Cost effective Roon endpoints

…or you can just go for a Digiamp+…hard to fault what you get for £54 +RPi+Case.

…or you can just go for a Digiamp+ …hard to fault what you get for £54 +RPi+Case.

I just bought one of these and I’m really impressed with it feeding a pair of Q Acoustics 3020i in my home office :+1:

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I want one but I can’t figure out how buy it in California. My current office setup runs the surprisingly good analog audio out of the Chromecast into a 50 watt Fosi Audio power amp then into two 50-year-old salvaged speakers. $91 USD. I listen to it a lot.

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Ahh…is HiFiBerry any easier? I think they do a similar product.

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IQaudIO will ship internationally…

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So do Allo :stuck_out_tongue:

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You don’t need to solder anything or plug chips into any board. Though you should make sure your body is static free. A grounded wrist strap is safest. The Pi and the HAT plug together in an obvious way, and you can put them in the enclosure of your choice–or not. Hi Fi Berry and Q Audio both make HATs with spdif outputs and enclosures for them. If you’re handy with a soldering iron you should definitely be handy with putting these things together in under half an hour. Static discharge, losing screws and bending pins (if you’re super careless) are your only concerns. Then you can enjoy the pride in listening to something you put together yourself.

I use Pis as endpoints with Ropieee software connected to DACs for headphone listening and the Allo Boss (combo Pi and hat) with Ropieee for RCA out to receivers. I’m happy with those endpoints. Mine are all wired, so I can’t comment on wifi performance. The Boss requires assembly, but no soldering. It’s easy.

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@Toolio Interested in your choice of DACs for headphone listening…

Raspberry with ropiee

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@ Stephen_Dawson: Sony TA-ZH1ES headphone amp and Sony MDR-Z1R headphones. They sound incredible together. I use a microrendu to feed it from my ROCK.

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I have a few. I have homes in two countries, so sometimes I double up. The collection that is being used or has been used with the endpoints I mentioned include: Schiit Bifrost DAC with Lyr amp, JDS ODAC + O2 (2), iFi Nano iDSD Black Label, Audioquest Dragonfly Red and Nuforce Icon HDP.

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The CCA goes up to 24/96, and the regular price is 35 bucks.

On paper. But it hasn’t worked at 96kHz for a long while unfortunately:

https://support.google.com/chromecast/thread/356030

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This bug is very annoying when I listen TIDAL Masters and let Roon do 1st unfold, many of them are 24/96.

So I let CCA to stream service like Spotify.

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Make sure you (and others) contact Google with your complaint, otherwise I’m afraid nothing may happen.

A few people (maybe a tiny % of CCA customers) have been complaining since ~July and there’s still no fix.

Good to know. All the more happier that I went for a usb connection between my working station and my DAC…

Still a great option for 44.1/48/88kHz. Hopefully enough people contact Google and complain so that 96kHz support is fixed.

Of course: the CCA is a champion in its category. In tandem with a cheap good DAC (the new Schiit Modi 3 for instance), it delivers amazing quality for less than 150 bucks.
In my experience, Google has always fixed the problems with their Chromecast devices -many of them, as this one, created by their own updates. Remember that even casting Spotify to the CCA was a nightmare at some point. So I would hold my breath.

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For good sound on the cheap with a small footprint, consider the Schitt Audio Modi 3 DAC with a HiFiBerry Digi+ Roon Endpoint. The Schitt Modi 3 is a significant overachiever priced around $100 US. This little puppy has a volume control and headphone amplifier in addition to single ended stereo outputs. John Darko reviews. And the whole bloody thing is made in the US. Yep, circuit board, case, and assembly.

Building a Raspberry Pi with a Digi+ hat is about $100 if you buy a case, power supply, and microSD card. You can connect the two with your choice of SPDIF or TOSlink.

A Chromecast Audio or an older Apple TV, the thin ones anyway, have TOSlink outputs hidden in the headphone jack and either will keep an TOSlink capable DAC fed. An Apple Airport Express also works if you can find them. Again, the headphone output also has a TOSlink emitter.

I’ve had a Raspberry Pi HiFiBerry Digi+ in the system for a couple of years and am completely happy.

With a Raspberry Pi, the tricky bit is getting the MicroSD card image installed correctly. It’s not hard but the instructions are not always complete. Use Etcher to transfer the image (bin not an archive) to the target media. Raspberry Pi foundation has a good getting started guide.

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