Introduction: Cheap High Difinition Audio With Raspberry Pi, Volumio Player and DAC
If you enjoy music, playing songs from youtube or your own DLNA server or simply listening to your favorite Internet radios and are looking something that sounds good for you buck, I think this project will be for you.
Conceptually we will review the following objects/Concepts
DAC---Raspberry pi---Internet/Network---Connectors to make everything work--Volumio software to control the whole thing
Please note all video are available in youtube , please suscribe to the authors to support their channel
all material is copyright to their respective authors
What is Volumio The Hans Beekhuyzen Channel:
What are DACS OneCall Channel:
What is a Raspberry pi y Richard Wenner Channel:
There es is many types of DACs for your Raspberry pi, but the most entry level ones are based on the following chips:
-Texas instruments PCM5122
-ES9023 I2S vers DAC Sabre
Both sound equally good in my opinion. But it also depends on the implementation done by the manufacturer and electronics used and of course the power supply. Normally the ones that create their own clock pulse sound a lot better from the reasearch I have done on the topic. But if you know more about this me, please feel free to add a comment in the comments section.
In my personal opinion I love the sound of the es9023 and also the price is a bit lower so let's get started.
1) Youw will need the cheap DAC you can order from Aliexpress or some other retailer should include es9023 chip. Around $10USD or less
https://es.aliexpress.com/store/product/ES9023-I2S...
2) Raspberry pi 3 they go around $35USD and they include wifi:
https://es.aliexpress.com/store/product/original-e...
3) Wifi connection in your home so you can listen to streaming music from Youtube or Internet radio. Also you can use Raspberry pi Ethernet cable connection and Ethernet cable to connect to your local area network.
4) Cables to connect to your DAC and your Raspberry pi
https://es.aliexpress.com/store/product/40pcs-1p-1...
5) Super glue to join cables to the DAC so connection is permenent and cables don't get disconnected.
You can get this at your local hardware store or any strong glue will do fine.
6) SD Card 8GB or higher will do fine. You can get this from Aliexpress or Walmart
Any SD card that your Raspberry pi 3 can read
https://es.aliexpress.com/store/product/real-capac...
7) To connect your DAC to headphones
https://es.aliexpress.com/item/Ugreen-3-5mm-Audio-...
8) To connect your DAC to audio system
https://es.aliexpress.com/item/Ugreen-3-5mm-Audio-...
9) Computer running Linux/Unix or windows also MAC will work fine so you can copy software to SD Card and run it from your pi.
10) Good microusb cable with decent power supply I have a good cellphone charger that does the trick, but you can also get already done solution from amazon or aliexpress or local electronics store here is an example:
Step 1: Make the Connection
Connect the cables between DAC and Raspberry pi
DAC names are written on the DAC board
Raspberry pi pin numbers for your reference https://78.media.tumblr.com/b568f622cf8f6b39a8629...
Final connections for your ease:
from DAC to Raspberry Pi GPIO;
DAC 5V to Raspberry pi pin2
DAC GND to Raspberry pi pin6 (gnd)
DAC BCK to Raspberry pi pin12
DAC MCLK Not used
DAC LRCK to Raspberry pi pin35
DAC GND to Raspberry pi pin39
DAC DATA to Raspberry pi pin40
Super glue the loose connections on DAC END.
Once dry proceed to next step or you proceed with next step and once you are sure about the connections put the glue on.
Step 2: Download and Install Volumio
1)Download latest version of Raspberry pi 3 image
https://volumio.org/get-started/
Unzip the image you should end with some file that contains volumio and ends in .img
Similar to this
wxrwxrwx 1 macunan macunan 2.8G Dec 22 18:54 volumio-2.348-2017-12-22-pi.img
[macunan@archhp ~]$
2) Insert your SD card to your computer
3) Download Win 32diskimager for windows
From:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/win32diskimager/
Once you have downloaded the software copy the image to your sd card and insert the sdcard to your raspberry pi 3 wait for 10 min and you should be able to find it in your network
volumio.local or check for new devices
You can review the videos in the introduction section
I put the Volumio installation as reference
Once Volumio is up and running change the settings to the images shown above
Set up your youtube account and radio settings and reset the device. The Youtube setting can be found in the plugins section.
Don't forget to connect to your speakers or headphones and enjoy the music!
