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Streamer advice

Two months into my Raspberry pi streamer experience. The results have exceeded my expectations. Admittedly there have been a couple of hiccups on the road. Assembling the pi 4 and Hifiberry DAC2 HAT is easy.

Getting PiCorePlayer up and running wasn't too difficult using the how to guide on the PiCorePlayer this enabled me stream from LMS running on my PC. This was not ideal as the PC is in the listening room and it isn't the quietest.

Adding LMS on the pi was the next stage, this was a bit more complicated and I made a couple of errors but I got there in the end.

The final piece of the puzzle was to access my ripped files directly from a USB stick plugged into the pi. This requires a bit more computer knowledge as it required me find software and install it on the PC. At this stage I managed to transfer the LMS core to the USB stick which was not ideal.

Reinstalled from scratch, much easier this time with previous experience. Some of the LMS settings about the mounting of the USB stick remained on the stick. This time I went for LMS 8 rather than 7.9. This version integrates your local music library with the on-line libraries. So when I look at My Music I see tracks and albums I set as favourites from Qobuz in the list.

The BBC Sounds plug-in has been updated and installs without any need to download from a repository. The user experience is now much more like the BBC app.

While I haven't had time to do any A-B comparisons I'm very happy with the sound quality from the Hifiberry DAC2 HD.
 
The Pi is one of the overlooked items by many audiophiles, who just refuse to believe that you can get really good sound for so little money. I think for most people in most setups it sounds as good as many expensive streamers and they couldn't tell the difference in non-sighted comparisons. But instead of doing a fair comparison, many audiophiles prefer to use sighted listening so that they can confirm their expectation bias that an expensive piece sounds better.
 
The Pi is one of the overlooked items by many audiophiles, who just refuse to believe that you can get really good sound for so little money. I think for most people in most setups it sounds as good as many expensive streamers and they couldn't tell the difference in non-sighted comparisons. But instead of doing a fair comparison, many audiophiles prefer to use sighted listening so that they can confirm their expectation bias that an expensive piece sounds better.
I'm sure there's an element of truth in what you say but I think there's probably equally as many 'audiophiles' who just want to plug in and forget about it and naturally this convenience comes at an additional cost.
 
My Allo Boss dac sitting on my pi delivers a breathtaking sound to my newly acquired Rega Elex-r amp. Even the wife commented last week and she normally tells me to turn it down! :)

Just got to sort the vinyl playback now as it's a bit lacking into the elex-r phono stage.

Using Tidal and ripped files btw. Tried Qobuz recently but was surprised that a few titles were missing from their library.
 
I wish Allo would get their act together on the cosmetics, their USB Dac doesn't get anywhere near to matching the Allo Sig case style - does my OCD no good at all.
 
I'm sure there's an element of truth in what you say but I think there's probably equally as many 'audiophiles' who just want to plug in and forget about it and naturally this convenience comes at an additional cost.
I want my main system to look aesthetically spot on - the Pi stuff doesn't cut it looks/style wise, the only half denent job was done by Bryston
 


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