Hi, I hope this hasn’t been raised b4. I’ve swapped my DAC from a cheap Topping to a Denafrips I was using elsewhere. All working fine using a USB connection but the cable is a cheapo.
On the Denafrips I was using a high-end RCA connection and I was wondering if it can be used from the RPi4b jackplug? Could try but I don’t want to mess anything up on the RPi and because the spec in the Raspberry site is a bit vague as to audio.
Many thanks for your thoughts.
The jackplug is an analog headphone jack. The RPi card by itself doesn’t have SPDIF (digital audio) outputs such as RCA coax or optical Toslink. It would require adding a HAT card such as DigiOne or HifiBerry Digi. Without an add-on card, USB is your only option to connect your RPi to the DAC.
Many thanks Richard. Looks like I’ll upgrade my USB cable.
No need to do so. Unless it does not work properly.
I’ll second this. Though this is opinion, I’d say it’s “fact driven opinion” that an upgraded USB cable should not do anything to your audio chain unless your cheapo cable were actually faulty, which you would experience as “doesn’t work”. I should say that I have a couple of $6 USB cables in my audio chain that has a couple components that are 500x to 1000x more expensive, and I don’t spend a moment thinking about whether I’m doing injustice to the bits. I do spend real money (though a lot less than many) on analog interconnects, but not on power cables. Everyone is different, and to each his own, but this particular form of “upstream digital nervosa” is one which is easy for the industry to make a few $ on, and I don’t think it’s likely to result in what most people want. That’s a nice DAC. Feed it nice bits. But a cheapo cable you have lying around will feed it nice bits.
After further research I agree, no upgrade is needed. Thanks guys.