I'd have thought you'd have enough pieces around to build one from your stash. ;)

Aluminum case ?
I almost had the Pi piece new-in-box, however that orphan in my stash turned out to be a 3B and I really just prefer the 3B+, so no existing parts were utilized.

Yes, that's the aluminum case, which turned out even nicer than I was anticipating. I guess I had seen a few negative comments about it online, and that coupled with the lowish price had my expectation at low/medium regarding the enclosure's fit and finish.

Turns out it's both very nicely machined and anodized, fully substantiating the $54.99 in my opinion. I hate plastic cases except when maximum WiFi signal strength is the goal/challenge.

The negative comments weren't actually about the machining or anodizing, some people just think it's hideous. I'm not one of them:

Boss parts.jpg

Boss done.jpg

Then there is the sound. This is supposed to be the pinnacle of Pi HAT designs based on the ubiquitous Burr-Brown PCM5122 chipset, utilizing a master clocking arrangement with Japanese NDK oscillators (one each for the 44.1 and 48 kHz sample rate families), film capacitor smoothing the power to the DAC chip, Linear Technology LT3042 LDOs, and a super capacitor (EDLC) motivating the analog output.

I'm using the Allo Nirvana to power the DAC card directly, which in turn back powers the RPi 3B+ through the GPIO header. You can also remove a jumper and power each independently, but I opted to leave the jumper in place and use just one PSU.

I have to agree based on the sound of the other two HATs I have, the HiFiBerry DAC+ Pro, and MamboBerry LS DAC+, that this Allo Boss really seems in a different league. The bass was a little woolly for about 5-10 minutes after connection, then things settled down and right now it is absolutely singing in a full rich voice, dynamic, with bass response far exceeding those other two aforementioned I²S HATs.

Not the cheapest I²S RPi solution, but if you want a finished looking product in a very robust case, with internal DAC card and stellar sound, this is certainly the ticket.

I got tired of waiting for the forthcoming Boss2, apparently the aluminum case for those is delayed, so I'm going to push that one back a bit and enjoy this one for right now. This gets my highest recommendation, sounds much more like high-end audio than my other two I²S HATs do, the all-in with tax and shipping was $163 (BYOPSU).
 
Nice ! I'm still waiting in the wings to see if the USBridge Sig gets an upgrade.
Allo had posted in either diyAudio or the Moode forum that they are working on it. Not too many details as yet, including price, but they have it in development.
 
Moode Audio Player 7.1.0 is now available as a downloadable disk image, or as an in-place update to existing Moode 7 instances.

This 7.1.0 release has a bunch of cool new features:
  • Full integration of CamillaDSP Digital Signal Processing engine and CamillaGUI Pipeline editor
  • Support for RoonBridge renderer management (requires user install of RoonBridge component)
  • Support for the Allo Boss 2 DAC with OLED display, and configurable DAC chip options for the Cirrus Logic CS43198
  • Radio station utility for improved import/export/merge and management of the Radio Station feature
Additional updates and features:
  • UPD: Bump to MPD 0.22.6
  • UPD: Bump to upmpdcli 1.5.8 w/updated coverart util
  • UPD: Bump to miniDLNA 1.3.0
  • UPD: Bump to librespot 0.1.6
  • UPD: Bump to ashuffle 3.11.1
  • UPD: Automatically detect SMB protocol version
  • UPD: Persist configured USB device in MPD Config
  • FIX: Squeezelite binary crashes on ARM6
  • FIX: Airplay, Spotify not able to output to Crossfeed DSP
  • FIX: SoX resampling quality always set to High
  • FIX: Auto-play receives empty songid during startup
  • FIX: Auto-shuffle reverts to track mode after library update
Code:
########################################################
//
// 2021-03-15 TC moOde 7.1.0
//
########################################################

New features

- NEW: CamillaDSP including Pipeline Editor
- NEW: RoonBridge renderer mgt (requires user install)
- NEW: Radio station utility for import/export/manage
- NEW: Automatic support for new Pi models

