[fihidelity]

I've decided to start a little project involving the Raspberry Pi, my plan is to make it so that it will take music from a server or external memory and send it to a USB DAC and the interface will be on my android phone. I've discovered an app called MPDroid that browses music externally from my phone and then pressing play causes it to play on the RPi. The idea is to eliminate my laptop from the setup and be able to control playback through my phone.
 
Has anyone had any experience with the Pi's USB audio and know whether this is a good idea? 

 

[fihidelity]

TL;DR - RPi USB audio, yay or nay?

 

[fihidelity]

I was thinking of cases to minimise the cable mess that seems inevitable with them and was thinking of taking the insides out of an old electronic device such as a games console. Any cool case ideas?

 

[fihidelity]

Has anyone had any experience with it?

 

[tradyblix]

I have a Raspberry Pi and a Fiio E17 DAC. I will see if I can get the combination to work and report back to you in a day or so. I have to say tho, I have found the Pi to be a rather underwhelming device. It is a cheap devices, but once you buy a case, a usb hub, a wireless n adapter, a keyboard, a mouse, and a monitor to pair, it's really not "30 bucks". It's also way slower than my phone at pretty much everything, but audio isn't that demanding for computers so we'll see. 

 

[fihidelity]

I've had experience with them before so I know they're not the fastest but I think it'd be ideal for just taking music from a server or external memory and sending them to a DAC. Looking forward to seeing how you got on, cheers!

 

[Dillan]

I have a lot of experience with the pi, but not particularly with the audio side of it. It isn't that powerful that is for sure, and after all the parts (like the other person said) it does rise above that tricky $35 price tag, but all in all I think its worth the investment depending on how creative you are. That's really all it boils down to. My advice on your potential project would be to first look at compatibility between linux and linux drivers, and the DAC or other devices you plan on using with it. Good luck with it, hope everything goes well.

 

[Soul_Est]

Check this thread head here: http://www.head-fi.org/t/660578/raspberry-pi-as-headless-media-server-with-archlinux-and-fiio-e17

 

[fihidelity]

Quote:

I have a lot of experience with the pi, but not particularly with the audio side of it. It isn't that powerful that is for sure, and after all the parts (like the other person said) it does rise above that tricky $35 price tag, but all in all I think its worth the investment depending on how creative you are. That's really all it boils down to. My advice on your potential project would be to first look at compatibility between linux and linux drivers, and the DAC or other devices you plan on using with it. Good luck with it, hope everything goes well.

I'm hoping that I'll get away with controlling it via an ethernet cable and ssh when I'm setting up but having used one with school I know how easy it is for the price to escalate on peripherals. I kind of had it in my head that linux was so versatile that it'll just work but I guess that's a little na[size=small]ï[/size]ve of me. Do you have any DACs that you could try to couple a Pi with as I'd be interested to hear some thoughts.
 
Quote:

Check this thread head here: http://www.head-fi.org/t/660578/raspberry-pi-as-headless-media-server-with-archlinux-and-fiio-e17

Thanks for that, I'd seen older ones but this some seems more relevant. Strange how we had pretty much the same idea about the Pi almost simultaneously!

 

[Dillan]

A friend of mine is using my Pi right now, but I know that the Schiit Bifrost will work with it through USB. That's the only one I know from experience that would work. If I remember correctly, I just plugged it in and changed a few settings in the audio settings section right in the GUI and it worked perfectly. I will try to get a hold of it, or one from my old school at some point soon and see what I can come up with.

 

[ShiftyFella]

I tried using Pi XBMC with my DacMagic100 but end result was poor, had alot of jitter\popping sound during playback and whole thing crashed every once in a while. Then i discovered Music Player Daemon. Now i'm using Pi MPD and control it with MPod app, works perfectly.

 

[fihidelity]

Quote:

I tried using Pi XBMC with my DacMagic100 but end result was poor, had alot of jitter\popping sound during playback and whole thing crashed every once in a while. Then i discovered Music Player Daemon. Now i'm using Pi MPD and control it with MPod app, works perfectly.

Thanks, that's reassuring!
 
I hope you don't mind my asking a nooby question but should a Pi and say a £500 audio orientated desktop computer sound the same if they went to the same DAC?

 

[ShiftyFella]

Quote:

Thanks, that's reassuring!
 
I hope you don't mind my asking a nooby question but should a Pi and say a £500 audio orientated desktop computer sound the same if they went to the same DAC?

yes and no, it's depends on features of your dac because usb implementation on pi is not ideal and you will be using alsa as means to output sounds. if your dac like mine natively supports asio you will never get asio like latency performance from pi, so expect increase in jitter\distortion. depending on your setup you may actually hear jitter compared to foobar with asio but honestly i don't hear any real difference compared to my windows machine. also, if your dac draws power directly from usb you should use usb powered hub because pi might have not enough juice on it's own
 
If you're planning on building high-end system or something with more features\power but want it to be compact you should look into intel nuc system.

 

[Soul_Est]

ShiftyFella hit the nail on the head with their answer there. The biggest issue and the one that would be the source of the jitter/latency is the fact that it only has lines for only one USB port coming from the BCM2835 SoC that powers it. Those lines are then fed into a separate chip that provides lines for one 10/100 FastEthernet port and two USB ports. That's a lot data to try and put over one USB port.

 

[Henry Flower]

I've had no problems at all with the E17 and the Pi (procedure described in the post which Soul_Est linked to above).
 
I did have problems when I used my old EMU 0202 USB DAC (clicking and eventual boot problems), but it turns out the EMU was on its last legs. I've no reason to think other people would have the same issues.