Dummies Guide to Pi2AES! Throw away your PC or laptop.

Discussion in 'Digital: DACs, USB converters, decrapifiers' started by purr1n, Jan 29, 2020.

  1. earnmyturns

    earnmyturns Smartest friend

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    Ok, I'll try once more. PCM data is held in Pi memory. It is a set of n-bit words, no timing involved. The device driver writes those words to the Pi I2S output, and that's where clocking happens. Which clock rate? Whatever is specified by the device driver. What clock? The clock provided by the Pi2AES master. TL; DR: PCM has no inherent clock, it's just a data format. Clock is only involved in synchronous digital outputs, such as I2S or S/PDIF.
     
  2. dasman66

    dasman66 Self proclaimed lazy ass - friend

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    Or the kali was clocking, and then the pi2aes was disregarding and clocking again (not sure how that happens if both are the master and neither are capable of being a slave).

    I can imagine this is what it would be like if you had 2 girl friends that found out about each other and were both screaming at you at the same time...
     
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  3. Dandou

    Dandou Acquaintance

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    It was a serious upgrade.
    With a more detailed, and much better resolved sound.
    Once you get a sound improvement in your system, you ressent the regression as painful.

    @Michael Kelly ,
    I think that it would be interesting for you to get a KALI board from Allo, and to clarify why it improves the sound. It may be beneficial for the engineering of the next generations of Pi2design products in order to reach new summits.
     
    Last edited: Jul 12, 2022
  4. LetMeBeFrank

    LetMeBeFrank Won't tell anyone my name is actually Francis

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    I have a hard time believing that the clocks from the KALI and the clocks from the Pi2AES are so different that anyone can tell the difference, let alone that one is "unlistenable" compared to the other, especially when they are essentially doing the same thing.
     
  5. Dandou

    Dandou Acquaintance

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    I don't know if the clocks are different.
    I think that the two boards do different jobs.

    The KALI was sent to the support of Audiophonics to check why it failed.
    I'll keep studying the options, and I will post updates.
     
  6. dericchan1

    dericchan1 Facebook Friend

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  7. Dandou

    Dandou Acquaintance

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    Last edited: Jul 12, 2022
  8. dasman66

    dasman66 Self proclaimed lazy ass - friend

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    Allo calls the Kali an i2s reclocker and states that their device is only compatible with slaves

    Micheal has already stated that the pi2aes "behaves much like the Kali does", in that it wants to be the master and what gets sent out uses the clock from the pi2aes.

    Based purely on the descriptions from each manufacturer... it sounds exactly like they are both trying to do the same job. I don't doubt that you heard a difference when both were working for a limited time together... and that you perceived that difference as "better". But the fact is that Allo states their device has to be the master, and Michael said that the Pi2aes wants to be the master (putting the rpi in slave mode).

    I surmise that the two masters conflicted and eventually one master killed the other.
    -----edit------
    grammar
     
    Last edited: Jul 12, 2022
  9. earnmyturns

    earnmyturns Smartest friend

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    Sounds like a videogame.
     
  10. Dandou

    Dandou Acquaintance

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    Your post is a very clear, and comprehensive explanation of what eventually happened.
     
    Last edited: Jul 12, 2022
  11. Michael Kelly

    Michael Kelly MOT: Pi 2 Design

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    so you’re saying that my board kills!
     
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  12. Michael Kelly

    Michael Kelly MOT: Pi 2 Design

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    The biggest difference is that the KALI creates clean I2S clocks which are then used by some other device. The PI2AES also converts the I2S into AES digital audio. If you were only going into an I2S DAC, then they are equivalent.
     
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  13. dasman66

    dasman66 Self proclaimed lazy ass - friend

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    there can be only one
     
    Last edited: Jul 12, 2022
  14. androxylo

    androxylo Acquaintance

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    Anyone got Light?
     
  15. Dandou

    Dandou Acquaintance

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    An update about KALI.

    The good news are that KALi was not killed nor damaged.
    The support of Audiophonics tried it with other HATs, and it works fine. So, it's unclear why it stopped working suddenly with the PI2AES.
    Maybe a random failure?…

    I'm afraid that I'll never know the answer, because I decided to go instead for the Audio-GD DI-20HE. It will be beneficial both for my PI2AES and for my Allo USBridge Sig that I keep using for my DSD albums.
     
    Last edited: Jul 21, 2022
  16. HotRatSalad

    HotRatSalad Friend

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    I've ripped all my sacds to .dsf files, if I remember correctly dsd to pcm conversion is either 88.2 or 176.4 correct ? I've set moode to native dsd but it always converts to 24/192 so I set sox to 176.4. I guess that's my question, is it better to do this ?

    After living with this device for a while, I love the way it sounds but navigating and software is always a lag fest. Only thing that sucks about it. Even with the 7 inch screen it's cumbersome and laggy.
    I only play files off my 4tb drive using moode. Initially this was for my step dad's stereo but he would probably smash it into 1000 pieces or be calling me everytime he wanted to jam. He knows nothing about software, settings, basic file structures lol. Got him a emotiva erc-4 instead, since he's more a spinner kind of guy.
     
    Last edited: Jul 24, 2022
  17. haywood

    haywood Friend

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    In mpd settings you want to set sox selective resampling to “upsample if source < target (adhere to base frequency)” which will upsample to multiples of 44.1khz or 48khz up to the maximum bitrate you set.

    Since it’s a web app the responsiveness of the interface is largely relative to the client. Even a cheap Amazon tablet is head and shoulders above a pi touchscreen for this. I’m not sure why people want to bodge a fixed low res display onto the pi when they could use a tablet instead but c’est la vie.
     
  18. HotRatSalad

    HotRatSalad Friend

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    Only concerned with sampling on sacd files. I don't resample or upsample, however sacds are either 88.2 or 176.4 not 192
    Sorry if info was insufficient. BNC to gungnir probably best to set 24/176.4 for sacd files.

    It's still laggy on tablets and phones btw. I agree the screen is kind shit though. Used one came up for sale and the screen was tempting as it was originally going to be for someone who doesn't know shit about these things and doesn't want to interface with a phone/tablet to listen to music.
     
  19. Smody

    Smody New

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  20. Michael Kelly

    Michael Kelly MOT: Pi 2 Design

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    There is a DSI connector on Mercury inside the box. But we have made no provision nor do we support the use of that connector. You would have to sneak the FPC out the front in order to use it.

    most software releases will output to the HDMI. I know that with Volumio and moode if you enable the touchscreen option that will cause the HDMI to follow the screen output.
     

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