm probably more about the music enjoyment (maybe 60% music and 40% tech).

Have paid the annual fee for volumio and will continue using it for now, works very well considering and was fairly impossible trying to set up something with foobar (and don't have a NAS) so the pi with SSD plugged in is a great cheap solution. Perhaps trial ver 3 which was recently released, although as long as you have something that works then that's the main thing. I find it I very quick to skip tracks etc, but given the nature of it you expect to be a little bit of lag. Even a cd takes time to initially spin up. Still haven't got around to testing other free solutions but find the tidal connect interface handy as well. Still sounds very clean and good with adi-2 and Yamaha monitors.

 

[Mark Dirac]

Fair bit better than Chromecast audio, particularly now gapless playback is possible.

Except you can cast pretty much any app to Chromecast Audio and pretty much no app to RPi.

 

[G-rig]

Except you can cast pretty much any app to Chromecast Audio and pretty much no app to RPi.

Oh right. There are heaps of apps to use the RPI. But depends what you want to do, Bluetooth is handy too.

Non Gapless sucks bro, and you can't buy CCA for a while now. Not getting rid of mine, still plugged into optical input. Was great for ages for what it was, no idea why Google didn't keep it.. most of their customer base just care about videos, not audiophiles.

 

[ahofer]

Except you can cast pretty much any app to Chromecast Audio and pretty much no app to RPi.

if it is running ROPIEEXL, you can Roon, Airplay, Squeezebox. Only not Chromecast.

 

[Palle]

I heard from a famous audiophile youtuber today, that the audio USB output of the Raspberry Pi is very noisy.

I was a bit disappointed at first because this is exactly what I use to stream my music. But then I thought well I can’t hear any noise so why worry, right?

But now there’s this voice in my head... I’m listening to a noisy source. But am I? Is it scientifically proven that this is a ‘dirty’ source? He was also complaining about the power source for the Raspi. I’m using the standard wall plug but as an audiophile you should at least buy a PSU of course!

On my Raspberry i use Ifi power X 5v.
And Ifi usb purifier 3
And Supra excalibur usb cable.
Connected to a Topping D90 MQA Dac
The sound got from good to just amazing with those tweaks.
My friend and I tested he's ifi streamer vs my setup.
We couldn't hear any difference at all.
Don't listen to Hans

 

[sjeesjie]

On my Raspberry i use Ifi power X 5v.
And Ifi usb purifier 3
And Supra excalibur usb cable.
Connected to a Topping D90 MQA Dac
The sound got from good to just amazing with those tweaks.
My friend and I tested he's ifi streamer vs my setup.
We couldn't hear any difference at all.
Don't listen to Hans

So what are you suggesting? Getting power filters, extra expensive cables etc but not listening to Hans who supports all that crap?

 

[Killingbeans]

[snark] Sounds like: Don't belive the alchemist Hans, but belive your own alchemy. [/snark]

But, seriously welcome to ASR @Palle

Just so you know, this is not a place where expensive USB cables and the likes are considered anything but snake-oil.

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Hello everyone @ ASR. :) I couldn't find a new members section so thought I'd start one... if that is ok @amirm. I'm from Australia and have been a member of a number of audio and tech forums for well over 20 years. So g'day everyone, in particular any other Aussies here (@Sir Sanders...

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[Roland68]

So what are you suggesting? Getting power filters, extra expensive cables etc but not listening to Hans who supports all that crap?

If it's all about the voice in your head, then get an Intona USB 2.0 Isolator (the small version will do). It is an industrial device that is used in industry, medicine and measurement technology.
If you don't hear a difference, you can return it for 30 days and be sure there's no problem.

Basically, USB is a very cheap (by any means) and dirty interface. It's all the more amazing that it works so well in the audio field.
At least I haven't found a direct interface (e.g. AES, i2s or i2s over LVDS) that had any sound advantage for me. And I've tried a few things, including various hacks that tap directly from i2s.

With modern DACs, USB is not a problem for two reasons:
- Most DACs do not use the power supply from the USB line, so there can be no interference in the device.
- This also applies to the processing of the digital signal. It is so good in most of today's DACs that additional devices do not bring any improvement.

With many (especially cheap) computers and notebooks, the USB cable is very "dirty" and still works perfectly. That will be better with the Raspberry.

 

[gitaarwerk]

Gotta pop this topic a bit, sorry.
I'm looking in recreating my pi streamer I used to build. It was with a Pi3 and that was noisy. Isolating using Ian Canada's isolator with a reclocker and back to SP/Dif did clean up the noise a lot. Now this was measured. And it was known that the PI3 was very noisy. The clock upgrades were non-noticable to me. But I've added the crystaks anyway to try.
USB Was the same, and knowing what dac could handle the noise or not, including availability and price was too much to figure out;

i2s have some other interesting options why one may want to use it. But as hardware is more powerful, including DSP on the Pi4 instead of an external in form of a HAT may be preferable. When you mention the PI4 is not noisy as USB, this could perhaps be good enough. i2s under longer lengths can be problematic, and indeed as some earlier measurements from Amir about i2s is clock separation and syncing. In the studio world a master clock and locked clocks can also still give a lot of issues. In DAWS there are often measurements and ways to compensate this. I don't think this can be easily done within a Pi.

Anyways... I just wanted to check if there are any sources on how this stuff measures on the PI4 from a reliable source, and not Henk

Also... as I prefer not to ask this on more subjective site... how's bluetooth 5 working? I often have my portable train-set with me, but often interrupts... I could just ditch a lot of stuff by just working with a bluetooth receiver instead (so directly with dac + bluetooth, instead of adding a PI in the middle too).

Would love to know how this works in current age.

