I am curious to try an HifiBerry solution with Ropiee to use speakers with Roon. I’d like to first try with some cheap speakers I already have, but I admit my total ignorance when it comes to all things Raspberry and HifiBerry. Could you please help me shed some light? And apologies if the questions are very banal
What I have understood is this - is it correct?
First of all, the basics: if I am connecting active speakers, all I need is a Raspberry and a DAC; the kind of DAC I need will depend on the connection required for the speakers: there’s aDAC with a 3.5mm jack , which I can use for cheap computer speakers, and other versions with RCA, XLR etc connectors.
If instead I want to connect passive speakers, then I need a Raspberry and an AMP. The AMP2 is basically a DAC+ and doesn’t require a separate DAC, while the AMP60 is an analogue that must therefore be connected to a DAC.
How about connections? How do I connect the Raspberry and the AMP/DAC together? What kind of connections does the AMP2 support?
Yes, there are “guides”, and yes, I did spend quite a lot of time going through those, but it all seems incredibly convoluted - it reminded me of when I was trying to learn Linux or Git and every piece of documentation I found was needlessly convoluted, so any help would be greatly appreciated.
The AAMP60 is a 30 Wpc class-D amplifier, designed for use with the DAC+ ADC and DAC+ ADC Pro boards (these combine a DAC with an ADC, to allow you to connect an analogue input).
If you don’t need an analogue input, then go for the AMP2 (which combines a DAC and a 30Wpc class-D amplifier) with passive speakers or go with the DAC+ Pro with active speakers.
The DAC+ and the AMP2 are “hats” that connect directly to your RPi. Everything you need (except for power supply, case and micro-SD card) are included in the kit.
Buy the Raspberry Pi plus choice of DAC hat and mount this on the 40-pin general purpose IO header. Then flash an SD card with a Ropieee image. Job done!
If you’re using passive speakers get the AMP2 or IQaudiO DigiAMP+. If you’re using active speakers get the IQaudiO Pi-DAC+ as this has both RCA and headphone outputs.
How about the wifi connection? I understand the Raspberry Pi4 has built-in wifi; is the connection any good? Has any of you needed to use a specific wifi adapter? Streaming audio doesn’t take a huge amount of bandwidth, but, after my terrible experience with a Sonos that keeps disconnecting despite being 4 metres from the router with nothing in between, I don’t know what to think.
Many people use wifi successfully, but Ethernet is always recommended (because it always works). I ended up running a few cables, and this probably contributed as much to our listening enjoyment as anything else has.
I wrote the RoPieee Beginner’s Guide, which I assume that you are referring to. How could it be made better? Is there something missing or a topic glossed over?
On an RPi 3b I use a cheap Edimax dongle - this allows me to upsample to 384KHz on both RPis without ever experiencing any dropouts. Can’t speak for the Wifi on the RPi4 - will also depend on the case you choose.
I had read that guide, it is actually quite clear - thanks a lot for your efforts! The key thing I didn’t quite understand is how to configure wifi; the iqAudio PDF guide says you need to write a text file with your password onto an SD card, as detailed here .Do you have to follow the same approach with Ropiee, too? or do you have to first connect a computer via ethernet to the raspberry and then, from there, enable wifi?
I have ordered a HiFiBerry and will play around with it once I receive it
As someone still fairly new to Roon and totally new to the whole Raspberry world, what struck me was:
There is a small guide on how to use HiBerryOs with Roon. How would that differ from using RoPiee?
the hifiberry website is laid out very poorly. I even wondered if it was legit at all. For example, there isn’t a way to filter the website and show products by type or by connection. There is some documentation but I found it scattered all over the place and a bit confusing
The iqAudio website is a little bit better, but not that much, because it has this guide, but most of its products are currently out of stock
Correct. Initial install is via ethernet – please note that you can do the initial install close to your router/switch, and move the Pi into the final location later.
RoPieee is a purpose built appliance-like OS dedicated to supporting Roon as an endpoint using a Raspberry Pi. @spockfish has done an amazing job. RoPieee has no direct affiliation with the HAT manufacturers, some of whom have also created OS instructions. Of course, any given HAT (say a HiFiBerry DAC+) is agnostic as hardware – you can use any number of software configurations other than using it as a Roon end point. If you are using Roon, however, I can’t think of a disadvantage of using RoPieee.
I updated the RoPieee guide to make it more clear regarding ethernet. Thanks for the feedback.
I have 3 X pi’s running wireless perfectly on 5ghz banf… Two are included in the speakers themselves the other is for headphones and just has a DragonFly DAC for output.
Re wifi, I find the Pi 4 to be far superior to previous models. Although wired is always best I’ve had great success with a 4 running wifi in a location I can’t get an Ethernet cable to. A Pi 3 didn’t do the job very well in the same location.
My Roon core (a dedicated notebook) is connected to my network with an Ethernet cable. The Pi 4 is connected to the network via wifi and the DAC connected to the Pi 4 with a USB cable. I also use a Pi 3 as an end point with another DAC, but the Pi 3 is connected with Ethernet, not through wifi.
Thank you. That answered the question and on the strength of it I have purchased a Pi 4 and am looking forward to installing RoPieee. Thanks also to Nathan Wilkes for his brilliant guide. I’ll report back on that Nathan when I’m done!
Following my experience the guide is great and comprehensive but I failed to pick up on the host name bit. I renamed and then of course could not find it because I was using the old URL!
Don’t feel bad, I set up a password on my first All Digione (probably by mistake). When I went to the web GUI I could not remember the name and password. I didn’t write it down anywhere. I had to reinstall Ropieee and start all over. Live and learn.
