RopieeeXL that has onboard DAC (like a Sonos:Connect/ZP80)?

Audio Gear Talk RoPieee
1

Hi-

Is it possible (theoretically, not saying it exists today) to have a single raspberry pi that both accepts a stream (from Roon, from Spotify Connect, maybe someday from Tidal Connect) that outputs not just USB/SPDIF but also contains a DAC and which can output analog audio via RCA? Or do you fundamentally need two hats (one SPDIF, one DAC), and so you need two raspberry pi’s?

I’m hoping to create something that is functionally the equivalent of a Sonos ZP80/Connect - I stream to it, and it outputs analog audio, which ideally I can volume control remotely. I realize I can obviously do it with two units; a RopieeeXL plus a khadas tone board feels like a decent solution for my use case. But I’d ideally like to keep cost down and complexity - so a single box solution would be better.

Let me know if this is such an edger case that it’s not worth even discussion, or if it’s trivial easy. I’m guessing it’s neither of those :slight_smile:

2

Yes - it’s trivial.
A Raspberry Pi plus a DAC HAT, eg. Hifiberry DAC, Allo Boss or similar with RCA outputs.

1 Like
3

Thanks - I thought it would be trivial. But when I look at the RopieeeXL documentation, I saw a number of HATs described as supported that supply SPDIF / Toslink and hadn’t seen discussions of those you mention. My oversight - many thanks!

4

You can run USB out at the same time you are running a HAT. There’s a selection to do that on Ropieee set up in the web browser UI. I don’t know if it’s default on or not. You can also airplay to the same raspi with output going to USB or HAT too.