Pi 2 Design - Mercury Streamer

[George Hincapie]

This Mercury seems a killer streamer for me. Low noise, small size and comes with wifi and airplay. Basically I do not need anything else...but at least with Pi2aes being out of stock for years it doesn't look promising as well...

I was thinking to grab used Node 2i, but many folks complain about it's optical output which I was planing to use to dac. There is no way to add DDC like U18/Iris as Node 2i has no USB output...Maybe something like Wiim Mini -> USB to DDC -> DAC. I'm open to any other ideas, but don't want to get stuck with large streamer again, unless it's a smallish/medium size with a good DAC which would outperform Qutest

crap seems Wiim Mini has no usb out as well

If you have a Roon server then you can get by with a Pi4, Tomanek LPSU and Ropieee for now. USB out to your DDC/DAC.

 

[George Hincapie]

Any updates on where we are with Mercury V2?

 

[George Hincapie]

Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

 

[Powermankw]

Micheal does pretty good to give updates he has. My experience is to add a month to everything. It just is how things are today. He is pretty active on the unofficial official mercury thread over at that other place.

https://www.pi2design.com/mercury-streamer-v2.html

https://www.superbestaudiofriends.o...of-ready-to-go-rpi-aes-streamer.10471/page-46

 

[borkenarrou]

Looks like V2 is only available with 4GB because of RPI4 8GB shortage, will it be too slow in normal usage.

 

[gimmeheadroom]

Looks like V2 is only available with 4GB because of RPI4 8GB shortage, will it be too slow in normal usage.

For music, even 2GB is plenty.

 

[Zachik]

Looks like V2 is only available with 4GB because of RPI4 8GB shortage, will it be too slow in normal usage.

I have 2 of the V1 - one with 4GB and one with 8GB of memory, both running Volumio.
I cannot detect ANY difference in performance AT ALL.

 

[Powermankw]

So V2 is coming out. There are others it seems... For me, mercury just sits there and works. I've used Gentoo player, Lumin, Audiarvana... I mainly use Volumio because it works. The DSP plug in is useful. Every now and then it will basically freeze. Mostly if I'm on Mobil playing around. Can't tell you if it's Mercury, volumio, or Mobil. All it takes is a reboot and back uo under 2 minutes. It's nice. Does all i want it to.

 

[Flm09]

I just heard about this streamer and was wondering how it compares to Ifi Zen stream which is coming in Jan from Amazon.

 

[borkenarrou]

Is there any way hqplayer can be integrated to the V2.

 

[kumar402]

Is there any way hqplayer can be integrated to the V2.

You can install OS that works as NAA for HQPlayer or you can install HQPlayer OS in Pi and upsample within Mercury itself

 

[borkenarrou]

You can install OS that works as NAA for HQPlayer or you can install HQPlayer OS in Pi and upsample within Mercury itself

That's a good idea, I'll be using the Hqplayer mainly for upsampling to the Spring 3, still not 100% sure the Pi4 in it has the processing power for it, my other option is a NUC type device with a external DDC, but that will be bit more expensive.

 

[kumar402]

Do remember Pi is limited to 192Khz so they are capable of only 4x upsample else you can upsample somewhere else and send the upsampled data by running it as NAA but it can only output 192Khz

 

[Sko0byDoo]

Just got a V2, boot it up, and in operations. Very nice sound. Having a local NVME storage is a huge plus instead over NAS. Not a huge jump from a PC via ASIO but a huge one from PC via DirectSound/Wave. Still experimenting to see whether I can encapsulate DSD-over-PCM to send over to the Holo Spring V3. Don't think DSD would work on this but anyone knows anything on this? Thinking this may be a software issue than H/W (running Volumio now). All other formats work perfectly.

 

[George Hincapie]

Just got a V2, boot it up, and in operations. Very nice sound. Having a local NVME storage is a huge plus instead over NAS. Not a huge jump from a PC via ASIO but a huge one from PC via DirectSound/Wave. Still experimenting to see whether I can encapsulate DSD-over-PCM to send over to the Holo Spring V3. Don't think DSD would work on this but anyone knows anything on this? Thinking this may be a software issue than H/W (running Volumio now). All other formats work perfectly.

What are you using to power it?