DIY Audio Projects Forum

With no screen or keyboard or mouse I have the credit card size Pi and PiDAC+ running wifi wise as a music server. It is running from a phone charger and goes to sleep of not used. I have better DACs coming which will do DSD and DXD extreme.

Currently playing local music off USB sticks upto 24/192 and listening to dozens of Internet radio stations, most CD quality or better. I remotely control it from smart phone, iPad or laptop. I can drag and drop music file from the laptop to the Pi. Or music on the Pi will play on my laptop. Volumio is the dedicated music server OS. All free software.

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Projects: "Grace" - Psvane 6SN7-SE Globe preamp | | "VoXUno" - Single driver MarkAudio 12P speaker | | "Lagoon Take 2" - Single stage tube preamp | Website: retro-thermionic

Hey Mark, that is real cool.

I got a Raspberry Pi2B a couple of months back and I use it as a headless console server, NTP daemon, rsyslog daemon and DNS server (Raspbian Lite). It works great.

I noticed that the Raspberry Pi3 is now out. It is 40% faster, and now comes with onboard WiFi and blutetooth!!. I was thinking of picking up a Pi 3 to try out media applications.

Mark, which OS did you load up on the Pi 2B?

Cheers

PS - I'm using a digital front end and love it. Laptop into a CambridgeAudio DAC Magic+

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[ DIY Mains AC Power Cable Cord ] - [ Gobo LM1875 Amp Kit ] - [ Tang Band D4-1 Horn Speaker Kit ] - [ Monoblock Push-Pull KT88 Tube Amp Kit ]

Volumio and Musicbox. Neither appear to be supported by Pi3. I have one and a few others are making the same comments.

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Projects: "Grace" - Psvane 6SN7-SE Globe preamp | | "VoXUno" - Single driver MarkAudio 12P speaker | | "Lagoon Take 2" - Single stage tube preamp | Website: retro-thermionic

It appears Volumio 2 will soon be ready for download and has been tested on the Pi3. Can't wait but I do have a working server currently so shouldn't complain.

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Projects: "Grace" - Psvane 6SN7-SE Globe preamp | | "VoXUno" - Single driver MarkAudio 12P speaker | | "Lagoon Take 2" - Single stage tube preamp | Website: retro-thermionic

Great advancement. A day or two back I received my DSD, DXD high performance DAC boards. Very impressed with quality of parts, Elna, Rifa etc. and overly impressed with the fact that half of the brd. is PS. It requires three tarnnies to make it go, 2X 9V and one 15-0-15V. You are best to use seperate trannies or at least seperate secondaries. Where I work, Jaycar, have the perfect toroids, 1X 9V with two seperate secondaries and one 2X 15V secondaries. This arrangement means I only need to trannies and can keep isolation in the PSs.

So how does it sound Mark? Not so fast. Once the Pi was up, via the WebUI, I selected the DAC which presented as X20. That was as hard as it got. I had the trannies roughed in in 15mins, 20mins later in total all up and going. Music just popped out.

I thought the HifiBerry+ a good 24/192 DAC and for the convenience, plug on top of your Pi, it is. But this brd, not much dearer just kills it. I'm currently playing DSD64 files. Downloads are about AU$30 each but worth every penny. Bass is crazy good. Not even my Oppo does bass this good and this deep on the same tube preamp and power amp. Far more depth to the music, more richness, more texture. Treble appears about the same but just a little clearer.

The HifiBerry+ has a very low output and I feel this is where the bass was suffering. Because this brd. is backed up by three big grunty regulated PSs it has a stack more drive. Very happy.

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Projects: "Grace" - Psvane 6SN7-SE Globe preamp | | "VoXUno" - Single driver MarkAudio 12P speaker | | "Lagoon Take 2" - Single stage tube preamp | Website: retro-thermionic

A Pi box. Real nice Asian timber box now home to the Pi. But it may change.

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Projects: "Grace" - Psvane 6SN7-SE Globe preamp | | "VoXUno" - Single driver MarkAudio 12P speaker | | "Lagoon Take 2" - Single stage tube preamp | Website: retro-thermionic

Well I'm so happy to report a massive step forward in my Pi music server journey. Today I'm running a Pi3B with a my high performance DAC brd. all wirelessly. Every feature I could ever want and more is running perfectly. To do this I moved across to Rune 0.4 beta.

This new phase started at 1am this morning with the downloading of the Rune zipped .img file. I did go back to bed eventually but laid awake 'till 5.

An hour or so after getting up I had my new freshly cooked Rune Pi ready for the eating. Once more you can do all this without keyboard or mouse. Everything you need and more is in Rune which you access via its WebUI and is the same UI as Volumio but many more features and much, much more stable.

Don't wait. Get a Pi3B, download Rune for the 3 and you will never look back, only forward. I'm happy to guide anyone because some of the setup in Rune is a little hidden but it IS there. Happy to talk about the setup in general terms but unless you have a Pi3 I'll hold off specific guidance.

I'm playing DSD64 files and everything runs like a dream. I dream I never want to wake from.

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Projects: "Grace" - Psvane 6SN7-SE Globe preamp | | "VoXUno" - Single driver MarkAudio 12P speaker | | "Lagoon Take 2" - Single stage tube preamp | Website: retro-thermionic

The big issue with the Raspis is that the design is fond of using a combined Ethernet and USB controller, thereby limiting bandwidth. This becomes a problem when you want to listen to high-rate DSD or DXD as the transfer from the storage fights for resources while there is transfer to the DAC by the same controller/module.

A Beaglebone Black doesn't use a combined interface like that.

Ok

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Projects: "Grace" - Psvane 6SN7-SE Globe preamp | | "VoXUno" - Single driver MarkAudio 12P speaker | | "Lagoon Take 2" - Single stage tube preamp | Website: retro-thermionic

I had a lot of problems keeping a connection, via the WebUI to Volumio running on the Pi2. I am currently using Rune on a Pi3, which is not only far better but similar WebUI and I have a perfectly stable connection to the Pi. To prove if the problem was the Pi2 with the WiFi dongle I loaded Rune for Pi3 on the Pi2 and found the connection perfectly stable. It appears Volumio is the cause of a lack of connectivity between smart phone, iPad or whatever and a Pi2 or Pi3.

Rune is so much better on so many levels than Volumio, I wouldn't bother even looking at Volumio. Please follow my RuneAudio Pi3B thread for any further updates to my mserver experience.

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Projects: "Grace" - Psvane 6SN7-SE Globe preamp | | "VoXUno" - Single driver MarkAudio 12P speaker | | "Lagoon Take 2" - Single stage tube preamp | Website: retro-thermionic