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Pi upgrade advice

ks.234

ks.234

Half way to Infinity
At present I have a raspberry pi running LMS on PiCore player with CD’s (lossless) on hard drive. Rest of equipment is MDHT orchid DAC, Dynavector L300 and hx1.2

Pi in main system also set up as server for pi in office and another in workshop

I mainly listen to Radio Paradise and BBC when not listening to vinyl

I’d like to get better sq, especially listening to CD’s. Should I be looking at a dedicated streamer? Or just a CD player? If so! What do people suggest?
 
Changing the Pi hardware will not change the sound. Look downstream for hardware, or consider software on the Pi, if you're unhappy with how your system sounds.
 
Try an Allo DigiOne or USBridge HAT for your Pi. :)

Personally I think coax (SPDIF) is the way to go, as you don’t need to rely on the quality of the USB front end of the DAC.
 
ks.234 said:
I’d like to get better sq, especially listening to CD’s. Should I be looking at a dedicated streamer? Or just a CD player? If so! What do people suggest?
Click to expand...

What problems do you have with the SQ? A RPi with PiCorePlayer is a dedicated streamer - the hardware is pretty much the same as on "hardware" streamers.

What RPi model do you have? If you are using USB both for the DAC and hard drive, and also use the network, you might be limited by the RPi I/O architecture, fixed in the RPi 4.
 
Yomanze said:
Try an Allo DigiOne or USBridge HAT for your Pi. :)

Personally I think coax (SPDIF) is the way to go, as you don’t need to rely on the quality of the USB front end of the DAC.
Click to expand...
Already have the digione, but using bnc . I’ll maybe try RCA’s cable instead.

To be honest, I like the sound of Radio Paradise, but disappointed with sound of CDs from hard drive (SSD). My vinyl source is an LP12! Karmen, Platteau and Aro, so maybe I’m just expecting too much?
 
Yomanze said:
Personally I think coax (SPDIF) is the way to go, as you don’t need to rely on the quality of the USB front end of the DAC.
Click to expand...

Instead you are relying on the S/PDIF front end of the DAC that in worst case has to derive the audio clock from the incoming data. If you go S/PDIF, optical would provide 100% electrical isolation.
 
Upgrade the dac to a suitably agnostic one. Needn't be costly, the khadas tone board designer has a new 200 dollar dac coming, with sota measurements
 
Julf said:
What problems do you have with the SQ? A RPi with PiCorePlayer is a dedicated streamer - the hardware is pretty much the same as on "hardware" streamers.

What RPi model do you have? If you are using USB both for the DAC and hard drive, and also use the network, you might be limited by the RPi I/O architecture, fixed in the RPi 4.
Click to expand...
RPi 3B+ with allo digione. To be honest I’m happy with quality of radio but disappointed with listening to CD’s stored on hard drive (SSD) into usb on pi. At present pi is connected to dac via bnc, maybe I’ll try coaxial connection?
 
sq225917 said:
Upgrade the dac to a suitably agnostic one. Needn't be costly, the khadas tone board designer has a new 200 dollar dac coming, with sota measurements
Click to expand...
Sorry, but I don’t know what you mean by an agnostic dac. Not very tech minded I’m afraid
 
sq225917 said:
Needn't be costly, the khadas tone board designer has a new 200 dollar dac coming, with sota measurements
Click to expand...



Are you referring to this (snipped from elsewhere)

3 months later

labjr
12d
From what I’ve read, Ben, the designer of the TB left to start another company. Likely why there’s no updated version.
Click to expand...

a linky would he useful, thanks

ronnie
 
Last edited by a moderator:
ks.234 said:
At present I have a raspberry pi running LMS on PiCore player with CD’s (lossless) on hard drive. Rest of equipment is MDHT orchid DAC, Dynavector L300 and hx1.2

Pi in main system also set up as server for pi in office and another in workshop

I mainly listen to Radio Paradise and BBC when not listening to vinyl

I’d like to get better sq, especially listening to CD’s. Should I be looking at a dedicated streamer? Or just a CD player? If so! What do people suggest?
Click to expand...

I use an RPI with piCorePlayer as well. It's an older PI version, don't remember exactly but must be either a 2 or 3. The RPI is fitted with a HiFiBerry Digi clone. The RPI is connected by coax spdif to a Cambridge Audio 851d preamp. I honestly cannot hear the difference between the streamer and a CD player.

If you don't like the sound you're getting out of your system then I would look at DAC alternatives. This is where you can get some differences in "color" of the sound.
 
ks.234 said:
RPi 3B+ with allo digione. To be honest I’m happy with quality of radio but disappointed with listening to CD’s stored on hard drive (SSD) into usb on pi.
Click to expand...

Strange, as they should sound the same. Only difference I can think of is the extra USB traffic from the SSD.

At present pi is connected to dac via bnc, maybe I’ll try coaxial connection?
Click to expand...

BNC is coaxial.
 
Julf said:
Strange, as they should sound the same. Only difference I can think of is the extra USB traffic from the SSD.



BNC is coaxial.
Click to expand...
Would adding something like a usb bridge help? Can I add usb hat on top of allo digione?
 
ks.234 said:
To be honest, I like the sound of Radio Paradise, but disappointed with sound of CDs from hard drive (SSD). My vinyl source is an LP12! Karmen, Platteau and Aro, so maybe I’m just expecting too much?
Click to expand...

perhaps a silly question, but did you do "lossless" rips of your CDs?
 
ks.234 said:
Already have the digione, but using bnc . I’ll maybe try RCA’s cable instead.

To be honest, I like the sound of Radio Paradise, but disappointed with sound of CDs from hard drive (SSD). My vinyl source is an LP12! Karmen, Platteau and Aro, so maybe I’m just expecting too much?
Click to expand...

BNC is better than RCA, due to proper impedance matching. You have a well sorted setup here. As mentioned are you ripping your files lossless? A lot of radio is compressed too, so could sound “bad”.
 
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