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Raspberry pi DAC : USB or I2S ?

C

ClothEarsAndy

pfm Member
Does anybody have any experience of whether an I2S DAC ‘hat’ such as a hifiberry DAC 2 HD is inherently better than a decent quality off board usb DAC ?

I know that there’s talk that jitter is worse on the usb outlet, but is this really an issue ?
 
I use USB out on an Rpi2 with no problems at all (16/44 though). If you get an rpi4, there are not even any theoretical issues with the USB out.
 
I2S is a simplified serial bus designed specifically for audio data. It was originally used in CD players and has migrated into the HiFi world. Controllers tend to use the I2C bus amongst other things.

Cheers,

DV
 
Thanks everyone.

I have an RPI3 B running Volumio with a USB DAC. I was just wondering the I2S DACs really are better. They seem good value if they are that good.

I also quite like that it would be a single box solution, but would probably have to build a box to house it.
 
How would you get i2s off the pi? Dacs have nonstandard hdmi plug sockets for i2s, some pin configurability is generally required.
 
These guys have a PCM5102 I2S DAC working off a Pi.

4c722229e34041b7200c98deb37460df7cc936af.png

…this is the result, my little streamer:
2821c247d686eea4a1fe590b6114b0c8079b1da0.jpeg

I am happy with the result
smiley.png


Cheers,

DV
 
That's pretty cool DV. Nice work.

I'm not sure if I'm talking at cross purposes. What I'm referring to is the simple plug in DAC's like the hifiberry Dac 2 HD that plug into the GPIO headers. I'm not trying to do anything too complex. Apologies if I'm using the wrong terminology, although I had a pi running as a source a few years ago, I'm new to any h/w interfacing to it.

What's puzzling me is that on a few webpages like Volumio they're recommending a GPIO DAC in preference to a USB DAC and they're implying that even a simple (read cheap) one like the hifiberry's should outperform much more expensive USB DACs and I'm wondering if this is really the case. Do I upgrade my USB DAC to something like a Benchmark, or just buy a cheap as chips DAC2 HD for less than a tenth of the price ? Seems too good to be true to be honest.
 
So you’re asking whether adding a DAC hat to a Pi is inherently better than USB out of the Pi to a USB DAC?

It’s hard to generalise. Why not try a cheap hat DAC and see if it sounds better than what you have. And later compare vs a better DAC...

Allo.com are another company that do RPI based products that I’ve found to be very good.
 
Heckyman said:
So you’re asking whether adding a DAC hat to a Pi is inherently better than USB out of the Pi to a USB DAC?

It’s hard to generalise. Why not try a cheap hat DAC and see if it sounds better than what you have. And later compare vs a better DAC...

Allo.com are another company that do RPI based products that I’ve found to be very good.
Click to expand...

Yes, is there any valid reason why a £90 hat DAC is better than a £90 usb DAC or even on par with, say, a £500 usb DAC ?
 
Yeh cos the pi is a source of ghastly emi/rfi and pi dac hats are seriously limited by board area.

The Orchard audio pecanpi is the best single board dac hat I've heard, knocking on the door of my fifopi, lifepo psu, dual ess9038qm dac stack.
 
ClothEarsAndy said:
Yes, is there any valid reason why a £90 hat DAC is better than a £90 usb DAC or even on par with, say, a £500 usb DAC ?
Click to expand...

It depends on the specific implementation. The hat DACs benefit from the superior i2s connection, but suffer from the emi/rfi noise generated by the Pi.

Generally you get what you pay for and it’s usually a good idea to take note of manufacturers recommendations about how to get the most out of their equipment.
 
I've used both HAT DACs and USB out from a Pi with excellent results in both cases.

AIUI with async USB the DAC is doing almost all the work so I don't think the fact that it isn't using i2s is particularly relevant.

Tim
 
ClothEarsAndy said:
Yes, is there any valid reason why a £90 hat DAC is better than a £90 usb DAC or even on par with, say, a £500 usb DAC ?
Click to expand...

Not sure what the reason is, but I much prefer my Pi2B and IQ DAC+ to the Aurender Server/Auralic Vega or Benchmark HDR2/£1.5K digital SPDIF cable I had at home for a while. Obviously that's not USB and nothing like £500.
OTOH I bought a KALI and Piano DAC and (unlike many) thought it sounded mediocre.

So I don't think you can classify DACs by price or interface, except to say that I'm yet to hear an ESS DAC that I like.
 
My hat utilises 12s And sounds very nice.I don’t think it’s a step that makes a great difference and noise doesn’t seem to be a massive issue. Archimago has done measurements if people are interested.
 
So I think what I’m hearing is that there’s no inherent technical reason why a HAT DAC would sound better ( or I suppose worse) than a USB DAC.

it all depends upon design, implementation and the chipset used.
 
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