Hi
I am also watching this with great interest as I am a total noob with all things streaming.
I have got as far as ordering a Pi model B. In fact I think the postman tried to deliver it today, unfortunately I was out so now I have to go to the sorting office!!
I have also downloaded the Volumio file and flashed it onto a 8Gb SD card. So hopefully I may make progress tomorrow. I was also interested to see that I2S appears to be directly available from the pi, so potentially I might be able to hook it up to my TDA1541A DAC.
IDM wrote:I was also interested to see that I2S appears to be directly available from the pi, so potentially I might be able to hook it up to my TDA1541A DAC.
sort of; I2S output needs to be made available by the software on the RPi...
Anyway, if my reading of the Volumio website is correct that software has I2S preconfigured so you should be able to interface it to an I2S DAC.
Please excuse my ignorance but what are the consequences of the software delivering the I2S? Does it have bad consequences for jitter, or is it just another way of delivering the digital signal to the DAC?
Please excuse my ignorance but what are the consequences of the software delivering the I2S? Does it have bad consequences for jitter, or is it just another way of delivering the digital signal to the DAC?
Cheers
Ian
If I remember the SOC that the Pi uses, the i2s is done by dedicated on chip hardware, pulling the data into a buffer via DMA, so it should be as good as the system clock. (or better if it uses a PLL recovery).
Whenever an honest man discovers that he's mistaken, he will either cease to be mistaken or he will cease to be honest.
Paul Barker wrote:In case this is still as clear as mud.
I don't wish to spend SQB money.
I latched on to the fact Ray has demonstrated to me and probably Phil that a RPI can do roughly speaking a SQB role.
That's good enough for me.
Regarding combining the two. Way off my radar thank you.
I was looking to go the SQB route then the Pi came along so I have 3 Pis running picoreplayer and I happen to have a Touch on loan too. It all works seamlessly.
Paul Barker wrote:I latched on to the fact Ray has demonstrated to me and probably Phil that a RPI can do roughly speaking a SQB role.
Paul, I think it is Izzy who has demonstrated an RPi in the role of a squeezebox renderer.
I'm trying to achieve a very similar outcome but using a different solution to the squeezebox based one. I aim to use UPnP/DLNA protocols instead of the squeezebox one - I'm still not sure exactly how UPnP/DLNA overlap/interact/etc. but together they form the basis of an open standard to share media (music/films/photos) across different devices. There are many products that are DLNA certified; for example my home cinema amplifier (a Denon) is a DLNA certified renderer that I can send music to from my library.
apart from some typos it was trouble free and I'm currently listening to music on my old active computer speakers through the RPi, music is from the JRiver media server and control is via the JRiver Gizmo app on my Samsung tablet. As far as I can tell there is no transcoding taking place; JRMC tells me that a 24bit 96KHz file is playing at around 2000 Kbs, which sounds about right. It all seems to operate well too, no hiccoughs changing what's playing etc. Not tried anything needing gapless yet.
Now playing 'Dark Side of the Moon' - gapless is fine.
I've also tried a 24bit 192KHz (4900kbps) recording and it played, however, I did experience a dropout. A couple of PCs have backups scheduled about now so I'll try it again later.
I've also made the device headless now so it really is just a little black box...
I've now connected the RPi to the TV system via HDMI so it's using the DAC and amplifier of my Denon home cinema amp, which I imagine is better than the DAC/audio output of the RPi and the labtech computer speakers I used to set it up with.
Anyway, sound quality is not bad at all; a bit 'rounded off' compared with my main system but still very pleasant to listen to.
The RPi is now running as just a little black box appliance.
