Basic hi end Pi streamer - BOM

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DaveInPA

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Joined 2020
#1
I know.. lots and lots of info on building a steamer from RaspberryPi and this is not a new thread by any means. However I am looking to build a Pi based streamer with best parts and power supplies and put it all in a nice chassis and the add on options to the Pi are where I’m getting lost.

Goal is to output digital via USB or Coax Spdif to an external DAC (Pontus ii from denafrips) then my preamp and then my amp. Today I’m using a blue node 2 with an upgraded external linear power supply. Sounds good to me but I just started using Roon and need a new project.

Looking at the IanCanada stuff and wondering if the following setup is what I need…

  • RaspPi 4 running ropieee
  • something that takes digital stream from Pi on the GPIOs and sends using I2S to another board
  • is this other board a “reclocker” which is a better digital out than anything the Pi would do natively? Assuming so I would upgrade this with premium clocks
  • use the clockers digital out on coax or usb to my external dac
  • need a linear power supply with beefy transformers to provide power to Pi and clocker. Do I need separate power supplies for Pi vs. reclocker?

Is above sufficient or do I need anything else in this chain? My sources are easy - I stream tidal only and no local files. Do I have to worry about drivers or is there a better setup if sound quality is my goal here? Welcome guidance as this will be my first DIY audio component build.
 
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#2
Rather than jumping in spending lots of money and time on equipment you may not need, I'd start simple, and build from there as and when necessary.
  • Use an RPi 4 or 5 USB output direct to your Pontus (looking at the specs, the highest performance is achieved with USB input, so you may not need to use I2S). RPi4/5 USB quality/performance is much improved over previous models.
  • Given that your Pontus has 'Adaptive FIFO Buffer Reclocking', do you need a separate reclocker?
After a while testing the above, you may identify areas of improvement, such as a linear PSU, an RPi HAT for digital output such as Digital Goodness etc.

RPi Audio can be a bottomless pit, or simply and cheaply rewarding. Either way is fun!
 
#3
A USB async DAC does not need RPi at all, any small fanless x86 PC would do. No need to do any buffer reclocking for properly designed USB-async (which this device may be, considering it uses XMOS as USB-I2S bridge and claims to use a separate crystal for each rate family)
 
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#4
Yatsushiro said:
Rather than jumping in spending lots of money and time on equipment you may not need, I'd start simple, and build from there as and when necessary.
  • Use an RPi 4 or 5 USB output direct to your Pontus (looking at the specs, the highest performance is achieved with USB input, so you may not need to use I2S). RPi4/5 USB quality/performance is much improved over previous models.
  • Given that your Pontus has 'Adaptive FIFO Buffer Reclocking', do you need a separate reclocker?
After a while testing the above, you may identify areas of improvement, such as a linear PSU, an RPi HAT for digital output such as Digital Goodness etc.

RPi Audio can be a bottomless pit, or simply and cheaply rewarding. Either way is fun!
Click to expand...
Thanks, that is some practical advice and makes sense. One question, I’m using coax spdif output from my current streamer to the DAC. What in the DAC specs tells you USB might be a better interface to use?

My take away is that a quality DAC would do the job of a reclocker on top of a Pi so it’s redundant. Therefore I would only need another board if I wanted to improve on the usb output.
 
#8
I’m not deep on this so asking to be educated. Why would getting the digital signal from the GPIO be worse than usb port? The digital stream from GPIO would be fed to a reclocker device which would get it ready to be fed to a DAC over spdif
 
#9
RPi is a conducted and radiated EMI/RFI source. The GPIO bus is noisy and high jitter, although it can be externally clocked from a dac. In that case reclocking could be possible. I designed a reclocker with some isolation in the thread at: https://www.diyaudio.com/community/threads/general-purpose-dac-clock-board.413001/ Link to reclocker is in first post.

Much easier to use USB, put a little physical separation between the dac and RPi (or buy or design your own shielding and isolator board). Make the dac fully synchronous and use Asynchronous USB to RPi.

A compact USB solution with very high quality clocking is available at: https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...soverusb-pcm2dsd-rtz-dac.423401/#post-7917601 The USB board includes galvanic isolation from the USB bus.
 
#10
My DAC is separate commercial device so I just need streamer to dac over usb or spdif. I think I’m learning since my DAC has a fifo and reclocks I just need to isolate and clean up any noise from usb.

My goal here is a better streamer sound quality than commercial blue node blue sound 2s…
 
#12
DaveInPA said:
My DAC is separate commercial device so I just need streamer to dac over usb or spdif. I think I’m learning since my DAC has a fifo and reclocks I just need to isolate and clean up any noise from usb.

My goal here is a better streamer sound quality than commercial blue node blue sound 2s…
Click to expand...

All you need is a mini PC with a capable CPU and HQPLayerPro. Pontus can go pretty high with sample rates, so you can play with PCM and DSD up to the current maximum available in the industry. Nice.

The Pontus USB card should be galvanically isolated, which means that the mini PC will power up the USB card. So, use a good-quality USB cable and a very low-noise linear power supply to power up the mini PC.

... and you are done.
 
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