Finally took a vanity photo of my new office headphone rig…
- RPi4 (2GB RAM model, which is overkill for RoPieee, but the 1GB was out of stock)
- Official RPi 4 power supply
- Official RPi 7" touchscreen display
- SmartPi Touch 2 case for the display + RPi
- Flirc.tv IR remote
- SPL Phonitor xe with integrated DAC
(My primary headphones are the Focal Stellia, to which you can see their balanced cable connected here.)
I installed the fan that came with the Touch 2 case, connected to the GPIO pins in “low speed” configuration. I can’t hear it over the ambient noise in my home office, but can feel it if I hold my hand behind the case. The RPi 4 runs about 42-43˚C when idling (RoPieee showing the clock) and ~48˚C when Roon is playing music. (That is with the most current RPi 4 USB firmware.)
As both RoPieee and the Phonitor do remotes by learning IR codes, instead of including their own remote, I programmed RoPieee to respond to the play/pause, next and previous buttons on an ancient Gen 1 Apple TV remote I had in storage (the actual ATV is long gone), while the Phonitor is programmed to listen for volume up and down.
As can be seen in the photo, the RPi is fed via wired Ethernet, and in turn feeds the Phonitor xe’s DAC via USB (from one of the RPi4’s USB 2 ports, not that that really makes any difference).
There are basically no reviews of the Phonitor xe’s integrated DAC to be found on the web. I guess SPL’s review loaner units have all shipped without one to make reviewers focus on the headphone amp, crossfeed circuit, etc. and not get into DAC comparisons (which is a huge rabbit hole). The Phonitor xe has their newer “DAC768”, which is based on the AK4490 series chips and supports up to PCM768 and DSD256. And to my ears, it sounds really nice.
And for the old school amongst us… VU meters! How awesome is that?