Hi all. I’m planning to build a Raspberry Pi endpoint for my bedroom, which isn’t my main listening room. Some quick searches tell me that for £60 I can buy either (1) an Audioquest DragonFly Black to use as an external USB DAC or (2) an ALLO Boss DAC HAT. £60 feels about right to me as a DAC solution for sleepy-time listening. If you were making this choice and had £60 to spend, what would you do? Or would you do something else?
Also – I’m going to use the Raspberry Pi 4 Model B. Is it true that I just need the 2GB (RAM) version because RoPieee doesn’t use much RAM?
The PI 4 with 2GB should be more than enough.
For my headphone listening, i use a RP 2 with no issues.
It is connected to my LAN via WIFI using an USB dongle.
I use a NuForce DAC for this temporary solution at the moment, but have used an Audiolab M-DAC as well.
What you choose will be about preferences and budget.
If you can hear both solutions and can choose the best one for your use, that should be optimal.
Check the output voltage against the headphones you are going to use , the AQ black has a lower output than the Red for eg, they won’t run 300 ohm cans ?
There’s also a Cambridge Audio usb and N Audiolab nano
I guess partly what I’m interested in is if folks have a general preference for an external USB DAC solution in comparison to a HAT solution. Or if anybody has tried one of these and been disappointed for any reason.
I think a hat would be more elegant as it has RCA outputs so will be tidier than the Dargonfly plus 3.5mm to RCA adaptor. Soundwise there is nothing much between my Dragonfly 1.2 and IQaudIO Pi-DAC+.