I've been following the discussions on the Raspberry Pi as an inexpensive endpoint but never had a chance to try one. I currently use a Sonore Microrendu feeding a Khadas dac and I wanted to see how close one can get to the Sonore Microrendu.
I had a Raspberry Pi 2B sitting around and I just picked up a Pi 4b this week. I booted both of them with Ropiee XL which gives equivalent functionality to the Sonore Microrendu. They can all act as Roon endpoints or DLNA renders or Airplay endpoints (via Shairport) or Squeezelite endpoints or HQ Player endpoints. For these tests I ran things as Squeezelite endpoints.
First up, I started with the Pi 2B powered with a Pwr+ switching supply. The Pi 2B doesn't have built in wifi, so I ran it off of a wifi bridge connected to the Pi's ethernet port. The Khadas was connected to the PI 2B's USB2.0 port and the Khadas got its power from the 2B.
Results were disappointing. Compared to the Microrendu, everything sounded flat and images were "stuck" to the speakers.
Next I tried the Pi 4B powered with a Cana 3.4 amp switching supply. For this test I used the built in wifi of the 4B. Again the Khadas was connected to the USB 2.0 port of the Pi 4B. This set up was considerably better than the 2B but not quite in the same class as the Microrendu.
Next I switched off the internal wifi of the Pi 4B and connected the 4B's ethernet to the external wifi bridge. I compared the Khadas connected to either the USB2.0 output or the USB3 output. The differences between connecting to USB2 vs. USB3 were small but perhaps slightly in favor of the USB3. This set up feels like it comes reasonably close to the Sonore Microrendu. I still need to do more listening comparisons between this and the Microrendu to decide upon how close they are but this is already quite good.
In the future I want to experiment with providing a separate linear power supply for the Khadas and see if that makes the Pi2B more acceptable. My suspicion is that many of the differences that I'm hearing are coming from the way they affect the power being fed to the Khadas DAC. I also want to experiment with linear supplies for the Pi's. So there's more to come.
I had a Raspberry Pi 2B sitting around and I just picked up a Pi 4b this week. I booted both of them with Ropiee XL which gives equivalent functionality to the Sonore Microrendu. They can all act as Roon endpoints or DLNA renders or Airplay endpoints (via Shairport) or Squeezelite endpoints or HQ Player endpoints. For these tests I ran things as Squeezelite endpoints.
First up, I started with the Pi 2B powered with a Pwr+ switching supply. The Pi 2B doesn't have built in wifi, so I ran it off of a wifi bridge connected to the Pi's ethernet port. The Khadas was connected to the PI 2B's USB2.0 port and the Khadas got its power from the 2B.
Results were disappointing. Compared to the Microrendu, everything sounded flat and images were "stuck" to the speakers.
Next I tried the Pi 4B powered with a Cana 3.4 amp switching supply. For this test I used the built in wifi of the 4B. Again the Khadas was connected to the USB 2.0 port of the Pi 4B. This set up was considerably better than the 2B but not quite in the same class as the Microrendu.
Next I switched off the internal wifi of the Pi 4B and connected the 4B's ethernet to the external wifi bridge. I compared the Khadas connected to either the USB2.0 output or the USB3 output. The differences between connecting to USB2 vs. USB3 were small but perhaps slightly in favor of the USB3. This set up feels like it comes reasonably close to the Sonore Microrendu. I still need to do more listening comparisons between this and the Microrendu to decide upon how close they are but this is already quite good.
In the future I want to experiment with providing a separate linear power supply for the Khadas and see if that makes the Pi2B more acceptable. My suspicion is that many of the differences that I'm hearing are coming from the way they affect the power being fed to the Khadas DAC. I also want to experiment with linear supplies for the Pi's. So there's more to come.
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