The All Purpose Advice Thread - Part 2

Hey,
has anyone ever converted a Bifrost 2 115V to 230V? Asking for a friend...

 

Not Bifrost2, but a friend of mine picked up a 110V Yggdrasil A1 recently and converted it to 230V. It involved desoldering 2 (or 3, I don't recall exactly) jumpers from the 110V positions and soldering em in the 230V positions. Apparently the PCB had clear labels for the correct positions. One of the jumpers was apparently blocked by the 3-pin IEC inlet. So he had to unsolder the IEC plug from the PCB to gain access to that jumper. I have tried looking at the pic of Bf2's PCB on Schiit's website, but I couldn't make out much as to how it is on the Bf2.

 

If you are in US, you can send it to Schiit and they will do it for a fee. So the cost will be shipping both ways + fee of conversion. I got mine done in 2019. I don’t remember the exact fee charged by Schiit but it was pretty reasonable.

 

Schiit had quoted $50 to my friend for converting the Yggdrasil 230V. I’m guessing it should be the same for the Bf2. Time constraint was why my friend couldn’t send it to Schiit for the conversion.

 

So I just checked the old email. I was charged $25 for BF2 voltage conversion and $20 for shipping to NY via FedEx. This was in Jan 2020, pre Covid era.
As per email conversation I had with Schiit, voltage conversion charge for Yaggdrassil and Gungnir is more then BF2

 

Am I going to have problems/deep regrets if I use a 2.5A power supply instead of 3A? This is for a streamer I'm playing with and the included 5V/3A supply is absurdly flimsy ...

 

No deep regrets, worst case would be that it just won't power up. Hard to be certain without knowing the power requirements of the streamer (is it in the specs?), but I doubt that'll happen - the change is less than a 20% drop in wattage. Most streamers don't need much; I'm running a PiZeroW & HiFiBerry Digi2 Pro on a 5V/1A (ie 5W max) wart without issue.

 

Helpful, thanks. Just wanted to know if I was embarking down the road of immolation before trying.

 

"The road of immolation" (love it!)

 

I'm very happy with my Pi2AES and Moode Audio setup. However, I have a small issue with my Gungnir A1 that occurs only when in one of two scenarios:

1. I switch from one track to another with a different sample rate (such as 44.1 to 48).
2. I stop playing audio for about 5 seconds, and start again.

In both cases, I hear that click from the Gungnir (which doesn't bother me), but about 1.5 seconds of music is cut off, and I have to immediately rewind if I want to listen to the skipped audio. Is there any way to add some latency in Moode Audio when I press play, so I don't keep getting that bit of audio snipped off every time I change sample rate or pause the audio?

 

I have a Pi2AES and use MoOde as well, but aside from the Gungnir clicking during sample rate change, I have not noticed any latency in between playing tracks. That's odd, I wonder if I have different settings than you do—although I am not very savvy with MoOde and left most things as default.

 

@JonCharles I was just about to chime in with the same. I have owned Gungnir, and I do recall this problem in the past. But I just pulled out my Pi2AES running MoOde. Though I hear the clicks, I am not missing music. Can you describe precisely what you are doing? I have tried both pause and start (5-seconds, though the click occurs almost immediately) and switching back to the start of a track where there is music, like Beatles on Abbey Road where the tracks run into each other at the end of the album.

 

Just throwing it out there: perhaps increase the memory buffer in the settings? I don't think it will help with the clicks, but at least this should let the streamer queue the next songs on the playlist.

Also, I'm not sure what RPi you're running, but maybe it's time to upgrade (although I still run the 2B).

 

I am not the most tech savvy, so I have left most settings default as well. I've only changed things that I either needed to or couldn't live with in default settings, which isn't much.

I'm technically running a Mercury Streamer V1. Sorry for not mentioning that. I am connected wirelessly to my router and not through ethernet cable. Maybe that is to blame?

Since I'm using a Mercury Streamer (I apologize for not mentioning it), I think that I am running on a RPi 4, so power shouldn't be an issue. The only settings I found that might? be relevant are audio buffer size and output buffer size. Not sure if they're what I'm looking for.

 

I have never used Moode, so no idea if there is a similar setting. However, in Ropieee/XL there is an "Advanced" menu option that has a setting called "Dynamic Audio Power Mgt:". This defaults to five seconds, so if there is no music playing for that time, then the unit switches off the signal to save power. When this happens my Yggdrasil clicks "off" so to speak, and then it will click "on" once I select a new album. I rarely queue multiple albums or listen to long playlists so I've just gotten used to it.

Maybe Moode has something that could fix the pausing/click issue you're having.

Unfortunately, I don't think there's really a great way around the clicks that happen when songs with different sample rates are played in succession. That's going to happen with any Schiit DAC. If you delay a track, then you could be in a position where stuff that's supposed to be gapless is no longer gapless. If you're listening to albums more, I'd just leave this alone because sample rate switches within an album are extremely rare (only one that comes to mind is the 2012 hi-res remaster of Charlie Brown Christmas). If you are listening to random songs in a playlist more, then perhaps adding the delay would be desirable, except it may not have the desired effect because it could end up just delaying the relay clicking by whatever buffer delay you add.

Delay in playing tracks could well be caused by wifi latency.

 

@JonCharles I have set moode in mpd setting to this.

Resource allocation
Audio buffer (MB)
32
Output buffer (MB)
256
Input Chache (MB)
512

Really helps with smoothness of the system as well for me. I don't really notice missing anything changing between different sample rates. I get a click then the song starts. Not sure if it matter but using BNC connection to gungnir A2 and Bifrost 2 (not 2/64) using coax.

 

Do you all get a gap between songs with Moode? I get a 1-2 second gap and it drives me nuts especially witt live albums. I’ve been meaning to ask about it for a long time.

@HotRatSalad i don’t have any options like that in MDP settings. But I don’t think I’m using the most recent version of Moode. When I tried the most recent version when setting up my Pi2AES it wouldn’t work so I installed the previous version I was using before.

 

I've never had an issue with gapless play been using moode since the summer. On version 8.2.3 but 8.2.4 just dropped as well. I don't change much just those settings in mpd config and a couple others. Aside from it not seeing the HAT recently it's been smooth and a reflash to 8.2.3 has been flawless so far. I always mention it but I just play files off a 4tb USB drive.

 

I hesitate to spam questions but yeah the gain switch on my Magni 3+ seems properly FUBAR-ed and I was wondering whether anyone here knew where I might source a replacement.

I do have a Piety (just taking a bit of a detour with a friend) that I'm 99.995% sure is going to be more my preference than the 3+, but I figured it might be nice to hold on to the older Magni as a reference since it's a known touchstone for many, or at least give it to a friend/sell it for a trifle.

The hell is with my luck with amps.

 

What is your music source (local files, streaming service) and type of connection (ethernet, wifi, uPnP)?