Audio devices

- NEW: Allo Boss 2 w/OLED display and chip options

Radio stations

- UPD: Radio FM4
- UPD: Resonance Radio 104.4 FM
- UPD: The Jazz Groove
- UPD: WEMU Ypsilanti FM 89.1 - Jazz
- UPD: WQED Pittsburgh 89.3 - Classical
- DEL: JB Radio2 (320K)
- DEL: RadioActive FM 88.6
- DEL: smooth Chill
- DEL: UCFM 87.8 - Canberra's Alternative

Updates

- UPD: Bump to MPD 0.22.6
- UPD: Bump to CamillaDSP 0.5.0-beta4
- UPD: Bump to CamillaGUI 0.6.0
- UPD: Bump to ALSA cdsp (commit e941420)
- UPD: Bump to upmpdcli 1.5.8 w/updated coverart util
- UPD: Bump to miniDLNA 1.3.0
- UPD: Bump to librespot 0.1.6
- UPD: Bump to ashuffle 3.11.1
- UPD: Bump to moodeutl 1.5.2
- UPD: Add Clear/Add to Library context menus
- UPD: Add Track info to Queue context menu
- UPD: Add Comment tag to Track info dialog
- UPD: Add Cover/logo to Track/Station info
- UPD: Add Throttled state to System info
- UPD: Disable power save for integrated WiFi
- UPD: Set correct 0dB level for HDMI
- UPD: Open station home page for "Streaming source"
- UPD: Automatically detect SMB protocol version
- UPD: Improve Crossfeed settings and a Linkwitz setting
- UPD: Selectively add/remove dtoverlay audio lines
- UPD: Change MPD volume terminology from "Disabled" to "Fixed"
- UPD: Allow changing betw HDMI, Headphone and USB w/o reboot
- UPD: Persist configured USB device in MPD Config
- UPD: Show msg in MPD Config if USB device off or disconnected
- UPD: Library Config option to ignore CUE files
- UPD: Decode Pi revision from bitmask instead of from table
- UPD: Allow negative pregain for Spotify renderer
- UPD: Add option fo include Composers in Tag view Artist list

Bug fixes

- FIX: Wrong PHP version in localui.service and build recipe
- FIX: Squeezelite binary crashes on ARM6
- FIX: Librespot volume curve option
- FIX: Order of excution for starting watchdog
- FIX: Airplay, Spotify not able to output to Crossfeed DSP
- FIX: Back link not working in CamillaDSP Config screen
- FIX: Wrong cardnum being used in moodeutl to get hw_params
- FIX: SoX resampling quality always set to High
- FIX: LED control for P-Zero
- FIX: Auto-play receives empty songid during startup
- FIX: Fields too wide in new/edit station and adv search modals
- FIX: Fix spaces not handled in Squeezelite $PLAYERNAME var
- FIX: Auto-shuffle reverts to track mode after library update
Enjoy the Music!
moOde.png
If you are a Moode user and enjoying it, please take a moment to consider making a small donation using the Donate button on the Moodeaudio.org web page, to help fund the continuous development and improvement of this excellent software.
 
Moode Audio Player 7.1.0 is now available as a downloadable disk image, or as an in-place update to existing Moode 7 instances.

This 7.1.0 release has a bunch of cool new features:
  • Full integration of CamillaDSP Digital Signal Processing engine and CamillaGUI Pipeline editor
  • Support for RoonBridge renderer management (requires user install of RoonBridge component)
  • Support for the Allo Boss 2 DAC with OLED display, and configurable DAC chip options for the Cirrus Logic CS43198
  • Radio station utility for improved import/export/merge and management of the Radio Station feature
Additional updates and features:
  • UPD: Bump to MPD 0.22.6
  • UPD: Bump to upmpdcli 1.5.8 w/updated coverart util
  • UPD: Bump to miniDLNA 1.3.0
  • UPD: Bump to librespot 0.1.6
  • UPD: Bump to ashuffle 3.11.1
  • UPD: Automatically detect SMB protocol version
  • UPD: Persist configured USB device in MPD Config
  • FIX: Squeezelite binary crashes on ARM6
  • FIX: Airplay, Spotify not able to output to Crossfeed DSP
  • FIX: SoX resampling quality always set to High
  • FIX: Auto-play receives empty songid during startup
  • FIX: Auto-shuffle reverts to track mode after library update
Code:
########################################################
//
// 2021-03-15 TC moOde 7.1.0
//
########################################################