 

[somebodyelse]

Archimago compared USB on Pi 3, Odroid and MS surface at the output of the DAC and found essentially no difference. Any properly engineered DAC assumes noise on the USB power line and filters/regulates it accordingly. If you've got ground issues (which often present as 'USB noise') that's another matter, and a proper USB isolator may fix it.

What do you mean by bluetooth 5? There were some significant changes announced for 5.2 which have since been rebranded, but as I understand it chunks of the spec have yet to be finalized. Then again manufacturers may release based on the last draft and hope nothing changes...

 

[gitaarwerk]

Archimago compared USB on Pi 3, Odroid and MS surface at the output of the DAC and found essentially no difference. Any properly engineered DAC assumes noise on the USB power line and filters/regulates it accordingly. If you've got ground issues (which often present as 'USB noise') that's another matter, and a proper USB isolator may fix it.

What do you mean by bluetooth 5? There were some significant changes announced for 5.2 which have since been rebranded, but as I understand it chunks of the spec have yet to be finalized. Then again manufacturers may release based on the last draft and hope nothing changes...

Cool, thanks

With Bluetooth 5 I mean just playing on another device with your phone to say..a topping dac (receiver); On the go, I have a sennheiser momentum bluetooth headphones, and I experience a lot of drop outs. I wonder how the quality of bluetooth streaming is.

 

[G-rig]

'm looking in recreating my pi streamer I used to build. It was with a Pi3 and that was noisy. Isolating using Ian Canada's isolator with a reclocker and back to SP/Dif did clean up the noise a lot. Now this was measured. And it was known that the PI3 was very noisy. The clock upgrades were non-noticable to me. But I've added the crystaks anyway to try.
USB Was the same, and knowing what dac could handle the noise or not, including availability and price was too much to figure out;

Hi, I'm running the Pi 4 with USB into a DAC and it's fine, no noise no HATS and whatnot. I think they upgraded USB chipset and how it's powered over older Pi's so it's a simpler setup and no need for optical only these days.

You shouldn't need all those noise isolators and attenuators and stuff, unless the power supply is 'dirty' and/or ground issues. FWIW I once tested connecting a HDMI to the TV as well but made very bad ground noise. Wasn't required anyway as the Pi console can be accessed over the LAN.

Anyway it's could still be hard to get your hands on a RPi4 but that's the route I'd go, you may just need a new one (and as far as audio goes they are a very cheap and good solution, running Volumio on mine). Some peoeple go way over the top with interconnects and add ons but you shouldn't need all that.

Cheers,

 

[ehabheikal]

The errors start here - WiFi is connected via sdio not usb.

Widely repeated but demonstrably wrong - please stop spreading this rubbish. The bus is far from maxed out when glitches occur. There's a lot of detail in the kernel bug report. Short version - something (or somethings) odd and as yet not pinned down causes increased latency in the interrupt handling, resulting in the Pi sending the next chunk of data to the DAC just too late. An example of weirdness - BruteFIR is quite a good trigger for the problem, but if you pin the BruteFIR processes to a single cpu core the problem stops.

EDIT: you're right about it not being a problem on the Pi4, and it having PCIe. I don't know if the bug still happens if you use the USB-C port in host mode and connect a DAC to it, but it's not exactly a normal use case.

Is the pi 2+1 affected? Currently using my pi 4 for roon but have an unused pi 2.

 

[somebodyelse]

Is the pi 2+1 affected? Currently using my pi 4 for roon but have an unused pi 2.

The issue seems tied to the USB-OTG controller shared by Pi models before the 4, or its driver, so the Pi 2 is potentially affected. Whether it actually happens depends on the software running among other things. I've never experienced it with piCorePlayer despite trying to provoke it, but on the same hardware I could repeatably cause it with BruteFIR on both Volumio and Raspbian. Since you already have an unused Pi 2 you may as well try it with piCorePlayer and/or RoPieee - it may well be fine.

 

[G-rig]

Sounds like it's time to get a pi4.
I'm running volumio, never had any issues and is pretty good solution.

 

[Tangband]

I heard from a famous audiophile youtuber today, that the audio USB output of the Raspberry Pi is very noisy.

I was a bit disappointed at first because this is exactly what I use to stream my music. But then I thought well I can’t hear any noise so why worry, right?

But now there’s this voice in my head... I’m listening to a noisy source. But am I? Is it scientifically proven that this is a ‘dirty’ source? He was also complaining about the power source for the Raspi. I’m using the standard wall plug but as an audiophile you should at least buy a PSU of course!

Best way to cure audiophile neurosis is to lend some streamers and compare for yourself at home. If you cant hear a difference between a Linn Akurate DS and a rasberry pi then there are no difference to be heard . Its your ears that shall be satisfied, not people at this forum.

Most people on this forum have NO clue if there are differences because most people hasnt compared the sound between different streamers for real. My experience of streamers is that their differences in sound sometimes tends to be somewhat larger than the differences between cd-players, and this is often because of bad software, bad SRC, bit truncation and so on, that dont happen in an old cd-player. Just read the reviews done by Amirm, and you can see that streamers often measure vastly different , some are very good like the rasberry pi Allo Boss, and some are worse than a 16 bit cd-player from 1990.

At the technical side - dont hook up on the potential noise coming from the USB port - there might be much more noise leaking from some of your PSU:s disturbing other components you have . Does this matter ? As I said- best way to cure Audiophile neurosis is to listen for yourself.

 

[somebodyelse]

Sounds like it's time to get a pi4.
I'm running volumio, never had any issues and is pretty good solution.

If you don't already have one then a Pi 4 makes more sense than older models, barring ridiculous pricing or availability issues. If you've already got a Pi and don't experience the issue then don't worry. I've still got piCorePlayer on an original model B without issue. It's a potential problem in that it genuinely does exist in the right conditions, but in many use cases it doesn't actually happen.