Raspberry Pi Into V1 DAC?

Just tried mine with Raspbmc on board via an Audioquest Dragonfly and all is well IF that is of any help?

There is also a wolfson(?) Board avaliable 

Actually Richard, that is helpful, assuming you're using your DAC's USB input? Proves it should work.

I tried this, using the coax digital out on the wolfson card into Hugo. Amazing for the money but not a patch on my NDX Digital out into Hugo. But then you'd hope not. 

Be interested if you get it working tony

Graeme

Tony, I have never tried RPI but my understanding is that Raspbian is just a Debian distribuion and Volumio is just an MPD client. Debian and MPD is what I am using on my fit-PC3 and I never experienced any problem with this combination.

I would suggest that you first make sure that the RPI is sending proper data to your V1. To this end, please check http://lacocina.nl/detect-alsa-output-capabilities. If MPD is setup properly, you should also be able to see the correct bit depth and sample rate on your V1. Assuming your RPI uses ALSA as audio system, your audio section in /etc.mpd.conf should look like the following:

audio_output {
    type          "alsa"
    name          "M2Tech hiFace Evo USB-SPDIF Interface"
    device          "hw:2,0"
    auto_resample       "no"
    auto_format         "no"
    mixer_type          "hardware"
    replay_gain_handler "none"
    use_mmap          "yes"
}

It is important that "auto_resample" and "auto_format" are set to "no". The device hardware address ("hw:2,0" in my case) has to be matched to your specific setup.

If MPD is set up properly and you still have poor sound quality, I would check the cpu load of your RPI. I never see MPD using more than 10% of CPU time on my fit-PC3. If MPD uses too much CPU, it might be doing something it should not do (resample, transcode, ...) or it is kept busy by your client. I would then try another MPD client: maybe MPD runs just fine and Volumio is the culprit.  Assuming MPD is up and running on your RPI, you should be able to control it from any iPad or iPhone wirelessly via MPoD

https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/mpod/id285063020?mt=8

Best, nbpf

Sorry nbpf, you've completely lost me. I'm happy enough to follow instructions on how to set stuff up, but I've no interest in the computery bit. The RPI was portrayed as a simple, straightforward device to set up but in reality it's far from the case. I'm reasonably computer-literate but these days I really can't be bothered with it all.

Right, I see your point. Albeit cheap, the RPI is a general purpose computer, if you want to set it up to work as a dedicated music server yourself, you should be prepared to invest a bit of time. Volumio is supposed to do that for you. It takes about 10 minutes to get a MPD server up an running on a standard installation manually. If Volumio does not work out of the box, either it's crap or there is something wrong with your RPI. Maybe you can try another distribution:  http://www.ap-linux.com/about/, http://www.raspyfi.com/project/ or http://linux.voyage.hk/. Good luck and please, report on your findings! Best, nbpf

RuneAudio is easier to configure and install (and is better supported IMHO) than Volumio, full stop, and eliminates the bloatware-ridden Raspbian distribution in favor of a stripped-down Arch Linux ARM.

J River have just announced Raspberry Pis preconfigured with JRiver Media Center, which should give you a choice of using it as a player, server or renderer and reasonable support. Id post a link if I could. 

Lots of good suggestions here.  As another alternative, I posted a topic "Tidal and Spotify using RaspberryPi".  I got this working.  

If you don't want to use Tidal then there is another very sweet software package for the RaspberryPi called MusicBox.

I agree the Pi can be very effective and cheap.. I use a Pi2 to run my UPnP server(s) and transcode over the LAN. But it requires a bit of 'computery' know-how to get it going.. After all that is exactly what the Pi was designed for.. To develop computer know-how, and encourage people who are interested  to rely less on plug and play and experiment!

Too many people these days depend on computers and the web  to a huge extent in their lives, but are clueless to how they work even at a superficial level.. But that is another topic.....

Simon

"They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance."

Tony,

I've used an original Pi Model B with piCorePlayer, Volumio and Rune Audio with USB out into an old Cambridge Audio DAC Magic, it works fine. I prefer piCorePlayer to Squeezeplug because the system runs entirely in memory and so the SD card is much less likely to be corrupted by powering off without shutting down.

If you take a look at the piCoreplayer web site there is a section on USB DACs that have been tested. The DAC V1 is listed as working, and it does not seem to require any special settings. The latest version of piCorePlayer, 1.19, now supports the RPi 2 so you might like to give it a try.

Adrian

Thanks Adrian, useful information from you.

As a matter of interest, I got the RPI to stream HD movies faultlessly using Kodi (XBMC as was) without issue. The TV remote even controlled it! Since arriving home I've also discovered the RPI doesn't like my Chord QBD76 DAC, but works quite happily with my DIY Buffalo II DAC through its Async. USB input (I fitted a Luckit Wave IO board - apparently the RPI likes the XMOS processor).

This is only academic interest; I'm happy to use an iMac/HD and Macbook Pro/HD as sources because I can then use Amarra iRC room correction (Dirac), something I wouldn't now be without.

Here's the link to the J River Pi:  http://jriver.com/Id/

I've asked my brother to help me config an RPi to run Minimserver to listen to BBC AAC streams wrapped in HLS, streamed to the NDS. He is pretty handy (his hi fi is DIY, apart from his LP12 and sounds amazing). He emailed earlier to say he is struggling with Java conflicts, but I have no doubt he'll crack it.

Keith