Life of Pi

[Daniel Quinn]

Dixons as disappered from Britain

[Fretless]

Now you know where they have gone to

[terrybooth]

http://www.dixonsretail.com/ As a silly question, get a straight answer.

[Fretless]

Dixons are big over here - more than 100 shops in the Netherlands. The most business they do is as an Apple retailer, along with smartphones, tablets and computer accessories.

www.dixons.nl

[Fretless]

Update for Pi power supply fans:

I have had the Xtorm powerbank in use for 10 days, running for an estimated average of 3 hours per day. The battery pack is still showing more than half-full. Interested to see how long it lasts before I am forced to recharge it.

Surprised by how good the optical output is sounding. Perhaps the laser on the Hifiberry Digi+ board is also benefitting from the interference-free, high-amperage supply. The connection to the DAC appears to be very stable.

System upgrade in the pipeline, watch this space .....

[Fretless]

2B or not 2B ? That is the question ....

I’ve been enjoying my little digital Pi system for a while now, but then the urge takes you – ‘Can it be any better?’, you all know how that feels. An announcement for a new Hifiberry PRO analogue output board got me wondering and upgradeitis led me to having a closer look at the newest model Pi 2B.

Advantages of the 2B over my current Pi B+ model are a quad-core processor that operates at least 6x faster, a Gigabyte of RAM (2x as much as the B+) and improvements to the power distribution around the various elements of the board.

My biggest niggle was the slowness of the B+ in starting - using a battery power supply I always turn it off when not using it - and the seemingly interminable length of time it takes to load the music database whenever any system changes are made.

So a Pi 2B is ordered and arrives, so small that it simply comes in a stiff envelope with the letter post. Switching boards is easy – they are totally compatible and the Hifiberry Digi+ board slots neatly on. The SD card with the Volumio operating system pops out of the B+ and goes straight into the 2B. Hook up with ethernet cable and Beresford Toslink to the Hegel DAC, apply power from the 5V/3A powerbank and we’re rolling!

Looking at the web-driven UI (User Interface) on my laptop, I see that the new Pi is firstly loading the music lists from the NAS (network storage drive) but does this in under 5 minutes instead of the expected half-hour. System tweaks that took ages to implement are now done in seconds. Well – that is a lot faster, and the response to UI commands is quick and secure. What about SQ ?

Time to listen. I am a bit unhappy about my system at the moment because of the imbalanced tweeters in the Cubes. However, what the Pi 2B did was to knock more sweetness, space and ambiance into the sound. Making the tweeter problem far less noticeable and irritating. A deeper level of subtle detail and better 3D placement in the soundstage. Acoustic instruments sounding more natural and electronics punchier and nuances of colouring more distinguishable. This is based on a first listen and I’ll be testing more in the coming days with different settings.

So far so good. Now I have a Pi B+ over and it is time to experiment with that. There is another Hifiberry Digi+ on its way to me and a card with alternative Rune Audio OS is waiting to be installed. More soon ...

[Fretless]

https://youtu.be/DmeUxk14vCc

The above is an in-depth video review of the Pi used with Rune Audio. Done by a repected Dutch Hifi journalist - don't worry, it's in English!

There is quite a lot of interesting info here about computer audio in general, setting up a Pi with Rune and why super-HQ formats can cause problems with data-stream volume.

Warning: this is a bit of a geek-only affair and assumes you already know something about computer audio and the Pi.

[walterwhite]

Hmmmm.... got me thinking now. I wonder whether the 2B will give me an improvement over the B+ with my Durio set-up. I know what you mean about the slow library updates, but boot time's not an issue for me. SQ improvements though, well you just have to check it out, don't you?

At less than £27 delivered, how can I not

I'll let you know the outcome when it gets here.

[Fretless]

Band on the Run(e).

Just fitted a new Digi+ board to the Pi B+ and have fired it up via the MF M1DAC in my office set-up. Singing like a bird.

The original audio project done for the Raspberry Pi was called RaspyFi. The team that did that then split into two camps; one side went off to create Volumio - ultimate sound quality with bare-bones functionality and tweakable for optimum performance. The Rune Audio group went for a friendlier, more versatile approach with less tweaking but still excellent audio output.

So the UI for both looks remarkably similar:





Main differences are the colouring and the album cover display on Rune.

On the film review by Hans Beekhuijzen, he mentions that the HifiBerry Digi+ boards are very sensitive about coax cables running SP/DIF to external DACs, especially the high-end model with the galvanic transformer that isolates the electrical signal from the circuitry of the Pi. Perhaps this is why I have preferred using the Toslink optical output so far. A project for later on - see what the effects of different cables are.
For now I'll stick to optical.

Whilst waiting for the postman, I had the B+ board running using it's own 3.5mm stereo output jack. In Rune you can set this to variable volume, hardware or software, but I chose to use it in fixed-level line-out mode. Running that through my Sansui AU-217 and Mission 760's the sound was certainly pleasant. Not audiophile standard, but certainly good enough for non-critical listening. Kept me happy, anyway.

Of course, streaming FLAC via the M1DAC provides the necessary punch and sparkle. Now that this is set up it's time to get back to the 2B on the NVA rig and see what joys are there to behold

[terrybooth]

Careful now - you will have Pi experiments littering the house. I'm up to three and am about to build number four (Pi plus external separately powered dac board).