Hello I have been eyeballing this project since getting an RPI
I am looking at the highfi berry and I am wondering if it’s necessary to go with this DAC or if you can just use the built it, or, if there are any other options.
The main thing I see is that I would prefer to have a unit with balanced quarter inch outputs to run into my audio interface, as the current DAC setup needs me to use converters at the back to plug in the outputs.
Also I thought there was a hifiberry with a headphone out, but it doesnt seem to exist anymore. any ideas there?
Thanks for doing this, I hope I can add a thing or two in the future.
the builtin audio is not really an audio interface. It uses PWM (I think only 10 or 12 bit). It sounds horrible. You definitly need an additional card. Maybe you can use USB audio. But I think it will be too slow and you have to add this by yourself to zynthian.
You can also try other soundcards (Wolfson, PiDAC+, …) - we have not testing other cards yet.
In the “/boot/config.txt” you can see a list of sound device drivers (overlays) that should work with zynthian:
hifiberry-amp
hifiberry-dac
hifiberry-dacplus
hifiberry-digi
iqaudio-dac
iqaudio-dacplus
audioinjector-wm8731-audio
Probably there are more. Those are the tested ones.
Regarding the the HifiBerry, any of them includes a headphones connector. Some includes a 3.5mm mini-jack output connector, but it’s a line output, not for headphones. Headphones requires extra amplification.
So I found this ‘new’ sound board called Fe-Pi audio Z V1 http://fe-pi.com/
Based on a Freescale I2S codex, STGL5000, on a Pi zero form factor board. 1/8" Line in, Line out and HP/mic. It’s fairly cheap at ~$11 so I went ahead and got one to try it out. Ordered it without the socket soldered so by using a 2x20 socket with long pin tails I can stack another socket on the Pi’s bus, Arduino style. What I really like is the stereo line in, thinking Looper or FX processing.
The downside is a custom kernel so no mainline support as yet. For Zynthian, would have to build on top of this kernel. Also would have to extend the In and Outs to the panel because of the form factor.
Yogi
Can anyone explain why the HiFiberry is listed as the go-to audio device when audioinjector-wm8731-audio is supported. Are there any caveats?
The audio injector is cheaper and with my limited hardware knowledge it seems like a better deal with headphone preamp, dedicated crystal for timing and presoldered header. Plus there’s stereo input as well.
When i started developing Zynthian, i chose HifiBerry because it was the more convenient i found 2 years ago. It remains as the “canonical” option because the case is designed to fit with it
Today there are more options, and some of them are really interesting, like the audioinjector. You can use whatever you like as zynthian software is not limited to the HifiBerry and it’s really easy to reconfigure to use any soundcard supported by the kernel. In fact, if you use the audioinjector i think you shouldn’t have problem for enabling the audio input and use the Zynthian as an FX procesor or stompbox. I think i will try it in the next weeks …
Thanks for your fast reply. That sounds great!
I’ve been toying with ZynAddSubFX and the idea of building a headless Synth from an RPI for a while, so I was quite thrilled when I stumbled upon the Zynthian project.
