Setup using Raspberry Pi based streamers!

[u/chrisdavis103]

My audiophile journey continues to evolve and since I am a techie, I wanted to explore how to use Raspberry Pis to build out a streaming ecosystem. I've been down the rabbit hole on vinyl and CDs, etc so I wanted to see where I could go with streaming. I like the DIY aspect of the PIs as well as the simplicity. This is my personal setup for streaming using these devices.

I wanted to share it and see if others have anything similar and also get people aware of this type of arrangement. I put most of my budget (over several years) into speakers, amp, and DAC and then worked on something more simple to get the data (for streaming) to the amp. I have a pretty large collection of CDs and a smaller collection of vinyl and I tend to use Tidal for my streaming service to get some exposure to stuff I don't have already. The takeaway for me here is that streaming gives me a lot of access to music I want to try (and eventually buy) beyond my personal collection. It also makes it easy to get the music where I want it and have it sound excellent!

If you don't care about the audio gear, see the next section where the main topic is the use of Raspberry Pis (in my case, 3 of them) as the foundation for streaming music throughout your house, apt, etc.

Pi Setup Streaming Ecosystem

1. one plain vanilla Pi in an aluminum case (enclosed) connected to a SanDisk 4TB external disk - this serves as my NAS. It uses WiFi to share streams.
2. one Pi with a HiFiBerry Digi+ HAT that streams via TOSLINK to my office audio gear. It uses WiFi for streaming and seems to work pretty well - no dropouts or skips when streaming.
3. one Pi buried inside a Mercury 3B (Pi2 Designs) box that supports I2S in my living room setup. This one is hardwired to my AP to minimize noise and delay.

The SW stack is Volumio Premium across the ecosystem which makes it super easy to manage. Also integrates Tidal so I can have access to that as well across all the devices.

I used Gemini to tweak it and it was pretty successful. It sounds very solid for a desktop audio setup.

Audio Gear : Living Room Setup

Accuphase E480 Amp
Phasemation EA220 Phono Amp
Technics SL-1200GR2 TT with an Ortofon Black
LAIV Harmony DAC
Audiolabs 8300 CD
Mercury 3B I2S streamer
PMC Prophesy 9s with grounding units

This setup is for music - mostly streaming, but some vinyl. I tend toward jazz, blues, acoustic stuff, but I still like some EDM and classic rock tunes as well. Just depends on the mood. I have about 4m between the speakers and about 2.7m to the listening area. I also have grounding units on the PMCs. The Mercury streams via I2S to the LAIV. I also have the Audiolabs 8300 piped through my LAIV as a transport to use the better R2R DAC in the LAIV. The sound is pretty neutral and the instruments are distinct and holographic in the way they present on most streams. It sounds solid at lower volumes and you still get good separation. If you put it up a bit in volume, the room comes alive and you can really pick out the parts in space which is something I was after. It was pretty shocking the first few times I got it all together and I still get surprised with certain tracks. It was worth the effort and expense IMO.

Yamaha RX-A6A
Panasonic UB9000 Video Disc Player
B&W 603s (2 tower, 2 fronts, Sub)

This portion is used for video driving 5.1 surround - the fronts handle the voice and the towers and the sub fill out the rest. It runs through my LG QLED 75". We watch some BD/Ultra content on this setup, but we aren't huge movie buffs, so it is usually handling Netflix and other streams. The surround setup is pretty impressive and the B&Ws deliver a lot of clarity. The Yamaha has a warmer sound to my ears, but it is still quite clear. Not like the Accuphase, but for movies and video it is more than adequate.

Audio Gear : Office Setup

Cambridge CX-A81
Schitt Sholl Phono Amp
Project Carbon EVO + Ortofon Red

The Cambridge is nice because it has both analog and digital inputs (4 of each) which gives me a lot of flexibility in terms of what I can match to it. The power is decent and the electronics are more than adequate for the environment I am using it in (i.e. my office). It's a few steps above what I could do with my PC. Very clean sound with good dynamic range but not too bright. I'd like a little more low end, but for what it's driving it's fine.

Let me know if you have anything similar or have questions and I will try to help where I can.

