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

Some HW kits were shipped without the M2.5 x 18mm M-F standoff. This goes between the PI and the PI2AES. If you are a US customer we will send them out asap. If you are outside of the US or Canada, the best way to get them is to order from a local source or Ali-Express. The M2.5 x 18mm M-F is not very common so if you have trouble we will send them from here. We will reimburse for the cost. We know this is our mistake and will do what we can to correct it asap.

 

Hi all,

Just setup volumino on my Pi2aes. I chose HIfi Berry Digi+ pro for my I2S Dac, but i am not getting any output signal from my coaxial/i2s output. On top of that, I get the “failed to open “alsa”” error everytime i try to play something. Anyone has any idea how to resolve the problem?

 

Oh, i managed to resolved the problem. It was the hardware volume control setting that was causing the “alsa” error. Swapping to software vol control solved the problem and I got output signal now.

 

I've been having trouble lately with Bubble UPNP and Moode skipping ahead after about 20 seconds of certain tracks. If I go back and play them agin, they still skip ahead at the same time. It's very annoying as I'm kind of an album purist. It also stops playing the album when it skips the track.

It happens on both my Pi2AES so I'm guessing it must be something with UPNP and Tidal.

Anyone else experience this?

 

I've had something similar happen with Qobuz and Audirvana. It was pretty rare and when I contacted support for both, nobody could figure it out. If I waited a day or so, the album or song in question would work fine again. So far this hasn't happened with Roon, I'm not sure if that's because their implementation of the Qobuz API is better or the issue was with Qobuz and has since been resolved.

 

Did you ever try the tidal connect setup? I had the least trouble with that and pi based tidal use. It installed to a generic linux setup (I used moode but there were people using other distros in the thread) so you need to make sure you reset the tidal app to playback to your phone (or iPad whatever) before you try playing local files on your pi or you’ll get an alsa error.

 

I didn’t think Tidal connect was even ready for Volumio and would never be available for Moode. What am I missing?

 

Read this thread. There was a command in there somewhere to make it load on reboot and read through the end of the thread as some things may have changed since I did it.

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1824083

 

Volumio added Tidal Connect back in April and works great. Update your Volumio if you haven't done it for awhile, then start up the Tidal app and you should be able to select Volumio as a cast target.

 

So, I bit the bullet and ordered a PI2AES a couple of months ago. USPS lost the first one that @Michael Kelly sent out to me and he immediately sent another one out with no quibbles - top service!

Some context. A couple of years ago I spent quite a lot of time and a moderate amount of money trying to build a good low-power PC transport for the Yggdrasil A2 Unison. In the end I just built a rod for my own back because it was so f'ing complicated to use and totally not fun and STILL had unpleasant digital hash that annoyed the shit out of me. In the end I went back to the simple life, direct USB out of my MacBook through a JCat isolator. Chain was USB -> Yggdrasil A2 Unison -> EC Af -> Omega 3i's. Although a massive relief to be able to play music in a straightforward manner it sounded limp and lifeless and I couldn't really be bothered to listen to it for like a year and a half.

Enter the PI2AES. I followed Marv's excellent, clear instructions and got it going without fuss, and fired it up without any particular expectations. Holy shit! I generally sit completely off axis with my speakers and don't care about soundstage at all but even so suddenly the suddenly enveloping sound field was super obvious. The other thing that immediately stood out was that midrange timbre and colour was BACK. Suddenly listening was fun again!

Nothing here to say that hasn't been said 100x before but hey why not:

