This is a review and detailed measurements of the Audiophonics RASPDAC MINI LCD KIT Streamer. It is on kind loan from a member and costs 165,83 € or US $193 (excluding Raspberry Pi and power supply).
As the name indicates, this is a streamer built on the popular Raspberry Pi small computer combined with an ESS ES9038Q2M DAC HAT (board). The enclosure is utilitarian:
I do like having the LCD display. Not to look at it while something is playing but for confirmation of the status of the unit.
Back panel has the basics you need:
Audiophonics nicely gives you the choice of two different operating systems: moOde Audio or Volumio. The version I received has the latter. It had been a while since I had played with Volumio and was impressed with how much progress they have made to make the web user interface pretty and functional. I both played content on a USB thumb drive and streaming from my Roon player (Volumio comes with Roon endpoint support).
For those of you not familiar with this class of "streamer," they are multifunctional. They can play local content attached using a driver, memory card, etc. Or you can stream from a networked file server (NAS). They also have in-built support for a few of the streaming services. For all of these, you would use the provided interface in the OS image you have installed. In my case, I use a "push" streaming method where I use my Roon player and treat the streamer as if it were a virtual, networked DAC. That way, I don't have to learn anything new to use.
Audiophonics RASPDAC Measurements
I put a few of my test files on a thumb drive, plugged it into the back of the unit and used the user interface to browse and play them. Here is our usual dashboard:
Distortion is very low at less than -120 dB. Alas, there is some power supply noise that I could not get rid of with grounding. A different power supply/setup will likely generate a different results (although not audibly). So I suspect its SINAD is well in excess of what is shown but even what it is, is quite good:
As noted on the graph, I also tested streaming the same file to the unit and performance was identical.
Jitter test over either USB or network was very good showing that a "noisy" computer need not cause any problem for a properly designed DAC:
Finally, I streamed my multitone test to it:
Since my Audio Precision analyzer can't control streaming devices, I can't run any of the dynamic/sweep tests. But I think we have enough here to have confidence that the DAC implementation is free of any issues.
Conclusions
Raspberry Pi platform combined with the right software and a nice DAC can be a potent and highly cost effective streaming solution. Alas, you need some knowledge to put one together. Audiophonics has taken that pain away giving you everything you need to hit the ground running. Stick one of these next to your hi-fi and you can play content from anywhere. My only reservation here is the look of the unit which is quite pedestrian.
I am going to recommend the Audiophonics RASPDAC MINI LCD KIT Streamer.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
As the name indicates, this is a streamer built on the popular Raspberry Pi small computer combined with an ESS ES9038Q2M DAC HAT (board). The enclosure is utilitarian:
I do like having the LCD display. Not to look at it while something is playing but for confirmation of the status of the unit.
Back panel has the basics you need:
Audiophonics nicely gives you the choice of two different operating systems: moOde Audio or Volumio. The version I received has the latter. It had been a while since I had played with Volumio and was impressed with how much progress they have made to make the web user interface pretty and functional. I both played content on a USB thumb drive and streaming from my Roon player (Volumio comes with Roon endpoint support).
For those of you not familiar with this class of "streamer," they are multifunctional. They can play local content attached using a driver, memory card, etc. Or you can stream from a networked file server (NAS). They also have in-built support for a few of the streaming services. For all of these, you would use the provided interface in the OS image you have installed. In my case, I use a "push" streaming method where I use my Roon player and treat the streamer as if it were a virtual, networked DAC. That way, I don't have to learn anything new to use.
Audiophonics RASPDAC Measurements
I put a few of my test files on a thumb drive, plugged it into the back of the unit and used the user interface to browse and play them. Here is our usual dashboard:
Distortion is very low at less than -120 dB. Alas, there is some power supply noise that I could not get rid of with grounding. A different power supply/setup will likely generate a different results (although not audibly). So I suspect its SINAD is well in excess of what is shown but even what it is, is quite good:
As noted on the graph, I also tested streaming the same file to the unit and performance was identical.
Jitter test over either USB or network was very good showing that a "noisy" computer need not cause any problem for a properly designed DAC:
Finally, I streamed my multitone test to it:
Since my Audio Precision analyzer can't control streaming devices, I can't run any of the dynamic/sweep tests. But I think we have enough here to have confidence that the DAC implementation is free of any issues.
Conclusions
Raspberry Pi platform combined with the right software and a nice DAC can be a potent and highly cost effective streaming solution. Alas, you need some knowledge to put one together. Audiophonics has taken that pain away giving you everything you need to hit the ground running. Stick one of these next to your hi-fi and you can play content from anywhere. My only reservation here is the look of the unit which is quite pedestrian.
I am going to recommend the Audiophonics RASPDAC MINI LCD KIT Streamer.
------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
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