[fihidelity]

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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.

My laptops distortion is quite high and I don't think that it's something I could put up with so I'll have to see if it's capable. I wasn't really planning a high end system but I'll keep the NUC in mind for the future, cheers.
 
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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.

That's good to hear, I installed Linux Mint on a partition on my laptop as Windows was prioritising everything over USB audio it seemed and so it was making tons of clicking and popping noises. Unfortunately it's still a bit distorted so if the Pi works well with a DAC then that's great news!
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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.

I'm afraid the 10/100 part is lost on me but I understand the rest. I hope it's capable enough as I'm really fed up with my laptops USB audio.

 

[fihidelity]

As an aside, can anyone think of any cool potential cases for the Pi. I'm contemplating hollowing out an old PS3 or something as I'd like to keep hidden the hard drive and as many of the cables as I can. A PS3 seems a bit big and excessive though, could I perhaps by a small PC case and fit it in there?

 

[Yazen]

If you're going to use a USB DAC with the RPi make sure it uses wall power as the RPi will not be able to power a standalone USB DAC.
 
Make sure to use a good power supply for the RPi to avoid any cut-offs in playback, my Palm wall adapter works wonders in comparison to your everyday Chinese micro-usb wall adapter.
 
My $35 RPi + $7 case + $8 Wireless Adapter + $5 cables + $5 8GB UHS-1 card = 60 USD for a working home theater setup.
 
In the end I hooked up an old Pentium Dual-Core, the RPi was fun, the desktop was practical.
 
RPi is now a dedicated Wireless N router 

 

[fihidelity]

Quote:

If you're going to use a USB DAC with the RPi make sure it uses wall power as the RPi will not be able to power a standalone USB DAC.
 
Make sure to use a good power supply for the RPi to avoid any cut-offs in playback, my Palm wall adapter works wonders in comparison to your everyday Chinese micro-usb wall adapter.
 
My $35 RPi + $7 case + $8 Wireless Adapter + $5 cables + $5 8GB UHS-1 card = 60 USD for a working home theater setup.
 
In the end I hooked up an old Pentium Dual-Core, the RPi was fun, the desktop was practical.
 
RPi is now a dedicated Wireless N router 

Unfortunately the DAC I got (E-DAC(ODAC equivalent)) is USB powered, will the Pi definitely lack the juice to power it and if so, would I be able to put a mains powered hub between the Pi and the DAC?
 
I was in the Apple store with a Pi under my arm and one of the staff told me that I could use it to watch Apple TV. I think they were taken aback when I asked them why I'd want to. It sounds like a good setup though, my dad uses one to control all our house's central heating and monitor the temperature of each room and the tanks. Your use wins on the excitement front though
 
Coming from a laptop with a loud fan, poor electrical isolation and gobs of EMI I'm hoping the little Pi will do better, despite being low powered. Have you thought about using the Pi as a media server?

 

[Yazen]

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Unfortunately the DAC I got (E-DAC(ODAC equivalent)) is USB powered, will the Pi definitely lack the juice to power it and if so, would I be able to put a mains powered hub between the Pi and the DAC?
 
I was in the Apple store with a Pi under my arm and one of the staff told me that I could use it to watch Apple TV. I think they were taken aback when I asked them why I'd want to. It sounds like a good setup though, my dad uses one to control all our house's central heating and monitor the temperature of each room and the tanks. Your use wins on the excitement front though
 
Coming from a laptop with a loud fan, poor electrical isolation and gobs of EMI I'm hoping the little Pi will do better, despite being low powered. Have you thought about using the Pi as a media server?

Sort of is one actually, it is my dedicated router hooked to an external HDD.  Can transcode with VLC but generally there is no need as all my devices can playback files in MKV containers.
 
lol, my cousin said he kept the Google TV for a week, the Apple TV?  Returned it the same night 

 
Actually I find a smart-home powered by a RPi far more interesting, I wish I had the time to wire my house for an application like that.
 
EDIT:  You'll likely need a powered HUB to prevent audio clipping, etc.  Wouldn't hurt to try before buying, though I can safely say that most USB devices I tested failed to perform correctly from inadequate power supply.

 

[fihidelity]

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Sort of is one actually, it is my dedicated router hooked to an external HDD.  Can transcode with VLC but generally there is no need as all my devices can playback files in MKV containers.
 
lol, my cousin said he kept the Google TV for a week, the Apple TV?  Returned it the same night 

 
Actually I find a smart-home powered by a RPi far more interesting, I wish I had the time to wire my house for an application like that.
 
