4 ms·

About audio: The built in line out jacks have just horrible quality. (And I'm someone who doesn't believe in gold cables so for 'audiophiles' it must be tortur

About audio: The built in line out jacks have just horrible quality. (And I'm someone who doesn't believe in gold cables so for 'audiophiles' it must be torture.) Rather get a USB sound card and hook it up to your pi. Also try out MPD (Music Player Daemon) if you want a juke box. MPD clients are widely available for any platform - you can sit on the couch and control your pi's MPD with a client running on your phone.

laumars 13y ago
> The built in line out jacks have just horrible quality. (And I'm someone who doesn't believe in gold cables so for 'audiophiles' it must be torture.) Rather get a USB sound card and hook it up to your pi. The problem is much more likely to be the DAC rather than the audio jack. However using a USB audio adapter may fix that as well as they'd have their own DAC. Earlier in this thread I did discuss another issue with audio on the Pi though: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5969424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5969424 > Also try out MPD (Music Player Daemon) if you want a juke box. MPD clients are widely available for any platform - you can sit on the couch and control your pi's MPD with a client running on your phone. Funny enough I did address that in this thread as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5967949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5967949
- pja 13y ago
  IIRC the analogue audio out on a Pi is fairly low quality: It's a 1-bit PWM signal @ 100MHz. That's about 11bits of SNR for a standard audio input supposedly. Use the HDMI audio, or a USB audio device if you want decent quality sound out of a Pi.
  - laumars 13y ago
    Indeed. Sadly HDMI audio isn't an option and any of the decent USB audio adapters would either be too bulky and/or too expensive (ie the additional cost renders the saving made by using a Raspberry Pi pointless). As much as I'm an audiophile at times (less so now than I used to be), this is only being used as an in-car MP3 / FLAC player. My car speakers are much worse than the spec of the Pi's audio chipset. In fact they're not even balanced right so my next job is applying some bespoke EQing to the output in real time (hopefully the Pi will be powerful enough to perform this) to lessen the harshness of the heavy top-end and complete lack of sound in the mid-range frequencies (whoever authorised the inbuilt sound system in my car was clearly death!) Thankfully I can usually distract myself from the shit sound quality by driving :P But sometimes (usually when really tired) it's too annoying to bare. Which is a pity as I love most other things about that car.
    - pja 13y ago
      You can pick up a tiny USB sound device from eBay for £1.50 including postage that will probably have better specs than the Pi analogue audio output. It'll get rid of that annoying clicking as well. If you're tight for space, then that might be a problem, but the cost of these things is negligible these days.
      - laumars 13y ago
        I take it you didn't read my post that you original replied to ;) (I jest because I raised each of those points myself). Sadly space is the issue. The one I bought (which was more along the lines of £3) sadly pushes the dimensions of the device I'm building much too much. At some point I'm going to have to re-investigate the issue though - as I plan on adding voice control which means I'll need a mic in. As for sound quality, that's really a non-issue given the it's going in a car with crappy speakers. So there's no point wasting money on a decent audio chip if I can't reproduce that sound accurately. (in an ideal world, I'd throw in some zero frequency curve studio monitors and use my spare Terratec Phase 96 as the Pi's sound device - but then the price really starts to jump. So instead I make do with what I've got)
fredley 13y ago
I use mine as an internet radio using USB wifi/sound cards and MPD: https://github.com/fredley/soma-pi https://github.com/fredley/soma-pi

laumars 13y ago

> The built in line out jacks have just horrible quality. (And I'm someone who doesn't believe in gold cables so for 'audiophiles' it must be torture.) Rather get a USB sound card and hook it up to your pi. The problem is much more likely to be the DAC rather than the audio jack. However using a USB audio adapter may fix that as well as they'd have their own DAC. Earlier in this thread I did discuss another issue with audio on the Pi though: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5969424 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5969424 > Also try out MPD (Music Player Daemon) if you want a juke box. MPD clients are widely available for any platform - you can sit on the couch and control your pi's MPD with a client running on your phone. Funny enough I did address that in this thread as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5967949 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5967949

pja 13y ago
IIRC the analogue audio out on a Pi is fairly low quality: It's a 1-bit PWM signal @ 100MHz. That's about 11bits of SNR for a standard audio input supposedly. Use the HDMI audio, or a USB audio device if you want decent quality sound out of a Pi.
- laumars 13y ago
  Indeed. Sadly HDMI audio isn't an option and any of the decent USB audio adapters would either be too bulky and/or too expensive (ie the additional cost renders the saving made by using a Raspberry Pi pointless). As much as I'm an audiophile at times (less so now than I used to be), this is only being used as an in-car MP3 / FLAC player. My car speakers are much worse than the spec of the Pi's audio chipset. In fact they're not even balanced right so my next job is applying some bespoke EQing to the output in real time (hopefully the Pi will be powerful enough to perform this) to lessen the harshness of the heavy top-end and complete lack of sound in the mid-range frequencies (whoever authorised the inbuilt sound system in my car was clearly death!) Thankfully I can usually distract myself from the shit sound quality by driving :P But sometimes (usually when really tired) it's too annoying to bare. Which is a pity as I love most other things about that car.
  - pja 13y ago
    You can pick up a tiny USB sound device from eBay for £1.50 including postage that will probably have better specs than the Pi analogue audio output. It'll get rid of that annoying clicking as well. If you're tight for space, then that might be a problem, but the cost of these things is negligible these days.
    - laumars 13y ago
      I take it you didn't read my post that you original replied to ;) (I jest because I raised each of those points myself). Sadly space is the issue. The one I bought (which was more along the lines of £3) sadly pushes the dimensions of the device I'm building much too much. At some point I'm going to have to re-investigate the issue though - as I plan on adding voice control which means I'll need a mic in. As for sound quality, that's really a non-issue given the it's going in a car with crappy speakers. So there's no point wasting money on a decent audio chip if I can't reproduce that sound accurately. (in an ideal world, I'd throw in some zero frequency curve studio monitors and use my spare Terratec Phase 96 as the Pi's sound device - but then the price really starts to jump. So instead I make do with what I've got)

fredley 13y ago

I use mine as an internet radio using USB wifi/sound cards and MPD: https://github.com/fredley/soma-pi https://github.com/fredley/soma-pi