I have a little project to make a DIY DAC using the Soekris DIY board. I was thinking about going direct to the Soekris from an RPI using the I2S GPIO pins. These would be side by side with very short hook up wire. My thinking was that I could get a better quality signal than using the USB to I2S converter suggested in the Soekris manual. Anyone see anything wrong with this idea?
Many have done that. Its all in the "main" thread
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...te-r-2r-sign-magnitude-24-bit-384-khz.259488/
https://www.diyaudio.com/community/...te-r-2r-sign-magnitude-24-bit-384-khz.259488/
Nothing wrong, I do it as well. I implemented a hifiberry with clocks and I2S out, still works well.
the i2s on rpi GPIO is well known to be fairly high jitter vs a reasonable USB->i2s convertor. Short wires wont help this fact.
Thanks for all the great replies. I really appreciate the info. I think I will figure a way to have I2S, USB, TOSLINK etc. All available as inputs. That way I can pick the best sounding inputs. I am using a RPI with a HIFIberry hat and TOSLINK to my current SCHIIT DAC and it sounded noticeable better than the coax and USB. It should be a fun experiment. BTW I am a new member, so I am still figuring out where to post things and look for things I am interested in.
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Thanks for the reply (back in February). I finally finished my RPI/ Soekris DAC streamer. I went directly from the RPI GPIO pins to the Soekris DAC I2S inputs. I think it sounds amazing. I tried the buffered outputs first then the unbuffered and heard a considerable difference so I am using the unbuffered outputs. I've been listening to all of my music again. I am using Volumio as the operating system and there was a Soekris DAC I2S selection. I plan to post a few pictures sometime in the future. Thanks again.