Tip X-Mas Gift No. 1

[truehl]

Searching for a Christmas gift? Here is my tip No. 1, others will follow.

Raspberry Pi for audio freaks

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Raspberry Pi for audio freaks

Description:
This is a Raspberry Pi with an external Audio DAC. The sound of this cheap Digital Analogue Converter is absolutely great! This tiny device has a fiber optic, a coaxial and analog output. I was very skeptic about the device and about the shipping to Germany. I was wrong: Shipping from China to Germany took only 10 days and the price was very cheap. It coast only $13.88 including shipping.

This device works great with http://www.squeezeplug.de and SqueezeLite.

What do you need:
Raspberry Pi
http://www.newit.co.uk/shop/proddetail. ... aspberryPI (I like the guys from new-it very much, even if you order e.G. from Germany, Canada or France)

SD-Card e.G.: SanDisk Extreme SDHC 4GB
http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B007PYB ... =computers

USB-Adaptor
http://www.conrad.de/ce/de/product/9719 ... AREA_37572

DAC PCM2704 USB DAC USB Power fiber optic coaxial analog output sz-11
http://www.aliexpress.com/item/PCM2704- ... 55749.html

Power-Supply Belkin USB Duo (This device has enough power to support 2 Raspberries)
http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B003DN3 ... 01_s00_i00

Power-Cable USB
http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B003ES5 ... 00_s00_i00 (you will need 2 for two devices)

SPDIF-Cable Toslink (You only need this cable, if you like to use the fiber optic)
http://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B004NKW ... 05_s00_i00

To run it with SqueezePlug, you can use this:

Code: Select all

 /sp/scripts/squeezelite -o front:CARD=DAC,DEV=0 192.168.2.80 &

Replace your LMS-Server IP-Address. I'll integrate this in upcoming versions of SqueezePlug. It took me some time to find the correct USB-adapter, I don't wanted to use a cable, but if you don't find a adapter like this, you can use a normal cable.

Merry Christmas,
Thomas
http://www.squeezeplug.de

[Trixster]

Very good, however does it work properly with a USB wifi adapter (such as the edimax one) attached as well, given the notorious issues the Pi has with USB devices?

Also, any tips on getting audio from the hdmi output, possibly using a splitter?

[bantammenace2012]

I tried one of the ebay splitter jobbies. I've posted previously in the forum about my experience of it.
The sound quality was not very good.
Has anyone experience of an AV receiver that has HDMI inputs ?
There are also an Oppo Blu-ray player with HDMI inputs but they are not cheap.
There is also a region specific blu-ray player from samsung (BD-E6500) that has HDMI inputs. I'd buy one but its not available in the UK and afaik there is no region hack available.

[dirklove]

Great! I ordered one and already have squeezeplug happily running on my 512 pi. Now I can finally turn off the computer and listen to my pi via squeezelite! Thanks for squeezeplug and this cool cheap find!
Dirk

[LeroyZ84]

i've bought one too,

wanted to replace my shuttle barebone for xmbc, but my receiver doesn't support HDMI.

So needed a good spdif optical card connector, thanks for your suggestion! Haven't received the board yet, but will test as soon it arrives

[truehl]

i've bought one too,

wanted to replace my shuttle barebone for xmbc, but my receiver doesn't support HDMI.

So needed a good spdif optical card connector, thanks for your suggestion! Haven't received the board yet, but will test as soon it arrives

I'm sure you will be happy with it! I'm playing with it for one week now and I'm very happy with the sound.

[drgeoff]

This is a Raspberry Pi with an external Audio DAC. The sound of this cheap Digital Analogue Converter is absolutely great! This tiny device has a fiber optic, a coaxial and analog output.
.......
To run it with SqueezePlug, you can use this:

Code: Select all

 /sp/scripts/squeezelite -o front:CARD=DAC,DEV=0 192.168.2.80 &

Replace your LMS-Server IP-Address.

I have one of these DACs but cannot get it to work with Squeezeplug. (It does work under Ubuntu on a PC and with Raspbmc.)
Running the above script gives error message about cannot open and resource busy. Killing all instances of squeezelite and squeezeslave and then running the script gives endlessly repeating error messages about sample rate not available and invalid argument.

What am I missing?

[ski522]

Running the above script gives error message about cannot open and resource busy. Killing all instances of squeezelite and squeezeslave and then running the script gives endlessly repeating error messages about sample rate not available and invalid argument.

What am I missing?

Probably either the card is not configure as device 0 or you just need to make changes with ALSA. You can review my post at http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=20866 which provides various config settings.

[drgeoff]

Running the above script gives error message about cannot open and resource busy. Killing all instances of squeezelite and squeezeslave and then running the script gives endlessly repeating error messages about sample rate not available and invalid argument.

What am I missing?

Probably either the card is not configure as device 0 or you just need to make changes with ALSA. You can review my post at http://www.raspberrypi.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?t=20866 which provides various config settings.

I am running Squeezeplug and using that USB soundcard. No other USB devices - I am accessing via ssh. So precisely the configuration that truehl's script is said to be for. He is usually very good at giving accurate, working code.

[ronajon]

Why does it need 2 usb power cables?
Doesn't the DAC gets it's power from the Pi?

[TiggerT]

Hi,
I bought one of these DAC cards and it arrived today. I plugged it in and tried to run the script above and rebooted. Then from the setup menu the test sounds play fine through the card to my amp, but when the server thinks it's playing music through the squeezelite player on the pi no sound is heard. Does anyone have any ideas how I can troubleshoot this?

Thanks in advance,
T.

[TiggerT]

I still can't seem to get this to work.
The strange thing is that with the USB DAC plugged in, I reboot, and go into the Squeezeplug setup menu>Server and Player>Player>AudioSettings>Test_Sound_1 I can hear that.
And if under that same menu I choose: Audio_Devices, then I have:
card 0: DAC[USB Audio DAC], device 0: USB Audio [USB Audio]
Subdevices: 1/1
Subdevice #0: subdevice#0
card 1: ALSA [bcm2835 ALSA], device 0: bcm2835 ALSA]
Subedevices: 7/8
Subdevice #0: subdevice#0
Subdevice #1: subdevice#1
Subdevice #2: subdevice#2
Subdevice #3: subdevice#3
Subdevice #4: subdevice#4
Subdevice #5: subdevice#5
Subdevice #6: subdevice#6
Subdevice #7: subdevice#7

If on the previous menu I choose Select_Sound_Output
it is currently set to Auto, with the other 2 options of Headphones and HDMI, No option to select USB DAC there.
The other strange thing is that I hear the sound test sounds fine whether I choose
Auto, Headphones or HDMI.

But when I try to play something from my library through the player, LMS thinks it's playing, but I get no audio out through the amp that the DAC is connected to.

If I run Alsamixer it looks like the default card is set to USB Audio DAC. Does anyone know what other things I could check here? Or anything else that I could try to troubleshoot this? It seems that the DAC card works, as I managed to get sound out through it plugging it into my Ubuntu laptop, and also the test sounds from squeezeplug do play through it.

Thanks,
T.