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I've used this for a few years as my main hifi. Runs on a pi with the hifiberry HAT, which sits just behind one of the powered monitors. If you are a bit of an
by binbag 5y ago
I've used this for a few years as my main hifi. Runs on a pi with the hifiberry HAT, which sits just behind one of the powered monitors. If you are a bit of an audiophile then this is an extremely cheap way to get very high quality audio into your house. The chain is something like: 1. Tidal or Qobuz master stream pulled by volumio, 2. Hifiberry DAC, 3. Good powered reference monitors. This whole chain has a set up cost of about £250/$300 and gives the same audio quality as turnkey commercial systems (e.g. from Linn Audio) that cost >>£1000. It also has an extremely small form factor, obviously thanks to the pi, so the whole thing can fit nicely into a bookcase, for example.
- jiofih 5y agoThis seems so weird to me. Does the hifiberry outperform something like an iPod touch which has a really good DAC and gives you a perfect touch screen for $199?
- binbag 5y agoYou have to have quality on every link in the chain. What's the highest bitrate iPod supports and what are the specs of its DAC?
- jiofih 5y ago-120 dBV noise floor, absolutely flat response curve, near zero output impedance, stable voltage, 0.002% THD (-100/120dB), it can play FLAC 24/96 The iPod touch specs are slightly better than an iPhone, and some old classic models were even better. couldn’t find the hifiberry specs sheet to compare. I imagine it’s not necessarily worse, but wondering is the whole setup worth the trouble?
- binbag 5y agoI think you can totally do what you're saying and the user interface will be great, although local to the speakers. I'm not sure if iPod DAC can actually faithfully process 24/96? If so, that's an option via flac. Once you add speakers to your set up, you're looking at the same price as the chain I suggested. The benefits of going the hifiberry route are: - You connect from any device on your network and tell the pi to stream - either from a local NAS or from a hq streaming service like tidal - It can pull and faithfully process 24/96 master streams and MQA - You don't need to use a user interface on the device itself or load files onto it - Bit of hobbyist fun
- vineyardmike 5y ago> hifiberry outperform something like an iPod touch For anyone looking for an alternative to Hifi berry that still uses a pi: USB Dac (eg. from schiit, or toppings). You can get great ones for $100 or drool-worthy ones for thousands... the input is digital so (with some exceptions) they all work well with a cheap pi connected to internet.
- dTal 5y agoI use a cheapy USB soundcard that cost about as much as a soup and sandwich. Sounds totally fine, but it has TOSLINK output too so the DAC hardly gets used anyway. I don't understand why anyone would spend hundreds or thousands on media players and soundcards. Save it for the amp/speakers!
- dTal 5y agoOr a Zipit Z2 - same DAC, a fraction of the price, and comes with a keyboard! Sure it's only got 32 megs of ram but how much do you really need to play audio?
- GoodJokes 5y agoYes it does. You are e paying for a lot more than a DAC with an iPod and a DAC is more than chip.
- alexhafner 5y agosweet setup! any recommendations for the powered monitors?
- colinb 5y agoso I know hi-fi preferences are the Vietnam of tech discussions (in the quagmire of war sense, rather than the vibrant modern economy sense) but what speakers did you pick, and why?