Orchard Audio PecanPi Ultra Review Pt 1

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Feb 6, 2010
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Review - PecanPi Ultra - $895 - Orchard Audio Supplier



First, a thank you to Leo of Orchard Audio for giving me the chance to listen to this item and for being patient with my questions. I will describe this unit and then confess at the end.



Leo may not be happy with this but i would describe this as a modern-day Logitech Squeezebox Touch +. This is an item for those who just want someone to take all of the heavy lifting and faff of using a Digital Player / Streamer and give them something that just works. Well look no further this will play directly out and will sound very good indeed as good as most streamers I have heard. I have not commented on the DAC Player use now as this review will be in two parts one for the unit as a stand-alone streamer the other as a DAC / Player.



This brings me on to the confession this is not in its current form the ideal unit for me and my current music network and to be fair to Orchard it was not aimed at me. I currently use a Logitech Media System with a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB unit with USB HD attached as the server and then all of the other systems have PI/Digihat players (Wired) offering SPDIF directly into the various DACs attached to the systems.



So the unit comes fully installed with Volumio which if you want to use multiple players you need to buy the MyVolumio add-on and load Volumio to each Pi in the network. Given that i have five systems that would have been lots of work. There is a way around it in that Volumio has a Logitech Media Server addon. Now this works but frankly, it is very slow I mean really slow but as it is an addon so not meant to be used instead, Volumio wants you to use their software.



The main users of this are more likely to just use this as a stand-alone Player which they connect the USB HD or direct to their NAS and play along. I will review that in my second review.



I was also sent by Orchard Audio a USB CD Drive and 4U USB Charger that you can plug directly into the PecanPi Ultra and Volumio has a Nano CD button so you can also use this as CD Source as well as Player. This is an add-on and would cost $199 but it does make the unit a complete digital source.



Now here comes a more interesting bit for me. As the Pecan Pie Ultra is based on a Raspberry Pi then it can be bought with different setups. It can be configured as a Roon End Point, piCorePlayer, moOde Audio as well as Volumio if you asked for this when you ordered it then I Leo would load and configure your SD card as much as possible so that it would be easy to use when it arrived. This then opens up to act as the streamer I want to use. With Leo,s permission I removed the supplied SD card and stored it safely. Then I inserted my SD card with Max2play which is the distro I use and know. Once loaded and with me setting up Logitech Media Server, Jivelite, etc the unit slotted in as a direct LMS replacement for my current server. Once the tedious scan of my USB HD unit was completed (I have some 61,000 Tracks in my Library so it is a bore but you only need to do it once) Straight on to my usual Material Skin GUI and play.



Music starts to play and it is obvious from the very first bars that this is a very good streamer. Sounds is as far as I can tell as good if not slightly better than the current Pi 4 Streamer. The noise floor is very low there is no hash or noise when there is no music. Bass is very tight and textured you can hear when bass strings are plucked or stroked and there is a slight twang if struck hard. The sound stage is nice and wide and the vocals are very real. This is music for me at least for me my ears and my systems that i would be very happy to listen to. You also get the advantage of using the touch screen to control all your players which makes things very simple.



This has now been running for three days straight playing song after song without a hitch it has been incredibly stable and consistent. I would say this is an excellent top-class streamer with all of the setup issues removed. If you want to use it as is, it has a plug-in power supply which 9v that you could easily replace this with one of the many LPSU supplies on sale. I think that would be something worth doing and could lower the noise floor even further. But many are not convinced of this so the choice would be yours.



I would view this as a very good streamer and certainly if Orchard Audio made a stand-alone streamer with no DAC I think I would have to give that some serious thought. As it stands this is a great product for those who want a Player Streamer ready to use out of the box but any comments on its playing ability will have to wait. So not really what I need but a must-listen for those in the market for a Node2i or similar.

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https://orchardaudio.com/pecanpi

 
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