* Raspberry Pi 4 (2gb)
* Hifiberry DAC+ DSP
* micro SD card for the OS
* Volumio Audiophile Music Player (Debian based Linux distribution customized for the pi and music streaming)
The hardware build only took about 20 mins: Imgur: The magic of the Internet
* Connected to my NAD integrated amp via optical cable.
* Connected to my home network via wifi. I'm going to change this to a hard wired ethernet connection after I free up an additional port.
The software took a bit longer... Days longer. Ran into some issues.
But first, what went right:https://imgur.com/a/usRswBB
- Installing the OS and getting the basic player and streaming functions was not that difficult. Volumio found all my network shares & Plex server easily. Access to the box via my phone's browser was also pretty simple. Pretty much all functions can be controlled remotely that way, or by using a web browser on a laptop, desktop or tablet (windows & mac).
- Spotify connect was enabled easily enough through an available plugin for Volumio.
- Volumio has native tidal and Qobuz support for the paid license.
- There's always airplay and bluetooth connectivity built in for when you have no other more direct streaming options.
Now, onto what went wrong:
Installing the software to access the 'DSP' part of the Hifiberry board proved to be quite a challenge!
- The DSP Tools software package that interfaces with the DSP chipset requires a recent version of Python. Volumio is built on an older version which the DSP Tools doesn't support. So a Python 3.x version needed to be compiled and installed.
- The instructions to do this, while lengthy, did not look too daunting. I'm no stranger to the Linux command line, though not an expert by any stretch of the imagination.
- This also means getting 2 versions of Python to play nice together on the same machine in such a way that the applications that require the older version can find it, as well as other applications/packages requiring Python 3.x to be able to find it. This is where I ran into trouble, Errors upon errors returned after following instructions to the letter. I ended up reformatting the SD card and starting from scratch 3 times to get this right. In the end, I have not yet been able to get DSPtools installed correctly in order to access the DSP functions.
- I have had some wonderful help from a user over on the Volumio forums that has a similar hardware setup. I'll post updates.
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