How good is the audio on a Pi?

[demonboy]

I've had a Pi 2 knocking around for a while and today I've finally decided to run MusicBox on it.

I'm planning to run this via HDMI to RCA cable (or USB to RCA) into my Alpine car stereo and might buy an amp for the Alpine. I currently run a NUC with W10 via headphone jack to RCA and the audio is perfectly acceptable (the RCA actually goes via an Alpine Ai-net box before the head unit).

I'm interested to know what the digital audio is like from the Pi. I figured if it's digital, it's digital, you can't lose audio quality like you can analogue, but the signal will be going from digital to analogue via the hdmi to rca cable, so any degradation in audio will come from the cable, not the Pi itself, no? Unless there is some other interference that the Pi is known for?

I was asking because I've seen a number of DAC devices for the Pi and wondered if these are necessary because the Pi has bad audio?

I'm a bit of an audiophile with quite a large library in many different file formats, and I can tell the difference between a 128kbs mp3 and a 320kbs mp3, but how necessary are these peripherals for acceptable audio? Is the Pi a bad idea for a music jukebox on its own? I'd prefer not to buy additional hardware because I'm trying to minimise power consumption (I live on a boat on 12v) but I don't want to end up with something worse than my current setup. Unfortunately I'm not in a position to test the audio with my proposed setup right now, so I'm looking for general opinions.

Any tips and pointers gratefully received.

Thanks!

[RaTTuS]

an HDMI to rca cable is not good enough you need an adapter , or a hdmi to audio splitter box

[fruitoftheloom]

I've had a Pi 2 knocking around for a while and today I've finally decided to run MusicBox on it.

I'm planning to run this via HDMI to RCA cable (or USB to RCA) into my Alpine car stereo and might buy an amp for the Alpine. I currently run a NUC with W10 via headphone jack to RCA and the audio is perfectly acceptable (the RCA actually goes via an Alpine Ai-net box before the head unit).

I'm interested to know what the digital audio is like from the Pi. I figured if it's digital, it's digital, you can't lose audio quality like you can analogue, but the signal will be going from digital to analogue via the hdmi to rca cable, so any degradation in audio will come from the cable, not the Pi itself, no? Unless there is some other interference that the Pi is known for?

I was asking because I've seen a number of DAC devices for the Pi and wondered if these are necessary because the Pi has bad audio?

I'm a bit of an audiophile with quite a large library in many different file formats, and I can tell the difference between a 128kbs mp3 and a 320kbs mp3, but how necessary are these peripherals for acceptable audio? Is the Pi a bad idea for a music jukebox on its own? I'd prefer not to buy additional hardware because I'm trying to minimise power consumption (I live on a boat on 12v) but I don't want to end up with something worse than my current setup. Unfortunately I'm not in a position to test the audio with my proposed setup right now, so I'm looking for general opinions.

Any tips and pointers gratefully received.

Thanks!

HDMi to RCA Cable will not work.



All RPi since the A+/B+ have TRRS4 Audio & Video output with the correctly wired cable, the audio output is line only so needs to be amplified:

https://www.raspberrypi-spy.co.uk/2014/ ... ideo-jack/


IMO a HDMi splitter would be better as the sound is digital, something like:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B016OD3L4I/

[hippy]

Is the Pi a bad idea for a music jukebox on its own?

I found the analogue out from my Pi B+ perfectly acceptable through my Hi-Fi and would have no hesitation in building an MP3 player / jukebox that way. Software rather than hardware or audio quality proved the problem for me and I haven't had time to get back to that project.

I am not an audiophile and am aware others have considered analogue audio sub-par, even atrocious. Digital audio should be better but probably the only way to know for sure if it is acceptable for yourself is to try it.

[demonboy]

Hi,

Sorry, I should have said box rather than cable. Understand cables are not the best solution. Thanks for the link, that's the kind of thing I've been looking at.

Since posting this I've been looking at DACs. I'm still a little confused as to whether a DAC is superior to HDMI-to-RCA. My 'audiophile' knowledge stops at this point!

One thing I am attempting to do is get rid of the Alpine HU unit and use an amp instead. There are solid amps out there that could be used to power my 100w speakers and I realise, as suggested above, the audio from the Pi will require amplification, but still can't work out whether it's better to go HDMI to RCA or DAC.

Planning to run Rune so hoping that takes care of the software side of things.