Looks like the Cubox-i I4 pro is unobtanium at the original costs or the "25 Euro for 2". Guess it had its run and I missed the boat while I was asleep. Now it's a vintage collectible.
I had a Pi 3B that I bought during a visit to the computer museum in Seattle. As the world turned, it sat in a drawer for a couple years - guess I sleep a lot. I figured why not give it a try - after seeing all the activity here.
FWIW, I'm not displeased with the sound, with just the Pi and the HifiBerry I2S amp, with a 24V 6A linear, probably running at <1W level my wife allows me without "could you make it lower" complaint. Yes, WiFi; holes are much more difficult to drill through house walls. Yes, "convenience" - cant be beat - ANY selection in my NAS hosted .flac collection is literally 3 mouse clicks away; from idea to listening.
I'm glad I finally did it.
I had a Pi 3B that I bought during a visit to the computer museum in Seattle. As the world turned, it sat in a drawer for a couple years - guess I sleep a lot. I figured why not give it a try - after seeing all the activity here.
FWIW, I'm not displeased with the sound, with just the Pi and the HifiBerry I2S amp, with a 24V 6A linear, probably running at <1W level my wife allows me without "could you make it lower" complaint. Yes, WiFi; holes are much more difficult to drill through house walls. Yes, "convenience" - cant be beat - ANY selection in my NAS hosted .flac collection is literally 3 mouse clicks away; from idea to listening.
I'm glad I finally did it.
Hi I guess we both like vintage collectible hardware as RPI 3 and Cubox-i I4 pro are about the same age 🙂 Furthermore it does not make much difference as computing power of both is way more than enough for audio. the Cubox offers more useful audio usable hardware for the money I think. Of course I paid a low price but that is the fun of it. More fun than being an early adopter paying the full price and having to cope with all kinds of bugs. Since I take everything apart and mod it too the risk is high and then a low price also helps. Today I bought a tube hybrid preamp for 75 Euro. If one is busy continuously with audio stuff accumulates and disappears fast. Today I also noticed I built 12 ultra low noise PSU's for my devices which makes it really time to get rid of some stuff.
The drilling of holes in walls is not that hard. An SDS drill and a few hours work but finishing it so that wall sockets are installed is time consuming indeed but it does pay off. If the motto is to do it right straight away no job is tedious.
The drilling of holes in walls is not that hard. An SDS drill and a few hours work but finishing it so that wall sockets are installed is time consuming indeed but it does pay off. If the motto is to do it right straight away no job is tedious.
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I bought a 2020 Subaru Outback with an upgraded sound system. Planning the first road trip, guess what, no CD player. At the dealer the after purchase bolt on upgrade is ~ $200.
I am thinking about other options; walkman, portable server or whatever.
Thoughts?
I do have a gob of easy to use CD's.
Thanks DT
There are USB, analog and bluetooth inputs.
I am thinking about other options; walkman, portable server or whatever.
Thoughts?
I do have a gob of easy to use CD's.
Thanks DT
There are USB, analog and bluetooth inputs.
The most difficult solution would be the very rare and hard to find 64 gb USB stick (flash drive) and to put your music on it in 320 kbit MP3 format. Not for the faint hearted but it takes courage sometimes. Just like operating the car radio playing from USB which is far more dangerous than fumbling with CD's while on the road. We are living in strange times.
Tip: buy, beg or steal the smallest/shortest 64 gb USB stick you can find as the ones sticking out are easily damaged and the cars USB port also often fails afterwards.
Did I read "a Walkman" ?
Tip: buy, beg or steal the smallest/shortest 64 gb USB stick you can find as the ones sticking out are easily damaged and the cars USB port also often fails afterwards.
Did I read "a Walkman" ?
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I recently took a stab at moving forward with a digital front end.
I don’t think I’m necessarily in the “Luddite” category, but I will say that I often find trying to get new computer based technology to do what you want it to...or what it is “supposed” to do can be a nightmare. I suspect this is often the reason why there is reluctance to take the leap into this area of audio.
I didn’t completely sacrifice my ability to play media. I had wanted to build a Shigaclone for a while, so I did. It works...and I have the option to pop discs in from my collection that I haven’t taken the time to rip digitally. To be honest, I haven’t been using it much.
Along with the Shigaclone I decided I wanted to be able to try different DACs so I could explore what has been happening over the last 30 years since the TDA1541 in my now defunct Rotel 855 player caught my fancy.
I’ve been listening through a SMSL M8 which I picked up dirt cheap in the swap meet. It has the early Sabre ES9018 chip that everyone seemed to go nuts over.
It is a nice sounding DAC. I compared it to the 855 when it was still functioning and it gave me the impression that it had some more detail. I still haven’t given up on my favorite TDA1541. I’m currently building a NOS DAC based on it to see what that’s all about.
