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

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

  1. songmic

    songmic Gear cycler East Asia edition

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    So it's possible to run HQPlayer / Audirvana / Roon with PI2AES? If so, what OS does the PI2AES run on?

    I'm wondering if it's also possible to, say, play YouTube (at least only the audio) with PI2AES, like how I do with my desktop computer.

    Sorry if I sound like a dummy but I have zero experience with RPi, I've only followed Marv's instructions on the first page and that's all I know.
     
    Last edited: Oct 26, 2020
  2. Ksaurav402

    Ksaurav402 Friend

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    I use Pi2AES as streamer and don’t do any heavy lifting in it. If you follow this approach then you will run Roon or Audirvana on your laptop or server and stream it to Pi2AES via RAAT or UPnP/DLNA respectively. I use RopieeXL and it works fine with both.
    If you use Pi2AES just as streamer then you can stream the audio of YouTube via Airplay from your iPhone or via DLNA from other hardware
     
  3. Michael Kelly

    Michael Kelly MOT: Pi 2 Design

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    since you can power both the raspberry pi and our board from a single PSU, having power over Ethernet would not seem to benefit much. You would still need a power supply feeding the POE ethernet cable. if you had multiple devices using POE that might make more sense because then you could have a single POE switch powering multiple devices over POE.
     
  4. dllmsch

    dllmsch Friend

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    To add to what @Ksaurav402 just said, you can also stream audio from laptop/android phone via the built in bluetooth adapter in Pi4. If you use Moode there's a SOX resampler as well, but I personally prefer the 8x OS filter from bifrost 2 more than SOX.
     
  5. Metro

    Metro Friend

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    Why do you feel a need to upsample? Most DACs already do oversampling internally during their D-to-A processing.
     
  6. synapses

    synapses New

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    Anyone ordered one of these recently? Purchased back on 10/11 and haven't heard anything back, although I might have missed an update on production from further back in the thread. No problems if they're built in batches, just curious as to timeline.
     
  7. farbinator

    farbinator Facebook Friend

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    Yep, that's exactly the use case I was thinking of. I love PoE, I use it for wireless APs and one PoE IP security camera at the moment.

    I realize this is probably a little uncommon right now, I have POE available in a few locations of my current house and in a few years when my family settles down in out permanent house, I plan to have PoE more readily available.
     
  8. Michael Kelly

    Michael Kelly MOT: Pi 2 Design

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    I'm very sorry that we have been unable to meet the demand is reliably as we have hoped. We do build them in batches because frankly it simply takes a certain amount of money to purchase the parts in sufficient quantities to keep the cost down. Not complaining, just explaining!

    we do have a 250-piece build proceeding at a contract manufacturer that we have used on other large projects in the past. but it is not going to be in hand here for another few weeks. In the meantime we've built up 50 units which I have received half last week and I'm picking up the other half later this week. So for an order from the middle of October that should be in that second batch. please feel free to send an email to us for better status. And again sorry.
     
  9. Michael Kelly

    Michael Kelly MOT: Pi 2 Design

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    Just curious, what level of POE are you providing from your switch? I have done POE projects in the past and was involved in some of the early testing back when most of my work was in network computing.
     
  10. farbinator

    farbinator Facebook Friend

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    My current setup is an older 8 port BV-Tech PoE-SW800G, which does 802.3af/at, 130W at 30W max per port. Nothing fancy but it does the job reliably.

    The network wiring in my house was put in by a previous owner and the central wiring node is in a weird place (MBR closet), so I then project power to a PoE self powered switch (Netgear GS105PE) which then passes the power on to a wireless AP and one IP camera. Definitely a bit Millenium Falcon but it works!
     
  11. synapses

    synapses New

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    Thanks for the update! Completely understand how these sorts of things go for small runs - just wanted to make sure I didn't slip through the cracks. Happy to wait, and looking forward to hearing how it sounds (and not having to set up my laptop with Gungnir for a night of music).
     
  12. dllmsch

    dllmsch Friend

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    I'm planning to get an LPS to try out with the Pi2AES, but on the other thread I read that the newer board require something at least around 14-15V to power the Pi2. The board that I received recently was rev.P3 and have +12-48V stated on it, Would a 12V 2A LPS be sufficient to power it or do I better go 24V?
     
  13. Michael Kelly

    Michael Kelly MOT: Pi 2 Design

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    Unfortunately I created that confusion when I stated that the preferred voltage was above 14 or 15 volts. Even though the PCBs are still marked 12V we do have a note on the website about this.

    However, having said all that the reason we increased the recommended voltage was that we had a small number of boards that failed to a boot reliably at 10 volts. That is the level that we tested to ensure that at 12 volts everything is always okay. The upshot of all this is that there's a very good chance you're bored will work just fine at 12 volts.
     
  14. Baten

    Baten Friend

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    No I'm not! :D
     
  15. dubharmonic

    dubharmonic Friend

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    After more experimentation, I've noticed that the Pi2AES is a far better match than Unison for the newer soft and ethereal Hifiman models.
     
  16. Failed Engineer

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    I recently updated the Wavelight firmware from 1.04 to 1.09 and now the I2S output from the Pi2AES just works. Same crappy throwaway HDMI cable. I don't know if this was implemented on a previous firmware version between 1.04 and 1.09 but reporting my experience.
     
  17. Michael Kelly

    Michael Kelly MOT: Pi 2 Design

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    That's great news! Sounds like the rockna guys are pretty top-notch folks.
     
  18. dllmsch

    dllmsch Friend

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    Got myself an LPS to test, with jumper on to power both RPi and Pi2AES.
    I was planning to get a 24V one but figure why not bypass the onboard switcher as well, so I ended up with a 5V 3.5A one.
    I think i get a slightly warmer tone, slightly blacker background, less sibilance and a tad bit more plankton. Overall I would call it an improvement, but the difference is really small. However
    So do it at your own risk if anyone's interested.
     
  19. HotRatSalad

    HotRatSalad Friend

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    Dumb question, I use Jriver on w10 pc. Can I control what's playing over wifi to it ? My PC is hardwired ethernet, pi2 would be on wifi. Would the pi2 be a configurable device in Jriver ? I dont stream only files...
     
  20. Aklegal

    Aklegal Friend

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    Yes. Just install volumio on the Pi. Jriver on your PC will then see volumio as an endpoint you can stream files to. There are some settings in volumio you will have to change but it is fairly easy to do.
     

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