May I present: the newest Roon-ready DAC and Streamer: The ITT Tiny 109. Built in 1978.
Say what? Of course, the ITT is merely the shell for my Raspberry Pi with Hifiberry DAC. I got the vintage radio, a real design classic, on eBay for 10 bucks. I hollowed out its inside and then simply put the RPi in, routing the cables through what was previously the connectors of the ITT. The whole thing is now connected to my stereo and nicely graces my bookshelves.
The work was finished within little more than an hour. The most labour-intensive part was to rip apart the insides of the old machine, which were glued together quite strongly. (Btw, the machine was broken when I got it. So I did not destroy a perfectly good radio).
I got the idea when I saw on the Hifiberry website that some people actually built their DACs into old radios and made them _work again. I admire their craftsmanship, but could never do that myself as I simply lack the skills. But I did like the look of the old radios much better than the plain plastic box you can buy from Hifiberry. So I thought I‘d try to use the old radio as a shell and connect it to my stereo. Worked surprisingly well!
Here’s more information on the radio I used (in German):
https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/ittdeutsch_tiny_109_einsprachig_lw_mw.html
And here’s Hifiberry presentation of the real craftmanship:
https://www.hifiberry.com/build/gallery/