I also decided to finally set up a dedicated Mac based playback system after I read an article on PS Audio’s site about using a Mac Mini as the basis of a headless music server. I only attempted this because it seemed well documented and fairly straightforward. It was supposed to provide a high quality playback experience within iTunes.
I bought an older refurbished Mini with an internal 1TB SSD and its memory maxed out. I also got an external 1TB HDD to use for backups. An additional benefit of the older model was that it came with an integrated optical drive I can rip my CDs with and it has a digital audio output I can connect to my DAC with a mini stereo Toslink adapter cable.
Everything set up reasonably well. However, I have not tried any of the Bitperfect software mentioned in the article which is supposed to provide features like playing files from RAM and controlling file bitrate during playback so it is not up or down sampled. There was also an add on that was supposed to allow playback of DSD files via iTunes.
The reason I haven’t tried the Bitperfect software is because my friend purchased it shortly after I shared my intentions of the Mini purchase with him. He already had a Mac to try it on. He has not been successful in getting the software to work the way it is supposed to regarding playback of higher bitrate files within iTunes.
So, I have a digital music playback system that is limited by whatever files and controls Apple and iTunes have in place that govern playback.
I have basically scrapped all of my previous digital collection as it was mainly MP3. Anything I now rip from my collection of CDs as lossless is usually AIFF. Any downloads I have that are FLAC have to be converted in Foobar if I want them to play in iTunes on the Mini.
It is all really a hassle and time consuming. The one thing I was enjoying was the ability to stream Apple Radio which is often what I have on in the background during the day.
That enjoyment was lost once I set up my iPad and iPhone to use as a remote so that I could get rid of the keyboard and monitor that I used to set the Mini up so it was actually “headless”.
Evidently the remote App doesn’t allow me to pull up Apple Radio as one can in iTunes on the Mini. Instead it simply gives me a list of useless internet radio stations I never listen to.
I’ve simply gone back to plugging my iPad into my system when I want to play music from Apple Radio or Pandora.
At this point I’ve walked away from the problem with the Mini music server. I think that I will probably have to try and find different software that actually has the features, sound quality and reliability that I want. For some reason that seems like a pipe dream. The promises made by the different companies marketing these and many types of software seem reliant on the user either being lucky or a computer programmer. The market is driven forward at break neck speed and issues of incompatibility seem unavoidable in a world where they are looking for you to constantly be plunking down your paycheck for the latest and greatest that they have churned out regardless of the glitches and problems that are still present.
Not that I’m bitter about it 😉
I don’t think I’m necessarily in the “Luddite” category, but I will say that I often find trying to get new computer based technology to do what you want it to...or what it is “supposed” to do can be a nightmare. I suspect this is often the reason why there is reluctance to take the leap into this area of audio.
I didn’t completely sacrifice my ability to play media. I had wanted to build a Shigaclone for a while, so I did. It works...and I have the option to pop discs in from my collection that I haven’t taken the time to rip digitally. To be honest, I haven’t been using it much.
Along with the Shigaclone I decided I wanted to be able to try different DACs so I could explore what has been happening over the last 30 years since the TDA1541 in my now defunct Rotel 855 player caught my fancy.
I’ve been listening through a SMSL M8 which I picked up dirt cheap in the swap meet. It has the early Sabre ES9018 chip that everyone seemed to go nuts over.
It is a nice sounding DAC. I compared it to the 855 when it was still functioning and it gave me the impression that it had some more detail. I still haven’t given up on my favorite TDA1541. I’m currently building a NOS DAC based on it to see what that’s all about.
I also decided to finally set up a dedicated Mac based playback system after I read an article on PS Audio’s site about using a Mac Mini as the basis of a headless music server. I only attempted this because it seemed well documented and fairly straightforward. It was supposed to provide a high quality playback experience within iTunes.
I bought an older refurbished Mini with an internal 1TB SSD and its memory maxed out. I also got an external 1TB HDD to use for backups. An additional benefit of the older model was that it came with an integrated optical drive I can rip my CDs with and it has a digital audio output I can connect to my DAC with a mini stereo Toslink adapter cable.
Everything set up reasonably well. However, I have not tried any of the Bitperfect software mentioned in the article which is supposed to provide features like playing files from RAM and controlling file bitrate during playback so it is not up or down sampled. There was also an add on that was supposed to allow playback of DSD files via iTunes.
The reason I haven’t tried the Bitperfect software is because my friend purchased it shortly after I shared my intentions of the Mini purchase with him. He already had a Mac to try it on. He has not been successful in getting the software to work the way it is supposed to regarding playback of higher bitrate files within iTunes.
So, I have a digital music playback system that is limited by whatever files and controls Apple and iTunes have in place that govern playback.
I have basically scrapped all of my previous digital collection as it was mainly MP3. Anything I now rip from my collection of CDs as lossless is usually AIFF. Any downloads I have that are FLAC have to be converted in Foobar if I want them to play in iTunes on the Mini.
