New RPI 3 Model B+ Launched

Audio Gear Talk Raspberry Pi
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This is based on a Volumio experimental build, and the author says he hopes it is a driver issue.

For those who are trying this out with Roon Bridge, what distro are you using?

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Is the WiFi good enough to use without a dongle?

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Are you using wifi to stream 512 DSD or wired ethernet?

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I got my Pi3B+ today. Just to make sure I had the latest drivers, I used Rasbian Jessie from the Raspberry Pi site. Because I couldnā€™t be bothered to figure out how to configure wifi via command line, I used the version with Desktop included.

After booting up to the desktop, I connected the wifi to my 5Ghz AC router. For kicks, I compared the download speeds of the 5GHz wireless to the ā€œgigabitā€ Ethernet. Surprisingly, they were almost exactly the same, about 70Mbps. (For comparison, my wired desktop usually measures over 300Mbps and my iPhone 8 plus usually measures 200-300Mbps on 5GHz.) So, no real speed benefit for one vs. the other.

I used the command line interface to install Roon Bridge. I find the Roon KB article on Linux to be very confusing, but I just paste these three commands in, one at a time:

curl -O http://download.roonlabs.com/builds/roonbridge-installer-linuxarmv7hf.sh
chmod +x roonbridge-installer-linuxarmv7hf.sh
sudo ./roonbridge-installer-linuxarmv7hf.sh

Boom. Roon Bridge is up and running over wifi. Just to minimize overhead, I also found a setting in the Rasbian Desktop that boots Rasbian up to the command line and doesnā€™t load the desktop. (You can always re-start the desktop by typing startx at the command line.)

I then plugged up my three USB DACs (Doesnā€™t everyone run 3 USB DACs on a $37 SBC?) and configured them in Roon:

  • JLH Labs ODAC for my main listening room
  • DragonFly Black for one outdoor zone
  • XtremPro X1 (DragonFly 1.2 clone) for another outdoor zone

All of them worked great. The only problem was when I disconnected them and reconnected, Roon switched the name and settings for two of the DACs. Inconvenient, but not a problem.

After listening on the ODAC via wifi for a few minutes, curiosity got the better of me. I turned off wifi and plugged in to Ethernet. I listened to this for 10-15 minutes, and I didnā€™t hear any noise or dropouts. Iā€™m not asking it to do anything more than un-decoded Tidal Masters at 24/48, but it didnā€™t have any immediately noticeable problems in the few minutes I listened. I then turned wifi back on and unplugged the Ethernet. Maybe, just maybe, the sound was a bit better over wifi, but I donā€™t have golden ears, and this was a really short test.

Iā€™m curious to see if DietPi will come out with an update that is specific to the 3B+, but until then, Rasbian works great!

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Iā€™m sure Harry is working on it too so expect a ropieee build coming soon.

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I posted many times this is lan. Wifi can only cope with dsd256 reliably