• With the stock Meanwell switcher, on a level with the low-power PC solution I abandoned (with a JCAT USB card and a jerry-rigged pile of LPSes), and way more convenient to use. After listening for an hour or two, still slightly fatiguing with obvious treble hash most evident in sibilance on marginal recordings, fret noise on acoustic guitars, tambourines.
• Stepping up to a nice choke-filtered 24v 2A LPS (local Oz supplier Gieseler Audio): the HF hash is gone and I can cleanly hear things going on in the top 1 1/2 octaves unobscured by digititus. Not inferior in any way to the Meanwell switcher so for me a really worthwhile upgrade (even at 3x cost of the PI2AES itself).
• With the LPS, clearly superior to the other solutions I've tried (JCAT USB, Lynx AES PCI and PCIe, RME PCI). Microdynamics and speed are now really impressive (my whole system is kind of tuned for these). Particularly hearing things like the particular tunings that guitarists or choirs or violinists are using.
• Tone colour and timbre is extremely good. With all the lockdowns I haven't heard an actual pipe organ for a couple of years and I put on an Anna von Hauswolff record and it gave me flashbacks.
• Of all the components in my chain, this one responds the most dramatically to cleaner power. I have a Pi Audio (no relation) Uberbuss and Digibuss, and the quantum difference from putting the PI2AES through them is much greater than for the Yggdrasil or the EC Af.
• Playback from internal storage > ethernet streaming >>> wifi streaming. Though the absolute differences are not that great -- mainly a slightly edginess when streaming. For control only, can't tell the difference between ethernet and wifi, and can't tell the difference unplugging the ethernet cable. Seems like isolation on the HAT is very good!
  
• Underclocking and undervolting help a little as well. It's quite hard to tell, though, as the clocks seem to need time to stabilise after every reboot and differences are marginal. I am running with CPU and memory underclocked to 450MHz, core to 150MHz and undervolted to -8. It's perfectly responsive for Volumio playback and it keeps the Pi cool (around 48C).

 

PI2AES Production Update - 08/20/2021

Just picked up 20 units for testing this weekend. They should go out Monday, but there is a hurricane bearing down on our area Sunday night into Monday. So it’s possible that we may lose power in which case we will ship as soon as we can. this will allow us to cover all orders up to and including 08/02.

I expect the rest by the end of the week and will update at that time.

As before, if anyone wishes to, they can cancel their order for a full refund prior to shipment.

Many thanks for your continued patience from the Pi 2 Design team, and stay safe!

 

I've read multiple mentions of Volumio "disappearing" from the network. For some unexplained reason that started happening to me. I'd listen, go to sleep and, next day when I go to listen, Volumio is MIA. Restart, listen, next day repeat.

What fixed it for me (for 3 days so far) was shutting off power management - this guy will apparently shut off wifi when idle. Not sure if it affects ethernet as well. If you know how to SSH into your Pi, run these commands:

$sudo nano /etc/modprobe.d/8192cu.conf

#Disable power management
options 8192cu rtw_power_mgnt=0

If you don't know how to SSH, check out this thread and then run the above.
https://www.superbestaudiofriends.org/index.php?threads/volumio-streamer-configuration-tips.11017/

 

@rhythmdevils this may help with your periodic issues, we should look into it. I assume MoOde could experience the same problem.

 

It’s already 0 in moode.

 

FYI, Supra HD5 v.2 HDMI 0.5m works fine with pi2aes & DIY input board & ad1862 dac.
Supra HD5 v.2 HDMI 0.5-meter (1.64') WHAT HI-FI? 5-STAR RATED Made In Sweden !
This is the first time I'm using HDMI i2s.

 

Hi everyone, first time posting!! Received my pi2aes recently and are extremely happy with the sound!!! I have a silly question that probably has been asked before (my apology) with regards to whether I can use my own power supply @ 24V1A? Will it be sufficient to drive both the pi2aes and the rpi4? Or would you suggest I should remove the jumper and use the 24v1 to power the Pi2aes and use separate power supply to power the rpi4?

Thanks

Deric

 

I use a 24VDC lrps for both and it works great.

 

Thanks Michael Kelly has also confirmed a 24V@1A would work

Deric

 

What I have done is to connect the power supply to a smart plug so I can call Alexa to turn the pi2aes on or off instead of reaching out to the outlet to unplug (obviously I always do software shutdown the Pi first)

Deric

 

Just like to share my impression of the pi2aes. I was previously connecting my pi4 to ifi neo idsd dac through USB with moode and I have another pi4 with a 12TB external hdd set up for a simple samba server/nas. I don’t do streaming at all.

listened to Billie Eilish’s happier than ever a number of times. With the USB input I always felt the soft vocal and the intentional muddled/distorted sound effects made it really hard to listen to, I could barely heard a word wtf she sang (poor separation). Made me wonder if the song was meant to be muddled like that or it could be my dac!!! With the pi2aes and connection through coax, all I can say is wow!!!! The clarity was simply amazing!! I did not have to listen hard to be able to hear all the words and the vocal separation with the intentional distorted sound effects was simply amazing!!!