Which HAT for coaxial output?

[Giuanniello]

I just got my Pi and it's fun to play with, it's running Moode and so far, from what I read and see online all the players look almost the same, of course I can't know how they sound if there is any sound difference among the the various ones (you are free and appreciated to post your personal experience opinions, grazie!), I am trying to figure how to create playlists if there is a way but the next add-on I am looking forward to is a HAT to give me a coaxial output so that I can use the two optical on my DAC (a Beresford Caiman SEG) for the TV and CD player and leave the USB free for on the fly connections like laptop or other devices, question is, since I already own a DAC and don't want to spend a bunch of money on such a device, which one would you advise me to look at taking into account that I want to also add, if I like the whole experience, a board to add a 2.5" drive with a S-ATA to USB adapter so that I don't have to recur to USB dongles or to the NAS (which I still have to figure how to connect since I have some issues with SMB connection).

 

Also, a board with a stable independent clock generator would be welcome to overcome the shared USB-ETH issue of the Pi (ver. 3B+).

 

Thanks for your suggestions and have a nice week end

 

 

Giovanni

[franz159]

@Giuanniello

 

Ciao Giovanni...

I would say that the usual suspects come into play here...

• HiFi Berry Digi+ Pro, 48$
• Allo DigiOne,  99$
• 502DAC - Audio Shield, 109$  (dac + coax + toslink)
• Allo DigiOne Signature, 239$ (this starts to be on the expensive side in my book...)

 

Franz

[Giuanniello]

Ciao @franz159

 

by reading here and there I also came to the conclusion that the Allo DigiOne Signature seems to be "the" solution I am looking for but the investment is quite heavy and can't even be split into an upgrade cause of the in between board begin part of the deal and not possible to split the buy into two parts like an upgrade so that one can first buy the clock and spdif board and then the other one making it less heavy to the wallet.

 

To be honest I don't yet know the potential of the Pi and as such to go for an almost 300$ expense to then maybe find out it is not that suitable leads me to re-thing the whole Pi situation, I am listening with the board only through USB and whilst I enjoy the web radios and find some of them being enjoyable the lossless music played through a usb dongle is not that exciting, even less the fact that Moode (which is my sole player at the moment) doesn't allow to build playlists and the fact you have to manually add to the queue each and every tune makes it less relaxing that listening to music should be in my opinion.

 

I know that getting rid of the USB output would make things so very much better I still doubt on what to do, maybe start with a cheaper spdif board to find out if the quality increase makes it worth to go through the hassle of manually adding each and every tune to the queue or if to give the Pi a whole different destination and look for a different route to listen to liquid music.

 

 

Thanks for your input

 

Giovanni

[franz159]

@Giuanniello

 

You wrote..."Moode (which is my sole player at the moment) doesn't allow to build playlists"

 

Admittedly, I'm not a fan of playlists, therefore I do not have that much experience.

But your statement is not accurate IMO.

To my knowledge in Moode you have one main "playing list" where you can easily "add" any item from your library or any radio.

If you want, at any moment you can save the current "playlist" into a new persistent playlist with the name you prefer.

This persistent playlist can be reused at any time.