EDIT:  You'll likely need a powered HUB to prevent audio clipping, etc.  Wouldn't hurt to try before buying, though I can safely say that most USB devices I tested failed to perform correctly from inadequate power supply.

Yeah, it looks like it will need its own supply, do you know if the Pi can cope with FLAC playback?

 

[Yazen]

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Yeah, it looks like it will need its own supply, do you know if the Pi can cope with FLAC playback?

Through USB DAC?  Probably, depends on overhead of the DAC itself.  I think it should work smoothly, though I've never tried personally.

 

[ShiftyFella]

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do you know if the Pi can cope with FLAC playback?

Absolutely, properly set up MPD plays hi-res files without a problem and system load is never more then 30% when playing files from USB HDD, with XBMC it was never less then 50% and at times close to max load

 

[fihidelity]

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Absolutely, properly set up MPD plays hi-res files without a problem and system load is never more then 30% when playing files from USB HDD, with XBMC it was never less then 50% and at times close to max load

That's reassuring, I spoke to a guy from iFi who said that it wouldn't have the CPU but I though FLAC used less power than MP3 anyway as it's less compressed. Or at least it wouldn't use much more.

 

[Yazen]

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That's reassuring, I spoke to a guy from iFi who said that it wouldn't have the CPU but I though FLAC used less power than MP3 anyway as it's less compressed. Or at least it wouldn't use much more.

CPU wise?  Hell yes lol
 
Actually FLAC uses more CPU than MP3's...  
 
1 - AFAIK like most modern devices RPi has hardware MP3 decoding, I haven't read anything like this for FLAC.
2 - MP3 is lossy compression

 

[warrior05]

Currently using mine as an audio streamer feeding off my NAS via ethernet. I have an old Behringer USB powered DAC sending analog to my Yamaha receiver (I could use the DAC as more of a converter and send TOSLINK to my receiver but I am out of digital ins). I listen to nothing but FLAC and have had zero issues. Be that as it may, I am disappointed with the RPi since my initial intent was to make a headless player with a USB HDD as a source. My RPi was very finicky with USB sources. I could only get one USB stick to work when I was first testing it out. When it came to my powered USB HDD, I tried 2 different powered hubs and couldn't get it recognized. I also couldn't get it to work when plugged directly into the RPi. I suppose I could have figured something out but I'm not Linux savvy and did not feel like spending that much time in sorting it out.
 
For what I am using it as, no complaints. Have had no audio issues and using my Android tablet as a remote controller (MPDroid) has been very convenient.
 
Thinking on trying an ALIX SBC to build the headless player I originally intended on.

 

[Yazen]

Quote:

Currently using mine as an audio streamer feeding off my NAS via ethernet. I have an old Behringer USB powered DAC sending analog to my Yamaha receiver (I could use the DAC as more of a converter and send TOSLINK to my receiver but I am out of digital ins). I listen to nothing but FLAC and have had zero issues. Be that as it may, I am disappointed with the RPi since my initial intent was to make a headless player with a USB HDD as a source. My RPi was very finicky with USB sources. I could only get one USB stick to work when I was first testing it out. When it came to my powered USB HDD, I tried 2 different powered hubs and couldn't get it recognized. I also couldn't get it to work when plugged directly into the RPi. I suppose I could have figured something out but I'm not Linux savvy and did not feel like spending that much time in sorting it out.
 
For what I am using it as, no complaints. Have had no audio issues and using my Android tablet as a remote controller (MPDroid) has been very convenient.
 
Thinking on trying an ALIX SBC to build the headless player I originally intended on.

I noticed that even with a powered hub the USB bottlenecks a bit, still better than a china tab.
 
You can find a list of confirmed working devices here:
http://elinux.org/RPi_VerifiedPeripherals#Powered_USB_Hubs

 

[fihidelity]

It hadn't really occurred to me that an external hard drive mightn't work with the Pi, I'll have to check compatibility. 
 
Any case ideas?

 

[Yazen]

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It hadn't really occurred to me that an external hard drive mightn't work with the Pi, I'll have to check compatibility. 
 
Any case ideas?

http://www.newark.com/adafruit-industries/859/raspberry-pi-box-enclosure-acrylic/dp/44W3465
 
Least bulky one, honestly all prebuilt ones kinda suck.  I have some saucer shaped one and its **** lol

 

[fihidelity]

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http://www.newark.com/adafruit-industries/859/raspberry-pi-box-enclosure-acrylic/dp/44W3465
 
Least bulky one, honestly all prebuilt ones kinda suck.  I have some saucer shaped one and its **** lol

I'm really looking for one that'll have room for an external hard drive and the nest of cables