New Volumio User

[elcoholic]

I spent a very frustrating day yesterday day trying to get Daphile to written to a bootable USB stick to try it on my old 2007 iMac. Even my neighbor the IT guy who's fluent in Linux, OS and Windows could do it. Today I tried Volumio and it was a piece of cake to write it to the stick and the iMac booted right up. This is just a trial to see how I like it before plunking down the cash for a Mac mini or an Intel NUC. I'm running off the iMac's headphone jack into my main system with cheap cables and even so the SQ with FLAC and 88k/32 AIFF files is very impressive. Much better than iTunes playing the same files. I think there's something to this dedicated server thing. There's some cool plug ins I'd like to try like stereo to mono and stereo to binaural. I have a Bifrost Uber due in tomorrow. Can't wait. T

 

[gvl]

You could write Daphile's .iso image to a CD and boot from the CD instead, that is if your computer has a CD/DVD drive. Daphile feels like a more mature product, if not a bit dated. I liked it but couldn't get it to work reliably with my USB DAC on a 15 y/o PC, Volumio works fine, however, so this is what I use. Volumio Tidal plugin is apparently coming very soon, will be interesting.

 

[elcoholic]

I thought about taking the CD approach and will hold that as plan B. I was also toying with converting the Daphile .iso to .img and then writing it to a usb stick with etcher since that worked so well with Volumio if that’s even possible. For now I’m sticking with Volumio. I’m not nor do I want to play computer dude. Having to use terminal is farther from plug and play than I want to be.

 

[elcoholic]

Tried that but could only get the limited functionality Daphile live usb that way.

 

[gvl]

Once Daphile boots off CD/flash you need to install it to the HDD from settings.

 

[LexDM3]

I have made a number of Volumio streamers on the Raspberry Pi 3B. Some use USB to feed external DACs, others use HiFiBerry DAC+ units plugged into the RPi's I2S bus.

They all work well and sound good. You can make the whole system happen for under $100 if you use the HiFiBerry DAC+. There are many DAC options.

I'm going to offer a seminar on doing just this at the upcoming Northeast AK meetup in March.

I use Etcher to write to SD and Micro SD cars on my 2009 MacBook Pro. It's free and works well. It probably supports USB drives too.

 

[E-Stat]

They all work well and sound good. You can make the whole system happen for under $100 if you use the HiFiBerry DAC+.

Better still, spend a few more bucks on an Allo DigiOne board, a nice external DAC and a linear or battery power supply for far better sound quality. I use piCorePlayer, but the hardware is essentially the same. Disable HDMI, Bluetooth, onboard audio, power LEDs and configure a large chunk of unused memory as a large output cache. Declocking a bit saves battery life if you use a cellphone charger based power supply - which is much quieter than a cheap and dirty SMPS.