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Cheap and simple upgrade to PC streaming?

What's not to love about the Pi?
It's a great first step into computer audio. It does get a bit bogged down handling large libraries over the mandatory network, but for the money, it's a no brainer. Long RIP Squeezebox.

That's not correct at all. It is a high quality player/transport. It doesn't get bogged down with large libraries as, when used sensibly as a player, it doesn't handle a library. You are talking about the wrong end of the wire. The picoreplayer is a .... player. It sends instructions to the server and passes any music gently to the dac or preamp/amplifier. It does this without even breathing heavily as it's a ...player.
 
Odd, it doesn't get bogged down at all ime. That 900mhz ARM chews through data faster than the network port can feed it. Volumio is stripped back with no redundancy and with a snap on DAC or SPDIF/Toslink interface you have the best of all worlds; no sharing ethernet/usb with data, a galvanically isolated add on DAC for £30 with its own power regulator on the chip, uses i2s/i2c so no usb paranoia. it's win win for me. I have yet to hear anything better, when I do I'll buy it.
 
If you want you can have all your music on an SDXC card or on two usb cards or on all three you don't even need a network. You can plug a hard drive or SSD direct into the USB port, there are loads of possible configurations.

Just don't use the standard audio output just yet, drivers with better SNR are coming now the audio driver API has been open sourced along with video but if you have a hdmi input on a DAC somewhere then you have HiRes bit perfect digital audio digital output as part of the hdmi video stream.

This makes a lot of high end audio redundant. The mouse that witnessed the fall of the dinosaur era.

I can see why trade sellers of esoteric digital hardware might be a bit miffed at it and will do the usual "damn with faint praise" trick or the "oh well, it's almost good enough, as a starter I suppose" trick that used to work with analogue and early CD players, but those days are over... Audio 24/192 is trivial to these DACs, less than £80 and you are good to go.

Frankly I need to CAD up an obnoxiously reassuring heavy ally billet of 6083, polish it, add fricking ridiculous connectors and put an unnecessary OLED display somewhere and charge £5k for it, but I'm not feeling as dishonest as some people out there.
 
Yes, the Pi is cheap, but you need a powersupply,case,wifi-dongle,Digi-out-board to get it running. Add that up and a s/h Mini ITX won't be much more. I got my Fit-Pc2 for less than 100quid, it's not much bigger than the Pi, but has all that AND a 500gb hd built in. With Daphile it becomes a server AND streamer at the same time!!!
 
ooh me wanty very muchy

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Yes, the Pi is cheap, but you need a powersupply,case,wifi-dongle,Digi-out-board to get it running. Add that up and a s/h Mini ITX won't be much more. I got my Fit-Pc2 for less than 100quid, it's not much bigger than the Pi, but has all that AND a 500gb hd built in. With Daphile it becomes a server AND streamer at the same time!!!

He already has a dac so would be about £50 inc wifi dongle

Pi - £25
PSU - £5
Case - £5
SD card - £10
wifi usb - £6
 
Also PSU in a mni itx is 35w at idle
For a PI its 2w

At present I am using a passive knob because I have an old one from TC electronics, full bitrate at 100, normal digital dithering volume otherwise I just adjust via the rocker on the iOS device or the web page.
 
I also dual purpose mine so have 2x SD cards, one with volumio and with openelec so I can listen to music or watch films I haven't downloaded from the tinterweb.
 
Odd, it doesn't get bogged down at all ime. That 900mhz ARM chews through data faster than the network port can feed it. Volumio is stripped back with no redundancy and with a snap on DAC or SPDIF/Toslink interface you have the best of all worlds; no sharing ethernet/usb with data, a galvanically isolated add on DAC for £30 with its own power regulator on the chip, uses i2s/i2c so no usb paranoia. it's win win for me. I have yet to hear anything better, when I do I'll buy it.

I didn't find the Pi much fun running XBMC and 40k tracks on a network, but I've not tried Volumio. I'd be sorry to lose album artwork . . .
 
WDTV Live, £60, controlled by tablet / phone, optical out, plays most types of music is it.

Silent, small, and also has telly if you want there.

No soldering or learning assembly language needed.

DS

Does it do hires stuff? Looking for something like this to experiment with.
 
I didn't find the Pi much fun running XBMC and 40k tracks on a network, but I've not tried Volumio. I'd be sorry to lose album artwork . . .

May be your SD card, I swapped a cheapy one for a class 10 a while ago and just last weekend watched a 12GB 1080p rip of Pacific Rim and it didn't blip once.

Openelec (XBMC) now has the Qobuz api plugin so you can listen to flac via that as well now.
 
Is the tight cable path not getting close to the minimum bending radius of the cables - 10 x OD seems to be typical for USB, and blue jeans cable suggest a 2 or 3 inch MBR for HDMI. Not that I know much about it.


In the blog you will see how he has changed the cable bend radius he no longer uses pillars and have moved the mount slightly, it uses a cradle rather than a pillar, I think he knows what he is doing, but he is awful uncommunicative.

I too like the design. Simple, elegant, metal. Could be a pot plant stand or a place to put a thing.
 
Does it do hires stuff? Looking for something like this to experiment with.

Probably not, it is mainly a HDTV device, but it does do lots of audio formats is it:

Audio - MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AAC, FLAC, MKA, AIF/AIFF, OGG, Dolby Digital, DTS

Playlist - PLS, M3U, WPL


OGG is important to me, I used to do a lot of OGG, and have many files like that there.

DS
 
Probably not, it is mainly a HDTV device, but it does do lots of audio formats is it:

Audio - MP3, WAV/PCM/LPCM, WMA, AAC, FLAC, MKA, AIF/AIFF, OGG, Dolby Digital, DTS

Playlist - PLS, M3U, WPL


OGG is important to me, I used to do a lot of OGG, and have many files like that there.

DS

That's a pity because I have one of them....
 
That's a pity because I have one of them....

the pi with a digi can play 24/192 files.

It would be really good if people wouldn't make assumptions based on little knowledge.

read this https://sites.google.com/site/picoreplayer/home

There is a great deal to be said for the original squeezebox arrangement. A player and a separate server. A computer with a fan to keep the hdd cool can be used. This computer can be sighted away from your nice listening room/living room. a computer hdd can be easily backed up.
 


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