New features

- NEW: CamillaDSP including Pipeline Editor
- NEW: RoonBridge renderer mgt (requires user install)
- NEW: Radio station utility for import/export/manage
- NEW: Automatic support for new Pi models

Audio devices

- NEW: Allo Boss 2 w/OLED display and chip options

Radio stations

- UPD: Radio FM4
- UPD: Resonance Radio 104.4 FM
- UPD: The Jazz Groove
- UPD: WEMU Ypsilanti FM 89.1 - Jazz
- UPD: WQED Pittsburgh 89.3 - Classical
- DEL: JB Radio2 (320K)
- DEL: RadioActive FM 88.6
- DEL: smooth Chill
- DEL: UCFM 87.8 - Canberra's Alternative

Updates

- UPD: Bump to MPD 0.22.6
- UPD: Bump to CamillaDSP 0.5.0-beta4
- UPD: Bump to CamillaGUI 0.6.0
- UPD: Bump to ALSA cdsp (commit e941420)
- UPD: Bump to upmpdcli 1.5.8 w/updated coverart util
- UPD: Bump to miniDLNA 1.3.0
- UPD: Bump to librespot 0.1.6
- UPD: Bump to ashuffle 3.11.1
- UPD: Bump to moodeutl 1.5.2
- UPD: Add Clear/Add to Library context menus
- UPD: Add Track info to Queue context menu
- UPD: Add Comment tag to Track info dialog
- UPD: Add Cover/logo to Track/Station info
- UPD: Add Throttled state to System info
- UPD: Disable power save for integrated WiFi
- UPD: Set correct 0dB level for HDMI
- UPD: Open station home page for "Streaming source"
- UPD: Automatically detect SMB protocol version
- UPD: Improve Crossfeed settings and a Linkwitz setting
- UPD: Selectively add/remove dtoverlay audio lines
- UPD: Change MPD volume terminology from "Disabled" to "Fixed"
- UPD: Allow changing betw HDMI, Headphone and USB w/o reboot
- UPD: Persist configured USB device in MPD Config
- UPD: Show msg in MPD Config if USB device off or disconnected
- UPD: Library Config option to ignore CUE files
- UPD: Decode Pi revision from bitmask instead of from table
- UPD: Allow negative pregain for Spotify renderer
- UPD: Add option fo include Composers in Tag view Artist list

Bug fixes

- FIX: Wrong PHP version in localui.service and build recipe
- FIX: Squeezelite binary crashes on ARM6
- FIX: Librespot volume curve option
- FIX: Order of excution for starting watchdog
- FIX: Airplay, Spotify not able to output to Crossfeed DSP
- FIX: Back link not working in CamillaDSP Config screen
- FIX: Wrong cardnum being used in moodeutl to get hw_params
- FIX: SoX resampling quality always set to High
- FIX: LED control for P-Zero
- FIX: Auto-play receives empty songid during startup
- FIX: Fields too wide in new/edit station and adv search modals
- FIX: Fix spaces not handled in Squeezelite $PLAYERNAME var
- FIX: Auto-shuffle reverts to track mode after library update
Enjoy the Music!

If you are a Moode user and enjoying it, please take a moment to consider making a small donation using the Donate button on the Moodeaudio.org web page, to help fund the continuous development and improvement of this excellent software.
Time to update the 3 running in our house.
 
Time to update the 3 running in our house.
One down for me, no issues with an in-place update over Ethernet that I did at lunchtime.

