HiFiBerry Digi2 Pro Impressions

I wonder what a wider X-axis will show, perhaps some nasty peak down at 5k or somewhere else? I guess we can always ADDA for some real audible difference at the end of the day, the chinese audiophiles have been doing this for years to compare dacs.

 

Dredging up this old thread to ask if anybody's had compatibility problems with HiFiBerry Digi2 Pro and particular Pi boards...

I'd been happily using Digi2 Pro on an old Pi Zero W, but on replacing that with a Pi 3B+ (better antenna for the currently marginal location for my wifi signal), I got either 'power failures' (4 short green flashes followed by 7 long), or, on the OSes that did work (Volumio 3.631 and MoOde 8.3.9; no Volumio 2 version worked), the infamous 'alsa error' when trying to play via I2S.

I confirmed it wasn't the Pi 3B+ by successfully substituting another HAT (Allo MiniBoss DAC) with different OSes, and the Digi2 Pro worked again when put back on the Pi Zero W. AFAIK I was flashing the correct image for each board every time (selected in Raspberry Pi Imager), and this would seem to be confirmed by everything working with the other HAT.

The particular combination of the 3B+ and Digi2 Pro seemed to be the problem. The forums are full of people who've experienced the same issue with the Digi2 Pro on different Pi boards. Some people have come up with workarounds (none worked for me); and the blame has been leveled variously at Volumio, MoOde, or HiFiBerry.

@Woland or anybody?

 

I had my Digi Pro or pi3 combo crap the bed, haven't tried to trouble shoot since my pi2AES and pi4 is going strong

 

Yeah, I have a Pi2AES with a Pi 3B in the main system and so far that's been bulletproof. If the HiFiBerry combo keeps failing, I'd look to replace it with a Kelly creation for sure.

 

I am sure we can accommodate your needs!

 

Maybe I should offer a $50 trade-in for any hi-fi berry hat. Digital or analog. What do you guys think?

 

Just looking at the Pi2AES picture and the back of your DAC would be enough, no reading was necessary

 

That was from 2021…

 

Update: evidently I didn't investigate the forums quite far enough...

There was a known compatibility problem with earlier versions of the HiFiBerry Digi2 Pro and late/post-2021 versions of the Pi 4 (rev. 1.5): evidently the use of a new power management IC resulted in the Digi2 Pro no longer being detected by the Pi on boot. HiFiBerry fixed the issue on an update of their Digi2 Pro boards (v 2.2) from May 2022. Mine however is from 2021.

There was also an update to the Pi 3B+ PMICs, from MXL to Dialog manufacture, in late 2022. I haven’t found reference on the HiFiBerry site to this causing problems, but I suspect it’s responsible for equivalent 'power failure' errors with certain firmware and hardware combinations, and likely also explains the ‘alsa errors’ I was getting when using images that would actually boot.

Looks like my solution will be to try another board version. Pi3B (non-plus) incoming.

 

Updated update: the old (pre-2022) Digi2 Pro is working with Pi 3B (non-plus). The non-plus version of the 3B has a completely different power management system from the 3B+ and later models (no PMIC on the earlier one), and there have been no board updates to the power supply or anything else.