I2S DAC

[npejcic]

Hello,

First, thank you for great OS and GUI

Do you plan to include I2S play device in your OS.
I have I2S DAC board which is connected to P5 GPIO port on Raspberry PI, so I need OS to support this.
Information from last days is: I2S library is included in new 3.10 Raspy official foundation's kernel.

Thank you.

BR,
Nebojsa

[ACX]

Hello npejcic, I'm glad you like our work

Yes, it's in our plans to Include I2S DAC support in the future. Which board do you own? We were interested to try which looks very promising.

[npejcic]

Yes, HiFiBerry is good compromise for best sound vs price I made DAC board myself also based on PCM5102A DAC chip (this DAC have good feature, can genarate MCLK inside of it) and we don't need to use external +-Vsupp for OP on output, this simplify electronic design. In difference of HiFiBery on our board we also have LCD/Buttons connectors.

After few months of listening this small board I must say that solution is very promising.

Picture of our device:

RaspyI2SModule

RaspyI2SKompletSmall.jpg (84.53 KiB) Viewed 15476 times

This board is made for local DIY audio community in Serbia
If you want to implement full function of this device DAC+LCD+BUTTONS I can help in testing purposes, or something else in hardware domain.

P.S. I also tested couple of another DACs (WM8740, WM8727, ES9023, AK4396) with our PIC32 based MCLK generator for best HiFi sound, but this device not-yet ready for publish.

[ACX]

Your board is very interesting too! I personally think that I2S is the way to go on the Raspberry Pi, leaving behind its well-known limitations of the shared Ethernet/USB bus. You are going in the right direction with your work, and we are are interested in supporting I2S DACs in future releases.

[Bones13]

Or better to just change to the Beagle Bone Black for I2S?

I have a rPi, but they are not that expensive.

[ACX]

The BeagleBone Black is also very interesting because it offers the possibility to develop specific capes ( some examples). I also like that it's fully open source, as entirely built with open hardware.

[npejcic]

I think that if you want to use Beagle Bone Black you must use USB DAC or BEAGLEBONE AUDIO CAPE for audio out.
Raspberry Pi and I2S board deliver very good sound quality, small size and price is lower than AUDIO Cape. Material cost for I2S HiFiBerry or my I2S board is about 20 Euros.
Integration of I2S driver in Raspberry OS is not very hard. I already use Raspbian and RaspyFi with kernel patch for I2S. Work great.

I use LAN NAS for file sharing, web radio and sometime use USB flash for file storing. I never had glitch or disturb in playing sound. Sometimes only in web radio but rarely, and that is consequence in internet connection not a Raspberry itself.
So I think that I2S module is best solution for Raspberry.

Beffore use PCM5102A dac chip, approach for made this IS2 board is not easy task, because it's very hard to generate good MCLK signal and synchronise it with rest I2S signals from Raspberry board. Raspberry Pi don't have MCLK onboard. So it complicate hardware and price must go higher. Now it's easy task, and sound good with PCM5102A.

If you have external DAC which have SPDIF than Cubox-i is also very good solution.

[ACX]

[npejcic]

I never have Beagle Bone Black, but after short research I think that SAME hardware can be used on BBB. Only cosmetic change is needed, because PCB footprint is not the same (pinout, connectors etc...).

[ACX]