While the developer says this update can take up to 20 minutes depending on network variables such as download speed, and the RPi hardware version, my update didn't seem to take much more than about 5 minutes on RPi 4B, though I did not have a stopwatch on it:

Screen Shot 2021-03-18 at 5.42.52 PM.jpeg
 
One down for me, no issues with an in-place update over Ethernet that I did at lunchtime.

While the developer says this update can take up to 20 minutes depending on network variables such as download speed, and the RPi hardware version, my update didn't seem to take much more than about 5 minutes on RPi 4B, though I did not have a stopwatch on it:

View attachment 34436
Wondering if I should move my CM4 to this version...
 
Wondering if I should move my CM4 to this version...
Tougher call for you (and maybe only you), due to the scarcity of people likely to report any potential issues with CM4 bugs, and also the relative pain in the ass involved with re-flashing it on eMMC storage.

That said, Tim's prerelease notes did make mention of CM4 support, however you've already got Moode 6 running without issue so I'm not really sure what exact support he was referring to, and that aspect of the prerelease notes doesn't seem to have made it to the final release notes, so unclear if whatever CM4 support or feature he was planning didn't actually make the final release or not.

Sometimes he'll back burner something and revisit in a later update, but because that prerelease note wasn't very specific, it's tough to say exactly what was being referred to, maybe just the auto-recognition of all of the different CM4 SKUs?

My newer version of the RPi 4B 2GB board is now being properly recognized after this update, and that also then restored the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth ON/OFF toggles, not that I even use them, but they are there now.
 
Tougher call for you (and maybe only you), due to the scarcity of people likely to report any potential issues with CM4 bugs, and also the relative pain in the ass involved with re-flashing it on eMMC storage.

That said, Tim's prerelease notes did make mention of CM4 support, however you've already got Moode 6 running without issue so I'm not really sure what exact support he was referring to, and that aspect of the prerelease notes doesn't seem to have made it to the final release notes, so unclear if whatever CM4 support or feature he was planning didn't actually make the final release or not.

Sometimes he'll back burner something and revisit in a later update, but because that prerelease note wasn't very specific, it's tough to say exactly what was being referred to, maybe just the auto-recognition of all of the different CM4 SKUs?

My newer version of the RPi 4B 2GB board is now being properly recognized after this update, and that also then restored the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth ON/OFF toggles, not that I use them, but they are there now.
RE: Me & my CM4 Moode player:

1616121519116.png
 
Actually, there does appear (based on the Moode forums) to be at least one other crazy mofo using CM4, so I guess now we've got an army of two.

Also, Tim has added the CM4 to 7.1:

View attachment 34513

:dance
Yes and actually it's some sort of whole new system that detects the board versions through something called bitmask, rather than the old table of model identifiers that had to be manually maintained and updated.

Thats what the release notes are referring to in saying "- NEW: Automatic support for new Pi models", and also
"- UPD: Decode Pi revision from bitmask instead of from table".

I hadn't seen anyone else on the Moode forum with the CM4, but I don't necessarily read every thread there.
 
Yes and actually it's some sort of whole new system that detects the board versions through something called bitmask, rather than the old table of model identifiers that had to be manually maintained and updated.

Thats what the release notes are referring to in saying "- NEW: Automatic support for new Pi models", and also
"- UPD: Decode Pi revision from bitmask instead of from table".

I hadn't seen anyone else on the Moode forum with the CM4, but I don't necessarily read every thread there.

Whoever liv_s is - they have a 1GB CM4 similar to my system.
 
I did find this forum searching for CM4 use for Moode, not so many around.
I do have CM4 ongoing for testing, actually I try to build a streamer CM4 based who will replace a Pi4 (if somebody is curious, try to find my post on Moode forum with description).
I attached 2 pictures with old shape and new project.

@Thermionics - I saw your CM project, nice indeed.
My approach is to install CM4 and Tone board in a FineArts tuner case, to be similar hifi type of equipment.
What I need if you can help is drawings for backplate.
 

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I did find this forum searching for CM4 use for Moode, not so many around.
I do have CM4 ongoing for testing, actually I try to build a streamer CM4 based who will replace a Pi4 (if somebody is curious, try to find my post on Moode forum with description).
I attached 2 pictures with old shape and new project.

