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

Oh the forums. Good call!

 

Allo's GUI for DietPi is rather minimal, the only thing you get are toggles for various streaming protocols (Roon, Airplay, UPnP etc) and some device stats. It's not really meant for GUI operation

 

Now Volumio stopped working too. I think I may have confused it by registering 2 devices with a virtuoso plan which only allows for one device. It had the other one turned on. I switched it to this Pi2AES turned on, but that didn’t fix it. So I erased both devices from my Volumio and re-flashed this card with Volumio and set it up again. It plays in Volumio but no sound comes out of the Pi2AES. And mconnect doesn’t see it. There’s definitely something going wrong here.

this is all so damn buggy i want to pull all my hair out. Mconnect won’t see my moOde card and now Volumio isn’t working.

seems there is a bigger problem then just mconnect being weird with MoOde.

I’m having to listen to USB which is unbearable now after hearing the Pi2AES. Grainy and fuzzy. Even unison USB.

 

looks pretty good for a settings interface. I was thinking more about the bundled audio player app UI. Thanks for the info!

 

Others have commented here but just to add that I also feel Volumio's integrated Tidal bests streaming Tidal via AirPlay.

Also, I am eyeing up an ultra rare DAC from the 90's that is jitter and source sensitive - I've read here that jitter on the Pi2AES seems to be very low and Marv rates the Pi2AES as better than his Marantz as a transport - is it insane to put a rarified and pretty expensive DAC in a chain with the Pi2AES (using Volumio to stream Tidal)?

Has anyone got any comparisons of the Pi2AES with top-end transports?

 

I use Pi2AES with Yggdrasil, Sonnet Morpheus, and Holo Spring 2. I've used more expensive transports (Metrum Ambre, Auralic Aries) with some of those DACs or their comparable predecessors. Pi2AES is as good or better than than them, and so good to my ears that I have no incentive to explore other, pricier, transports.

 

It's all about the music. I'm sure it feels a bit like putting a V8 into a Vega (I assume no one under 50 gets that reference), but if the sound is better, then that is the bottom line. No?

 

Yup. PI2AES isn't just a good, cost effective transport. It's good - period. You might find better for more money, but having listened to a bunch of more expensive transports, you'd probably have to spend a bunch more to beat it. That makes it a really good value component (much like the SW51+).

 

Not only do I get it, I had one.

 

Thanks for your responses here - sorry to labour on this query but I've uncovered one point of nervosa and that is that this vintage DAC doesn't do any reclocking - all the data it receives relies on the quality of the clock or the signal of the source or the transport, and from what I can gather the majority of more modern DACs do reclock (e.g., the Pavane reclocks everything so I guess the Sonnet may do too) - so there's a subtlety here that might or might not be important (I really have no idea) but wanted to raise it just to scratch that nervosa itch - what difference does an absence of reclocking make? And if it makes a significant difference, does anyone have any experience of a non-reclocking DAC in a chain with the Pi2AES?

Apologies if I've misunderstood subtleties of non-reclocking v. reclocking, or the relationship between the DAC and the source/transport, or if this whole thing just doesn't matter, but would welcome a nervosa panacea.

 

All inputs are reclocked except for I2S. AES and SPDIF both have embedded clocking and the receiving end must extract the clock. This is done with a circuit called a PLL that in essence "reclocks". What input does your "vintage" dac support?

 

Thanks Michael - AES and SPDIF but no I2S.

 

this means that the quality of the clock that goes to the DAC circuit is a combination of the transport stream clock and the internal PLL of the receiving circuitry. Obviously you want both to be as high quality as possible because they both affect the resulting sound.

 

The coupon code "SBAF" is back! Choose any case (even the 7") and it's free, just pay shipping. 2021 will be awesome.

 

Has anyone ever not received the middle stand-offs? I got the short ones that go between the Pi and the bottom plate, and the 2*female long ones that go between the Pi2AES and the top plate, but not the ones that go between the Pi and the Pi2AES... just wrote to see whether I mis-ordered or something, but wanted to see if that sounded familiar to anyone....?

j

 

It's a small company, mistakes happen. Just contact them and they'll fix it.

 

Done, he responded right away naturally. Hard to get all the help packing that they usually have during the pandemic. Definitely a gentleman.

 

Has anyone here had any experience with working with PI2AES with DAWs and music notation software? I intend to use PI2AES with stuff like Adobe Audition and Finale. Is there any easy way of setting this up?

 

Thanks Michael for doing this for us SBAF'ers. Much appreciated.

 

Finally got the screws on the box.
Enjoying sound of the AES out as roon endpoint!!