IanCanada's Latest RPi GB Goodies Impressions... and your tweaks, mods and hints...

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I've had a bunch of the goodies from Ian's latest and greatest Group Buy on hand for a bit over a week now, with various combinations making music since this last Monday. NONE of it is broken in yet and I have a LOT of combinations and variations to try still... so no impressions to post YET.

BUT I'm starting this thread as a way to gather impressions and info about his GB RPi goodies... the FiFoPi, various DACs and I/V / output stages along with the ESS DAC controller, the LiFePO4 supply, the updated IsolatorPi, and a bunch of supporting accessories.

Anyone got any sonic impressions or tips they'd like to share.

Me, I'd like to get through a few more of the permutations I'm planning to try before starting to share how they work. PLUS I still have bits and pieces arriving... LL1544a's AND LKS discrete opamps both delivered today. A few more orders are yet outstanding. AND a few more to get in.

I'll update at some point what I've got and what I'm trying.

In the meantime, post away!

Greg in Mississippi

P.S. Anyone got any good alternative clocks worth trying? I have 22/24 & 45/49 Crysteks AND various NDK's... 22/24 & 45/49 SDAs, selected 90/98's from Acko, and a TON of standard SDs. Anyone got a good source for high-grade Connor-Winfield's or other possible alternatives?
 
I did not tried ll1544, but I tried ll1684 amphorous core. It was great! Unitll I hooked up teramoto finemet :) Can't go back to amphorous now.
I also tried lifepo4. Same again here, it was great until I hooked up supercaps :)
Pity that pulsar clocks are no more available :(
I am also interested in magicxtal.

How much? :eek: Meanwhile back on planet earth....:D

I am super impressed with the way Ian makes his stuff, its so well thought out and user friendly but I have one suggestion/tweak.

I added a couple of plastic spacers to my baseplate for supporting the middle of the LiPo4 pcb. There is quite a lot of weight when loaded and I thought it would help the mechanical integrity as it is just supported round the edge. They just bear on the bottom of the board in a couple of places between the copper and take some load.

Obviously.... DON'T USE METAL if you do the same.
 
I just assembled one battery supply and have a question: the supply only works when connected to the mains. Is it not possible to use it off the mains as a portable battery supply?

You need external power to run the microcontroller, display, relays, monitoring etc. I think it's kind of missing the point if it was possible to use one of your hard won clean battery rails to do that. However I don't initially see any reason why you couldn't connect an external 12V battery to J5. The current draw needs to be considered though.
 
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I just assembled the setup. Need some advice on setting up the dac hat in dietpi.

I installed dietpt, roon-bridge, and raspotify. The roon device is visible and can be selected:

root@DietPi:~# aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: ALSA [bcm2835 ALSA], device 0: bcm2835 ALSA [bcm2835 ALSA]
Subdevices: 7/7
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0
Subdevice #1: subdevice #1
Subdevice #2: subdevice #2
Subdevice #3: subdevice #3
Subdevice #4: subdevice #4
Subdevice #5: subdevice #5
Subdevice #6: subdevice #6
card 0: ALSA [bcm2835 ALSA], device 1: bcm2835 ALSA [bcm2835 IEC958/HDMI]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

However when I play a song via roon there is no sound output. Roon shows the song actively playing and there is no error reported. Perhaps I need to configure the DAC hat somehow?

Any pointers are most appreciated!
 
I just assembled one battery supply and have a question: the supply only works when connected to the mains. Is it not possible to use it off the mains as a portable battery supply?

All battery rails are isolated and independent from any other circuit. If using battery to power the board itself, the isolation will be broken thus degrade the low noise performance. That's why I can not design it in that way.

It's an audio power supply, not a portable power supply:).

Have a good weekend.
Ian
 
However when I play a song via roon there is no sound output. Roon shows the song actively playing and there is no error reported. Perhaps I need to configure the DAC hat somehow?

Any pointers are most appreciated!

You need to go to dietpi-config and in the audio section pick to install the drivers for one of other i2s DAC hats. Then restart and the aplyer output should show another card that is what you need to use Roon with.
 
I just assembled the setup. Need some advice on setting up the dac hat in dietpi.

I installed dietpt, roon-bridge, and raspotify. The roon device is visible and can be selected:

I used dietpi-config to configure the sound device to hifiberry dac-plus. It seems to detect the DAC correctly:

root@DietPi:~# aplay -l
**** List of PLAYBACK Hardware Devices ****
card 0: sndrpihifiberry [snd_rpi_hifiberry_dacplus], device 0: HiFiBerry DAC+ HiFi pcm512x-hifi-0 []
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice #0

Now when I play via roon the fifopi lock light lights up. However the ESS Controller displays "No Input" and there is still no sound.

Any ideas?
 
This is displayed when playing audio via Roon or Spotify:
 

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This is displayed when playing audio via Roon or Spotify:

Hi,

Ess controller displays the real measured signal status. Your OLED shows no signal it means that your RPi did output any audio signal into GPIO. Please confirm your player software is working for the first.

BTW, you did good job assembling the LifePO4 battery cells!

Regards,
Ian
 
All battery rails are isolated and independent from any other circuit. If using battery to power the board itself, the isolation will be broken thus degrade the low noise performance. That's why I can not design it in that way.

It's an audio power supply, not a portable power supply:).

Have a good weekend.
Ian

That makes sense. Besides a fixed streamer I also want to build a portable headphone streamer, I will use a simple lifepo charge pcb from China for this.

The dac is build and playing!
 

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Hi,

Ess controller displays the real measured signal status. Your OLED shows no signal it means that your RPi did output any audio signal into GPIO. Please confirm your player software is working for the first.

BTW, you did good job assembling the LifePO4 battery cells!

Regards,
Ian

Thanks. I'll post some more photos on the construction process later.

Before I play anything the fifo shows empty and no lock. However once I started playing the fifo locks on (green light). How do I verify if the player is working? There is no error reported and roon seems to play normally, just no sound.