Dummies Guide to Pi2AES! Throw away your PC or laptop.

Discussion in 'Digital: DACs, USB converters, decrapifiers' started by purr1n, Jan 29, 2020.

  1. SPAZ

    SPAZ New

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    Thanks for the feedback on youtube casting. Exactly the news I wanted to hear :)
     
  2. ohshitgorillas

    ohshitgorillas Friend

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    Well if there's no I2S period then, yeah, that would be a problem. Maybe just a mini-3 pin AES then? Which would be an even more asinine and terrible product that would only apply to two of their DACs.... bah, just let me dream.

    I'm working with a Bifrost 2, so the best I can do is either Unison or BNC>RCA coax and I've barely had the time to fairly compare the two with a half decent USB source. I definitely considered a USBridge Sig, but the Pi2AES was 25% cheaper, smaller (more easily portable from setup to setup), and more versatile: not all DACs have Unison USB, but just about everything has SPDIF... and if, god forbid, I ever upgrade my DAC, I won't also have to upgrade my transport to keep up.

    In the mean time, the Pi2/B2 combo sounds stunningly good. I just slapped a 9" DH Labs Silver Sonic BNC>RCA cable together and it's even better. The levels of fine detail my setup is reaching down into are just... it's hard to describe. I suppose it might be what y'all call plankton. These sort of super-fine textural details in just about every sound, even synthetic ones. Image placement is super accurate, with abundant air and depth. Gorgeous.
     
  3. Yethal

    Yethal Facebook Friend

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    Volumio has a youtube plugin
     
  4. Metro

    Metro Friend

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    Can you tell us more? There is no YouTube plugin in the Volumio I downloaded and installed a week ago.

    I found a thread in the Volumio forum (https://forum.volumio.org/youtube-for-volumio-t6608.html), but a lot of people seem to have trouble getting the plugin to work, and the instructions to manually install are unclear even for me as a software engineer.
     
  5. Scott Kramer

    Scott Kramer Friend

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    There's i2s everywhere* in schiit dacs, usb/spdif is just the pre-game. Ya just can't quite get at it, unison is closest.

    *it's just flappin' around in the breeze
     
    Last edited: May 21, 2020
  6. Biodegraded

    Biodegraded Friend

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    It used to be in the list of available 'offical' plugins shown in the plugins/music services menu in the settings, as seen here:

    https://volumio.github.io/docs/Plugin_System/Plugin_System_Overview

    But looking just now, I see it's no longer on the list (although my legacy install remains on both my devices). Maybe it was removed because of the complaints about its flaky behaviour.
     
  7. Clemmaster

    Clemmaster Friend

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    Are you done making that I2S board for the Bifrost 2, yet?

    ;)
     
  8. Yethal

    Yethal Facebook Friend

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    According to this comment that's exactly what happened.
     
  9. batriq

    batriq Probably has made you smarter

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    Sorry if this is redundant info. I'm on a mac, and Etcher didn't work, so I ran these commands:

    $ diskutil list external physical
    $ diskutil eraseDisk FAT32 RASPBIAN MBRFormat diskX
    $ diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskX
    $ sudo dd if=~/Downloads/volumio-2.773-2020-05-05-pi.img of=/dev/diskX bs=1m


    where diskX is the name of the disk representing the memory card, which you get from the first command; for example, disk3.

    Please be careful with these commands.
     
  10. earnmyturns

    earnmyturns Smartest friend

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    "Etcher" has been replaced by "BalenaEtcher" which has worked for me recently.
     
  11. batriq

    batriq Probably has made you smarter

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    Correct. That's what I used and it did not work. All the software in the commands I used is already on the mac, so no need to download anything.
     
  12. TheloniuSnoop

    TheloniuSnoop Friend

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    Has Volumio stopped working for any of you? It stopped working for me two days ago. It shows that it's playing music, but it's not sending the signal to my Pi.
     
  13. Metro

    Metro Friend

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    No problem for me. What is your music source (Spotify, Qobuz, USB drive, etc)? Have you tried restarting the Pi?
     
  14. Phantaminum

    Phantaminum Friend

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    If you haven't, power cycle it. It bugs out for me as well when I don't after a few days. The power cycle fixes it.
     
  15. TheloniuSnoop

    TheloniuSnoop Friend

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    I only power it up when I use it. Mostly it stays off. I use Qobuz mostly, but also use Spotify, which does the same thing; shows music playing, but it doesn't make it to the Pi. Both the Pi and audio boards show power, but the audio board signal indicator light doesn't come on any more.
     
  16. Metro

    Metro Friend

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    On my audio board, the green power light and red 44.1k light are turned on after power up, even without playing any audio. Hopefully @Michael Kelly can provide some help.
     
  17. Dr J

    Dr J Friend

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    Just a thought: are you by any chance using separate power supplies for the Pi and the Pi2AES?

    Because if you are, you need to power up the Pi2AES first for the PI to detect it. Although probably there should be a big error saying there is no output device...
     
  18. Michael Kelly

    Michael Kelly MOT: Pi 2 Design

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    Volumio plays a short piece of music at 44.1 kHz when it starts up. Do the rest of your tracks play correctly?
     
  19. rlow

    rlow A happy woofer

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    May be a dumb question, but did you try to power cycle your DAC? Or try powering it up in a different order than the Pi2AES?
     
  20. TheloniuSnoop

    TheloniuSnoop Friend

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    My Pi2AES only uses a single, regulated power supply, at 23.75 VDC. The only light that I get on the audio board is the green power light. Nothing else comes on, even though Volumio shows that music is playing. It was working fine until a few days ago, then nothing.

    Thanks for all the suggestions, but nothing works. One thing: I'm still running Windows 7 if that makes a difference.
     

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