Minimal car setup for rPi player

[olisturm]

Hi,

I'm new to the forums - hope this is a good place to ask my question!

I have a Moode-based music player installed on a Raspberry Pi that I've been using in my Defender for a while. At the moment, I'm connecting this to my (Pioneer) head unit using the phone jack on the rPi and the Aux in on the head unit. I don't like that setup much - sound isn't great, which I'm attributing partly to the bad connection, and the Aux-in on the head unit is on the front, which means dangling wires.

What I'd like to do is add a DAC HAT to the rPi and use its RCA outputs. The problem is only, where do I plug them in? For some reason that's beyond me, head units don't seem to have RCA inputs - at least I haven't found any that do. Perhaps they exist?

Alternatively I'd be happy to do away with the head unit. I don't need any of its features with the exception of volume control. Could I somehow hook up the rPi directly to an amp, perhaps with an extremely simple preamp for volume control? Are there (pre-)amps for cars that would work that way?

I appreciate any thoughts or suggestions!
Thanks
Oli

 

[Perry Babin]

There are passive level controllers available for about $15.

They are essentially the same as what's shown on the following page under 'preamp level controllers'.
Potentiometer

 

[olisturm]

Thanks Perry, that's a cool site you're linking to. The part I wasn't aware of are actually the signal levels - I'm a radio amateur and so quite familiar with the electronics side of things, and I've set up many home audio systems successfully over the years. However, for some reason I never knew that the signal level output by a typical RCA source is so high that the volume control actually reduces that signal for the amp.

So I guess I'll go the way of attaching my rPi directly to the amp by way of a simple level controller.

Thanks
Oli