Audio quality on Pi

[Pete]

The phono out on the Pi is not great. Would the audio stream from HDMI be much better. Also, how would the HDMI audio compare to a dedicated HAT DAC board for a Pi.

Many thanks

[janui]

Hi Pete,
Yes, the phono output on the Pi is not good.
HDMI has the potential of running at 24-bit 192kHz, but on the Pi it is limited to 48kHz. This is actually OK and much better than phono.
Pi Hat cards are in most cases very good, you generally get what you pay for. Don’t expect a cheap Chinese card to perform as well as well as one from the better suppliers. Even so, cheap Chinese cards can give very acceptable results for the price.
For some measurements of a Pi with a Hat card see here: http://archimago.blogspot.com/2016/10/m ... berry.html
janui

[Pete]

Thank you Janice. Much appreciated.

I had an old Pi B model with 256mb RAM. Is there a board that's compatible with this old model?