Life of Pi

[walterwhite]

The Durio Sound Basic stacks onto the Pi without any mods needed. http://www.gravitech.us/dusoulsoqufo.html It plugs straight into the I2S on the Pi.

From their website:
"Durio Sound connects directly to the Raspberry Pi where no external cables are needed. No need to solder any header or wire, just stack the Durio Sound on top of your Raspberry Pi because the board is the same size as the Raspberry Pi. It is also supported in the standard Raspberry Pi kernel that is included in the Raspbian distribution ranging from A, B, and B+." "The Durio Sound works by receiving the digital I2S signal from the Raspberry Pi. The signal get process by the PCM5102 DAC chip then send out as the analog waveform to the 3.5mm jack and the RCA connectors."

Costs $50 + p&p from the US. Basic card only.

[terrybooth]

Yep. However, what I wanted to try was a Dac board which could be powered separately (not take power from) the Pi.
The theory being that a power supply could be built which would improved the sound.

[walterwhite]

That's why I went for the Pro version. From their website again:

"PRO – In additional to the Basic, this option comes fully loaded with the 5V switching power supply. You can power the system via the external AC or DC wall transformer. This provide the cleanest power to the DAC chip for the ultimate sound quality."

As for the PSU, I haven't yet decided what to use. I can completely understand how you want to go the DIY route though, it's just that I'm a lazy bugger who'd rather buy something I (hopefully) wont have to fiddle with too much.

[Fretless]

I see a Durio dual mono option, with a basic and a pro board.
Does that use one channel from one board and the other channel from the second, running power supply from the pro board?
What would be the advantages here?

[walterwhite]

To be honest, I'm not really too sure how it all works, as I haven't even seen it in the flesh yet. To me, as a layman, it looks like the biggest benefits should be in being able to supply the DAC with a decent power supply. Perhaps someone with a bit more electronics expertise could follow the link above and give the circuit diagrams on their website a look and come up with some answers. Anything I say stands the risk of being ridiculed on the grounds that I don't know what I'm talking about.

Linux and networking are going to be enough of a challenge for me I did order the dual mono (Pro) all-the-way version though. I'm assuming that one board supplies the left channel, and the other the right

[terrybooth]

The dual mono version is a bit of a misnomer, it's actually sort of tandem stereo as I understand it.



In this picture, the bottom board is the Raspberry Pi. Next up is the Durio Basic board and the top board is the Durio Sound pro. You can see the two blue leads solder to the RCA connections on the bottom Durio board which I think are solder to the RCA sockets on the top board.

From the Durio Sound site, the maker/promoter (not sure which) says he has four boards stacked in that way in his system.

[walterwhite]

Yup, that seems to make sense. I wonder what the best power supply option for the Pro board would be? It'll be plugged into a BMU.

Hope this isn't hijacking the thread?

[terrybooth]

Bit of a mismatch in power supply there, the BMU provides 120 0 120 V AC and the Durio board needs either 3 or 5 V DC. Plugging it into the BMU directly will produce an interesting firework display. However, plugging the whole lot into a BMU will probably make a difference.

My weekend experiment is two HiFiBerry Pis one of which is powered by a wall wart power supply and using SSP to my preamp and the other powered by my experimental PSU connected via SP to the preamp. the same music will be played on both and I will switch from one to the other to see whether I can hear a difference before I get bored with the whole excercise.

[walterwhite]

Hah... plugging it in to the BMU would interesting, but expensive Of course I mean the wall-wart/power supply will be plugged into the BMU.

From what I can work out from the diagrams I think I'll need >5v but no more than 12v AC, which should power the Rasp Pi as well as the Durio Pro. It also seems to be saying that you can use a DC supply of >9v but no more than 15v. Am I right in saying that? Should have paid more attention at school

As an aside, I wonder if this will make USB drives run more reliably fron the Pi without the need for a powered USB hub?

[terrybooth]

Not sure about powering the Durio. Other than having it confirmed that it can be done, I haven't taken it futher.

The Pi needs 5v DC and pulls less than 1 amp. I have a Raspberry Pi B (not the B plus, the older one supposedly with a more iffy onbaord power supply) I have a decent 2Amp wall wart power supply (the sort supplied specifically for the Pi). That seems to power the Pi and an external 1tb USB disk (Western Digital My Passport Ultra) plugged into the Pi OK.