Good Little Inexpensive Computer System

[hagensieker]

I've been using Raspberry Pi as part of a home LogitechMediaServer home audio server for years now. Recently I started messing with adding a small LCD screen and figuring out how to get it to display track info, etc.

 

As a result I've spent a lot of time under headphones on the Pi and am blown away at how good a Raspberry Pi with HiFiMeDIY 9018 DAC and Sony MDR-V6 headphones sound. If you carefully shop the headphones you basically have a full system for about $150 or $200 if you want to be technical adding in the costs of micro SD card and power brick, etc.

 

I have vacuum tube amps and headphone amps and am just as satisfied listening via this inexpensive Pi system as I am any of the others.

 

Oh, and the LCD is cool. You eagle eyes might note that isn't the 9018 DAC in the photo. You'd be correct. Just used my older DAC to set it up because it literally kept falling off the work table. Same goes with the HiFiBerry DAC's as well.

 

[franz159]

I've been using Raspberry Pi as part of a home LogitechMediaServer home audio server for years now. Recently I started messing with adding a small LCD screen and figuring out how to get it to display track info, etc.

 

As a result I've spent a lot of time under headphones on the Pi and am blown away at how good a Raspberry Pi with HiFiMeDIY 9018 DAC and Sony MDR-V6 headphones sound. If you carefully shop the headphones you basically have a full system for about $150 or $200 if you want to be technical adding in the costs of micro SD card and power brick, etc.

 

I have vacuum tube amps and headphone amps and am just as satisfied listening via this inexpensive Pi system as I am any of the others.

 

Oh, and the LCD is cool. You eagle eyes might note that isn't the 9018 DAC in the photo. You'd be correct. Just used my older DAC to set it up because it literally kept falling off the work table. Same goes with the HiFiBerry DAC's as well. [ATTACH=CONFIG]32353[/ATTACH]

 

[ATTACH=CONFIG]32352[/ATTACH]

I like the raspberry and have been playing with it for a few years now...

At the small cost of a few extra SD cards, you could experiment with other distro (Moode, Rune, Volumio) and maybe share your "subjective" comparison...

[hagensieker]

I've been through most of those and kind of have an affinity for PiCorePlayer, which is also LogitechMediaServer (or Airplay) I prefer LMS to the MPD players. They're cool but my eco-system at home revolves around LMS. I have embedded a raspberry pi in a tube headphone amp (Bottlehead Crack) and the evolution of that (hopefully) will be the LCD player on the front.

[Cebolla]

It's actually the Squeezelite network audio file player (a Squeezebox streamer emulator application) component of PiCorePlayer, that actually does the decoding and playing of the audio files - not LMS. The Logitech Media Server is there to provide Squeezelite with the audio files from its media library. LMS also has a built-in web browser controller app for the user to build play lists and control the playback of any Squeezebox type devices on the network, including PiCorePlayer's built-in Squeezelite.

 

You could have chosen not to install LMS in your PiCorePlayer's, so use LMS on another device on the network to provide the audio files, eg on a computer or a NAS. However, you would not be able to use PiCorePlayer to play audio files on the Rapberry Pi, supplied by LMS (internal or on another device on the network), if you had not installed (and are using) its Squeezlite component.

[Cebolla]

I like the raspberry and have been playing with it for a few years now...

At the small cost of a few extra SD cards, you could experiment with other distro (Moode, Rune, Volumio) and maybe share your "subjective" comparison...

Interestingly, the latest version of the Moode Player distro now has an optional Squeezelite player, in addition to MPD. However, unlike its MPD, there's no UPnP renderer front end, so you still have to use it as a Squeezebox and of course supply it with audio files from an LMS somewhere on the network (Moode doesn't come with a built-in LMS option like PiCorePlayer).