Hi All,
I’ve finished setting up a RPi 4 running PiCorePlayer connected to a Tone Board DAC. For anyone that wants to give this a go I’ve provided some history/background below with some links to resources that I found useful. I’m certainly no expert and if you do try this you will need to set some time aside as it can be frustrating when encountering issues. I found Google (other search engines are available) to be very useful as the answer can usually be found on a forum somewhere.
At present this solution is fine for listening to new/recommended albums via Qubuz and allows a decision to be made on whether to purchase a physical copy. I'm intrigued as to how good this could sound and was wondering whether anyone has tried running a RPi to stream Hi Resolution files to a high end DAC? At the moment I’m thinking of DACs such as the Denafrips Terminator; Aqua La Scala or similar. I’ll keep an eye on the systems that will be at the show in October but am interested in hearing of anyone’s first hand experience.
I’ve seen several comments about having to use re-clockers, but in an ideal world I’d like to keep it to one box. I can add a shelf to my existing rack for the DAC, but it would be difficult to add further devices.
Please let me know whether you have tried something similar and how you got on? If you couldn't get the result you wanted and ended up going down a different route I'd be interested in hearing about this too.
Budget is around £5K. I appreciate that to try a La Scala it will have to be used (unless significant discounts are being offered).
Thanks for reading this far and I look forward to hearing about your experiences.
Some History and set-up
I’ve used a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ running PiCorePlayer / Logitech Media Server (LMS) connected to a Classic SqueezeBox (SB) player for several years. The SqueezeBox is connected to a Denon RCD-M40DAB & Monitor Audio Bronze speakers in our kitchen/dining room.
All our CDs are ripped to FLAC although we mostly listen to 6 Music via the BBC Sounds plugin. We find streaming 6 Music offers a significant improvement in sound quality compared to the Denon DAB, your experience may differ.
Prior to starting with the RPi I was using a NAS drive connected to the Classic SB. I experimented streaming Flac files with the player connected to the main Hi-Fi which didn’t last long - after a brief listen it was returned to the kitchen and I carried on using vinyl & CD in the lounge.
During lockdown I started thinking about trying streaming using a high resolution audio streaming service (Qobuz). This was partially with a view to listening to albums in an effort to avoid purchasing any more ‘lemons’ on physical media. I also thought that DACs will have improved over the years and that this coupled with high resolution files might lead to the replacement of the CD player & CDs. Another rabbit hole to explore.
RPi3 or RPi 4?
One limitation of the RPi 3 is that the USB and Ethernet share the same bus which might cause contention when streaming larger files.
The RPi4 doesn’t have this issue, but does run hotter than the 3.
With the RPi3 I’ve never experienced any overheating issues using a heatsink case. The device also powers an external USB hard drive and is rarely switched off.
Much as there haven’t been any issues streaming FLAC files from USB to the SB via Ethernet, I didn’t want to build another RPi3 only to find out that Hi Res files caused an issue, so opted for the RPi 4+. I went with the 4GB model but the 2GB might have been perfect for the job.
[SIZE=11pt]I originally ordered a heatsink case as I wanted to avoid the possibility of any interference caused by a cooling fan.[/SIZE]
Once assembled in the case, PiCorePlayer was installed - instructions can be found at:- https://docs.picoreplayer.org/getting-started/
I worked through the instructions step by step which led me to a page on editing the config.txt file. I learnt that I didn’t need to do this a little too late and ended up in the VI editor. This is a different from most text editors as it has insert & command modes, the following resource should prove useful in case you end up in the same position, or want to start using VI:-
www.howtogeek.com/411210/how-to-exit-the-vi-or-vim-editor/
One thing that the piCorePlayer document states is that you use Ctrl-V to paste into vi. It didn’t work for me, but I found that once you have set vi to insert mode – right clicking the mouse pastes the text.
I noticed that KJF Audio stocked the Tone Board and thought I’d try them as they support the forum rather than Amazon. Many thanks to Stefan and his team for the prompt delivery.
Once the Tone Board was assembled in the case I connected it to the RPi4 and amplifier and had a listen. I was impressed at the improvement in sound quality compared to the SBox - DACs have certainly improved.
As a temporary installation it looked like this:-
Needless to say, after an hour or so the music stopped. I set up an external fan and with this going everything was fine, having shown it was a heat issue I ordered a different case and swapped the Pi over.
After some research I settled on the Argon ONE V2 Raspberry Pi 4 Case. This has a fan which can be controlled and the picoreplayer site has instructions on setting this case up:- https://docs.picoreplayer.org/projects/setup-argon-one-case-for-rpi4b/
If you go down this route you will have to become familiar with VI editor, something I found useful:- www.howtogeek.com/102468/a-beginners-guide-to-editing-text-files-with-vi/
After initial setup I found that the temperature/fan speed settings needed to be tweaked after which it hasn’t shown off again.
The Argon case won’t fit alongside the Tone Board so for the time being:-
At the moment this is perfectly acceptable for listening to an album to make a decision on whether to purchase it.
Having listened to it I’m intrigued as to how good it would sound with a better DAC.