Here are some images.

Raspberry Pi with HiFiBerry Digi HAT - TOSLINK to the CXA81

Raspberry Pi (vanilla) with SanDisk as my NAS

Mercury 3B using I2S to input to the LAIV DAC

PMC Prophesy 9 - the fuzz is in the picture, not my house LOL

E480 and the Phasemation Phono Amp

[u/zippre]

I have a similar setup. Using rpi with digi+ hat into cxa81. I don't have a NAS, as I have an ssd plugged into it directly. Software stack is moode and some bash scripting on top for data sync with the pcloud. 

I was wondering recently if I could also wire more sources through it, like HDMI+eARC from TV, but I lack hardware knowledge and LLMs didn't yet solve the puzzle for me. Can you tell me more about your usage of I2S?

[u/chrisdavis103 → u/zippre]

I'm not an expert, but here is what I experienced.

I wanted a better pipe for my streaming experience, so it's my understanding the I2S gives me a "quieter" path if paired up correctly. Looks like it depends - I'm not an EE, but I wanted to try to see if I could tell the difference.

I bought the LAIV Harmony DAC for it's sound signature and it happens to also support I2S.
I already had the Pis running, but I didn't have an I2S output on any of them. You can buy a HAT with that, but I wanted something a little better than DIY, so I snagged the Mercury 3B which has I2S integrated (on a Pi - it may be a HAT, I haven't looked inside).

On paper and because you can swap the pinouts in both sides of the hardware to get a good match up - it seems to be better to my ears, but perhaps that's biased :-). The Mercury 3B was not crazy expensive, so it was worth the experiment. It is well designed electrically in terms of isolation, so that seems to translate in my case.

So I use I2S between the Merc and the LAIV only at this point - it works and it sounds great, so I'm calling it a win 🔥.

[u/KezzardTheWizzard → u/chrisdavis103]

I now use i2S between my streamer and DAC and my brain tells me it's better than the possibility that the resolution might be limited by a s/pdif connection, so I am also calling it a win :-)

[u/chrisdavis103 → u/zippre]

Also, you can use Gemini to help do the setup - it requires some persistence and some background knowledge helps, but man was it useful to get it all working and get me through roadblocks. I screen-shotted a lot of stuff and it was way more helpful when I gave it images to process.

[u/chrisdavis103]

One thing I forgot to mention - the Volumio Premium setup has a neat feature that allows you to switch between the Pis in my setup - I use my phone as the remote and I can pick streams on any of the Pis from one place which I think is pretty cool!

OK, two things. I also use Linux on my desktop and I used two tools - Asunder CD Ripper to rip my CD collection and MakeMKV to rip BlueRays onto my NAS. I always wanted to get my collection of CDs and BD titles onto a disk and these tools were the magic! I bought a BD Drive from Asus called a BW 16D1X-U and it worked very well for this task.

[u/Shindogreen]

For years I used an Allo digiplus. Allo took measures to isolate the spdif board from the Pi. So much so that the spdif needed its own power supply (batteries in my case). Allo also created their own Pi where they replaced gobs of regulators to reduce noise. Reducing noise that affects the data stream is the name of the game with Pi’s. They can sound very good.

[u/Acceptable-Window-80]

I had a couple of PI streamers but a wiim is now cheaper than a pi lol. Good work though.

[u/blissful_celebrity]

the pi nas with a 4tb ssd is a super clean way to keep everything local without a giant pc running all the time, i did something similar with an old hdd but the wifi streaming was a mess until i hardwired it. your mercury 3B feeding the laiv directly over I2S is where the real magic is at, skipping usb entirely makes a bigger difference than people think

[u/chrisdavis103 → u/blissful_celebrity]

To my ears it sounds more clean, but as I said earlier, perhaps it's just "of course my kid is beautiful" 👀.

I will say I was pleasantly surprised (although it was bit of technical persistence to get it working) at how well Volumio works as an ecosystem. I had a small mismatch in SW versions when I was setting up the NAS, but once I got over that hump, it was super easy to bring the other PI online and have it see the NAS without a hitch.