It is all really a hassle and time consuming. The one thing I was enjoying was the ability to stream Apple Radio which is often what I have on in the background during the day.
That enjoyment was lost once I set up my iPad and iPhone to use as a remote so that I could get rid of the keyboard and monitor that I used to set the Mini up so it was actually “headless”.
Evidently the remote App doesn’t allow me to pull up Apple Radio as one can in iTunes on the Mini. Instead it simply gives me a list of useless internet radio stations I never listen to.
I’ve simply gone back to plugging my iPad into my system when I want to play music from Apple Radio or Pandora.
At this point I’ve walked away from the problem with the Mini music server. I think that I will probably have to try and find different software that actually has the features, sound quality and reliability that I want. For some reason that seems like a pipe dream. The promises made by the different companies marketing these and many types of software seem reliant on the user either being lucky or a computer programmer. The market is driven forward at break neck speed and issues of incompatibility seem unavoidable in a world where they are looking for you to constantly be plunking down your paycheck for the latest and greatest that they have churned out regardless of the glitches and problems that are still present.
Not that I’m bitter about it 😉
I just load a fresh CD into the drive every 10 minutes or so while listening to something else. It took a few weeks (well, maybe more than a few) but they all got ripped eventually.
Long time Apple user here but certainly not for playing back music. Vendor lock in in a severe form (AIFF, iTunes etc.) and a true hassle and too much time consuming. In recent models now also hardware lock in to make it worse. If it becomes even more worse it is bye bye Apple for me. They have become way too patronising and think they can get away with everything.
An RPI (some might think I am anti-RPI but I just think there are better devices out there) but they are a dream compared to using Apple Mac mini with Mac OS for music. Choosing Apple for music playback is a good example of a system choice that has quite some consequences. I would go so far by calling it a wrong choice as any solution should be able to play the meanwhile standard FLAC files.
Volumio seems a good candidate for your wishes. No experience with the Primo but it also seems a stable device.
An RPI (some might think I am anti-RPI but I just think there are better devices out there) but they are a dream compared to using Apple Mac mini with Mac OS for music. Choosing Apple for music playback is a good example of a system choice that has quite some consequences. I would go so far by calling it a wrong choice as any solution should be able to play the meanwhile standard FLAC files.
Volumio seems a good candidate for your wishes. No experience with the Primo but it also seems a stable device.
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For the main playback at home, I’m using a media player that uses an arm32 processor, ak4118, puts out 12s to my dac mounted in the same case. It reads lossless files from SD cards, which is a hairshirt process compared to my daughter’s Bluetooth amp setup, but sounds great.
At work, the headphone amp uses a usb dac running wav and flac files from my laptop pc/VLC media player, and makes sense for that environment where the pc is always on and available.
Files are stored on a thumb drive.
At work, the headphone amp uses a usb dac running wav and flac files from my laptop pc/VLC media player, and makes sense for that environment where the pc is always on and available.
Files are stored on a thumb drive.
I have been using Daphile for over 10 years and have unplugged my CD player and put it in the closet years ago. I was looking at upgrading my dac but also decided to look at some of the streamers commercially available. The manufacturers don’t seem to like publishing what dac chips they are using inside and it kind of leaves me to believe sticking with what I have and upgrading the dac may offer the best cost/performance option.
Bill
Bill
I moved from CD / SACD to a small headless Daphile System just a few months ago and never regretted it. My Yamaha Multiplayer is in the drawer now and only comes out every once in a while when I want to watch a BluRay Video disc.
The reason for my move was simply that I was not satisfied with the difference in sound quality between SACD and CD. Even after compensating the volume, the 44.1-tracks usually sounded way better. Reason was simple: 44.1 signal could be passed digitally to my Rotel 1570 Preamp, while DSD had to be processed inside the player and passed over on analog line level.
After learning how to rip the DSD layer to disc, converting to 88.2 / 24 bit FLAC and storing these files on Daphile, I now have a completely different experience. When recording engineers have done a proper job, those converted DSD layers are much more brilliant, detailed, and dynamic.
What might be interesting as an alternative to Daphile is a real open source solution, so I could participate in enhancing the software.
The reason for my move was simply that I was not satisfied with the difference in sound quality between SACD and CD. Even after compensating the volume, the 44.1-tracks usually sounded way better. Reason was simple: 44.1 signal could be passed digitally to my Rotel 1570 Preamp, while DSD had to be processed inside the player and passed over on analog line level.
After learning how to rip the DSD layer to disc, converting to 88.2 / 24 bit FLAC and storing these files on Daphile, I now have a completely different experience. When recording engineers have done a proper job, those converted DSD layers are much more brilliant, detailed, and dynamic.
What might be interesting as an alternative to Daphile is a real open source solution, so I could participate in enhancing the software.