I’ve finished setting up a RPi 4 running PiCorePlayer connected to a Tone Board DAC. For anyone that wants to give this a go I’ve provided some history/background below with some links to resources that I found useful. I’m certainly no expert and if you do try this you will need to set some time aside as it can be frustrating when encountering issues. I found Google (other search engines are available) to be very useful as the answer can usually be found on a forum somewhere.
At present this solution is fine for listening to new/recommended albums via Qubuz and allows a decision to be made on whether to purchase a physical copy. I'm intrigued as to how good this could sound and was wondering whether anyone has tried running a RPi to stream Hi Resolution files to a high end DAC? At the moment I’m thinking of DACs such as the Denafrips Terminator; Aqua La Scala or similar. I’ll keep an eye on the systems that will be at the show in October but am interested in hearing of anyone’s first hand experience.
I’ve seen several comments about having to use re-clockers, but in an ideal world I’d like to keep it to one box. I can add a shelf to my existing rack for the DAC, but it would be difficult to add further devices.
Please let me know whether you have tried something similar and how you got on? If you couldn't get the result you wanted and ended up going down a different route I'd be interested in hearing about this too.
Budget is around £5K. I appreciate that to try a La Scala it will have to be used (unless significant discounts are being offered).
Thanks for reading this far and I look forward to hearing about your experiences.
Some History and set-up
I’ve used a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ running PiCorePlayer / Logitech Media Server (LMS) connected to a Classic SqueezeBox (SB) player for several years. The SqueezeBox is connected to a Denon RCD-M40DAB & Monitor Audio Bronze speakers in our kitchen/dining room.
All our CDs are ripped to FLAC although we mostly listen to 6 Music via the BBC Sounds plugin. We find streaming 6 Music offers a significant improvement in sound quality compared to the Denon DAB, your experience may differ.
Prior to starting with the RPi I was using a NAS drive connected to the Classic SB. I experimented streaming Flac files with the player connected to the main Hi-Fi which didn’t last long - after a brief listen it was returned to the kitchen and I carried on using vinyl & CD in the lounge.
During lockdown I started thinking about trying streaming using a high resolution audio streaming service (Qobuz). This was partially with a view to listening to albums in an effort to avoid purchasing any more ‘lemons’ on physical media. I also thought that DACs will have improved over the years and that this coupled with high resolution files might lead to the replacement of the CD player & CDs. Another rabbit hole to explore.
RPi3 or RPi 4?
One limitation of the RPi 3 is that the USB and Ethernet share the same bus which might cause contention when streaming larger files.
The RPi4 doesn’t have this issue, but does run hotter than the 3.
With the RPi3 I’ve never experienced any overheating issues using a heatsink case. The device also powers an external USB hard drive and is rarely switched off.
Much as there haven’t been any issues streaming FLAC files from USB to the SB via Ethernet, I didn’t want to build another RPi3 only to find out that Hi Res files caused an issue, so opted for the RPi 4+. I went with the 4GB model but the 2GB might have been perfect for the job.
[SIZE=11pt]I originally ordered a heatsink case as I wanted to avoid the possibility of any interference caused by a cooling fan.[/SIZE]
Once assembled in the case, PiCorePlayer was installed - instructions can be found at:- https://docs.picoreplayer.org/getting-started/
I worked through the instructions step by step which led me to a page on editing the config.txt file. I learnt that I didn’t need to do this a little too late and ended up in the VI editor. This is a different from most text editors as it has insert & command modes, the following resource should prove useful in case you end up in the same position, or want to start using VI:-
www.howtogeek.com/411210/how-to-exit-the-vi-or-vim-editor/
One thing that the piCorePlayer document states is that you use Ctrl-V to paste into vi. It didn’t work for me, but I found that once you have set vi to insert mode – right clicking the mouse pastes the text.
I noticed that KJF Audio stocked the Tone Board and thought I’d try them as they support the forum rather than Amazon. Many thanks to Stefan and his team for the prompt delivery.
Once the Tone Board was assembled in the case I connected it to the RPi4 and amplifier and had a listen. I was impressed at the improvement in sound quality compared to the SBox - DACs have certainly improved.
As a temporary installation it looked like this:-
Needless to say, after an hour or so the music stopped. I set up an external fan and with this going everything was fine, having shown it was a heat issue I ordered a different case and swapped the Pi over.
After some research I settled on the Argon ONE V2 Raspberry Pi 4 Case. This has a fan which can be controlled and the picoreplayer site has instructions on setting this case up:- https://docs.picoreplayer.org/projects/setup-argon-one-case-for-rpi4b/
If you go down this route you will have to become familiar with VI editor, something I found useful:- www.howtogeek.com/102468/a-beginners-guide-to-editing-text-files-with-vi/
After initial setup I found that the temperature/fan speed settings needed to be tweaked after which it hasn’t shown off again.
The Argon case won’t fit alongside the Tone Board so for the time being:-
At the moment this is perfectly acceptable for listening to an album to make a decision on whether to purchase it.
Having listened to it I’m intrigued as to how good it would sound with a better DAC.