@Thermionics - I saw your CM project, nice indeed.
My approach is to install CM4 and Tone board in a FineArts tuner case, to be similar hifi type of equipment.
What I need if you can help is drawings for backplate.
I have attached the .FPD file below (Front Panel Express). I don't know if there is an easy way to convert from FPD to other CAD program. Also note that it has specific mounting positioning for a HifiBerry Digi+PRO with an IanCanada Isolator II hat, so you'll want to adjust that, depending on what you are choosing for your hat solution (or eliminate entirely if you aren't using a hat).
 

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Moode Audio Player 7.2.0 is now available as a downloadable disk image, or as an in-place update to existing Moode 7.1.0 instances. The update takes about 1 minute, after which a restart is required.

This latest release includes new features, updates and bug fixes including a new ALSA routing framework which supports ALSA loopback at 384kHz, updates/fixes to CamillaDSP, UPnP, and enhancements to the I²S driver configuration supporting more devices.

Code:
########################################################
//
// 2021-04-24 TC moOde 7.2.0
//
########################################################

New features

- NEW: ALSA routing and loopback option
- NEW: ALSA loopback driver 384K support

Radio stations

- NEW: ByteFM
- UPD: Ancient FM - Mediaeval and Renaissance Music
- UPD: BBC 128K stations
- UPD: WKCR 89.9 FM

Updates

- UPD: Show Quick Convolution filter friendly name in Audio info
- UPD: Revert the "Artist +" library option (not useful)
- UPD: Allo Boss2 OLED display script and startup
- UPD: Enhance I2S configuration to support more devices
- UPD: CamillaDSP: Show encoding of wave file
- UPD: CamillaDSP: Improved wave file converter
- UPD: Drop UAC2 fix (not applicable anymore)
- UPD: Drop UPnP Tidal/Qobuz from Config (doesn't work anymore)

Bug fixes

- FIX: Wlan_country param missing from auto-config export
- FIX: Wrong squeezelite compile in release image
- FIX: Genre data for several radio stations
- FIX: Capitalization and terminology in Audio info
- FIX: CamillaDSP: Save not disabled when other DSP active
- FIX: CamillaDSP: Config dropdown not disabled when other DSP active
- FIX: CamillaDSP: Relative paths on first use of config
- FIX: CamillaDSP: Wave file converter doesn't support floats
- FIX: CamillaDSP: Work around bug in yaml parser
- FIX: Typo in sysinfo output for throttled state
- FIX: Several issues with UPnP config and cover art
moOde.png
If you are using Moode and enjoying it, please consider making a small donation on moodeaudio.org to help ensure ongoing and future development of this fantastic music player software for Raspberry Pi.
 
I'll have to see if this improves things for me. It would be nice to stay current.
Definitely, and since whenever Tim put up links to a GitHub repository of previous releases, it's easy enough to roll back again if there is something about a particular update that doesn't work well for any given setup.

I noticed one fix right away before closing the Safari browser I used to update, I started a Qobuz track and noticed the album art is now visible, where previously Qobuz album art did not render in the browser view, only in the Control Point app, so that UPnP cover art fix mentioned in the release notes enhanced the view for those that like to access Moode via a web browser.

Screen Shot 2021-04-29 at 4.12.19 PM.png

Cover art in browser view is also working for locally served files:


Screen Shot 2021-04-29 at 4.25.35 PM.png
 
I have attached the .FPD file below (Front Panel Express). I don't know if there is an easy way to convert from FPD to other CAD program. Also note that it has specific mounting positioning for a HifiBerry Digi+PRO with an IanCanada Isolator II hat, so you'll want to adjust that, depending on what you are choosing for your hat solution (or eliminate entirely if you aren't using a hat).
Thank you.
My internals will look similar with what I use to have, for sure not a hat.
I am not sure if I will add a LPS or not. For now, I am using a medical SPS for 12v input, works fine.
 

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