This is a review and detailed measurements of the HiFiBerry DAC+ Pro DAC for the Raspberry Pi boards to build your own low cost streamer. The unit was purchased and drop shipped to me by a kind member. The HiFiBerry DAC+ Pro costs just USD $39.90. So you could have a streamer and DAC for just US $70 or so.
The HiFiBerry DAC+ Pro distinguishes itself from the lower cost versions by having dual clocks to produce low jitter performance. The board is basically a TI PCM 5122 and a few passive parts and connectors plus aforementioned clock:
It comes with a set of stand-offs but you are on your own to provide a case and power supply for the combined boards. I used a switching power supply for my testing.
I performed my testing using Ropiee custom Linux install that simply provides a Roon endpoint. As such, I used my Roon player to send the bits to it. The initial install did not work and I had to mess with it by remote login using ssh.
Otherwise, the boot up was fast and reliability was good in my limited testing.
DAC Audio Measurements
Since my Audio Precision analyzer software has no support for Roon or streaming of any sort, I can only run static tests where I manually play a file in Roon and measure the results using the AP software. This rules our running full suite of tests. But I think we can get a good sense of device's performance with the subset of measurements starting with our dashboard:
Nice to see our nominal 2 volt output. THD+N and hence SINAD (signal over noise and distortion) is modestly good and matches the specifications for the PCM5122 so nothing is screwed up in laying it out.
Signal to noise ratio using a new test (and as yet, not fully trusted) is similar to harmonic distortions above:
So overall, you are a few dBs short of what I like to see for proper 16 bit playback of ripped CD and online lossless music subscription services (Tidal/Qobuz).
The dedicated clocks do their job to produce a jitter-free response that is helped with somewhat elevated noise floor:
State-of-the-art DACs have noise floors that some 15 dB better.
I tried to run my 32-tone test file at 192 kHz but could not get any output. Not sure where the problem may be. So I settled for 7 tone signal at 44.1 kHz:
Generally the distortion floor is below -90 dB but some spikes show up at higher frequencies, rising to almost -70 dB. So again we are some dBs short of transparency for 16 bit signal.
Frequency response shows a lazy filter, not providing a lot of attenuation in ultrasonics:
Conclusions
The HiFiBerry DAC+ Pro is dirt-cheap but seems to be competently designed to produce the best that the single chip DAC can do. For the price of a decent dinner you can have a streaming solution that should be fine for general music playback and enjoyment.
I am happy to recommend for the HiFiBerry DAC+ Pro for budget-priced DAC for Raspberry Pi streaming solution.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
My panther above was grumpy posing for such a budget priced product. He is saying it is beneath him but not a problem that a few nice steaks would not fix. So please donate generously as these panthers are picky about their meat! https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
The HiFiBerry DAC+ Pro distinguishes itself from the lower cost versions by having dual clocks to produce low jitter performance. The board is basically a TI PCM 5122 and a few passive parts and connectors plus aforementioned clock:
It comes with a set of stand-offs but you are on your own to provide a case and power supply for the combined boards. I used a switching power supply for my testing.
I performed my testing using Ropiee custom Linux install that simply provides a Roon endpoint. As such, I used my Roon player to send the bits to it. The initial install did not work and I had to mess with it by remote login using ssh.
Otherwise, the boot up was fast and reliability was good in my limited testing.DAC Audio Measurements
Since my Audio Precision analyzer software has no support for Roon or streaming of any sort, I can only run static tests where I manually play a file in Roon and measure the results using the AP software. This rules our running full suite of tests. But I think we can get a good sense of device's performance with the subset of measurements starting with our dashboard:
Nice to see our nominal 2 volt output. THD+N and hence SINAD (signal over noise and distortion) is modestly good and matches the specifications for the PCM5122 so nothing is screwed up in laying it out.
Signal to noise ratio using a new test (and as yet, not fully trusted) is similar to harmonic distortions above:
So overall, you are a few dBs short of what I like to see for proper 16 bit playback of ripped CD and online lossless music subscription services (Tidal/Qobuz).
The dedicated clocks do their job to produce a jitter-free response that is helped with somewhat elevated noise floor:
State-of-the-art DACs have noise floors that some 15 dB better.
I tried to run my 32-tone test file at 192 kHz but could not get any output. Not sure where the problem may be. So I settled for 7 tone signal at 44.1 kHz:
Generally the distortion floor is below -90 dB but some spikes show up at higher frequencies, rising to almost -70 dB. So again we are some dBs short of transparency for 16 bit signal.
Frequency response shows a lazy filter, not providing a lot of attenuation in ultrasonics:
Conclusions
The HiFiBerry DAC+ Pro is dirt-cheap but seems to be competently designed to produce the best that the single chip DAC can do. For the price of a decent dinner you can have a streaming solution that should be fine for general music playback and enjoyment.
I am happy to recommend for the HiFiBerry DAC+ Pro for budget-priced DAC for Raspberry Pi streaming solution.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
My panther above was grumpy posing for such a budget priced product. He is saying it is beneath him but not a problem that a few nice steaks would not fix. So please donate generously as these panthers are picky about their meat! https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
Last edited:
