Duet Receiver vs Pi with DAC

[Jon T]

Hi folks,

I've read in several threads how folks have replaced their dead Duet Receivers with Raspberry Pi's running piCorePlayer. Just a question out of curiosity: are there any benefits to doing that replacement now even before the Receiver dies? In other words is the Pi an "upgrade" one should consider doing because there's something so much better using a Pi rather than the "stock" receiver?

Related question: if I'm connecting a Pi receiver to a stereo system and speakers via RCA jacks, does adding a DAC (like the HiFiBerry) make enough of a sound quality difference to justify the "upgrade" to a Pi? Is the sound that much better than the "stock" receiver?

Jon T.

[waldo]

Hi folks,
Related question: if I'm connecting a Pi receiver to a stereo system and speakers via RCA jacks, does adding a DAC (like the HiFiBerry) make enough of a sound quality difference to justify the "upgrade" to a Pi? Is the sound that much better than the "stock" receiver?

Jon T.

Hi Jon,
I still remember moving from Duet receiver to Touch and improvement in sound quality was noticeable. Nowadays running a Pi with IQaudio DAC hat and think audio quality is in line with Touch (which is good).
Main reason to move to Pi in my case was running server and player 24h without dependency on any other computer.

[garym]

Hi folks,

I've read in several threads how folks have replaced their dead Duet Receivers with Raspberry Pi's running piCorePlayer. Just a question out of curiosity: are there any benefits to doing that replacement now even before the Receiver dies? In other words is the Pi an "upgrade" one should consider doing because there's something so much better using a Pi rather than the "stock" receiver?

Related question: if I'm connecting a Pi receiver to a stereo system and speakers via RCA jacks, does adding a DAC (like the HiFiBerry) make enough of a sound quality difference to justify the "upgrade" to a Pi? Is the sound that much better than the "stock" receiver?

Jon T.

Highly unlikely to make a difference. Speaker placement and room acoustic treatments would be way more likely to make a difference. So if you're happy now, I'd do nothing. You can always replace the receiver when/if it dies.

If you play a lot of hi-res files, this could be a benefit for the rPi (as the duet receiver is limited to 24/48 files). As noted, another benefit is that you could run LMS on the rPi as well with a USB drive attached containing your local music files.

I would suggest a DAC hat for the rPi if you use one. I use the hifiberry DAC+ and it works well.

[cfuttrup]

Hi Jon T

The Raspberry Pi 3 (or 4) is an upgrade over a Receiver, no doubt about that and the CPU is much more powerful, but - there are a couple of details ...

First, the Raspberry Pi needs an OS, like piCorePlayer, which in turn is much more powerful and better than what the Receiver has/can do. For example you can apply upsampling.

Second, the Raspberry Pi has a mini-jack analog output that sounds bad, so for the sound to be better than the Receiver you'll need to use the digital output (to an external DAC) or a DAC HAT module. Even the lower-end DAC HATs will give you a sonic improvement over the Receiver.

Here's my story with a Raspberry Pi and one of the available DAC's: http://www.cfuttrup.com/touch_upgrade.html

/Claus

[garym]

Highly unlikely to make a difference. Speaker placement and room acoustic treatments would be way more likely to make a difference. So if you're happy now, I'd do nothing. You can always replace the receiver when/if it dies.

If you play a lot of hi-res files, this could be a benefit for the rPi (as the duet receiver is limited to 24/48 files). As noted, another benefit is that you could run LMS on the rPi as well with a USB drive attached containing your local music files.

I would suggest a DAC hat for the rPi if you use one. I use the hifiberry DAC+ and it works well.

When I say "unlikely to make a difference" I should clarify that I mean a difference in audio sound quality. the rPi with piCorePlayer and a DAC HaT has significant improvements over a duet receiver (as noted by others as well).

[garym]

Hello everyone,
I want to share with you an experience of mine and tell me what you think. I love going to the cinema and watching the latest movies, but because of the pandemic, I don't have a chance to go out anymore, and I recently got and I love it, because I personally can not watch movies on the speakers of a laptop. I want to feel like in a cinema, and to feel all emotions and sounds that can provide a movie. So this amplifier is the next generation of cinematic experience.
Thanks, I am waiting for your opinions.

I'm not sure what this post has to do with "Duet Receiver vs Pi with DAC", or with squeezeboxes or LMS in general. But I agree, watching movies at home, I really like having a good sound system connected to my TV for a better experience.

[binky]

not if you adjust the duet a bit, it then sounds pretty in the direction of a raspberry pi with HAT, but you have to be willing to do something for it.
as far as the raspberry pi is concerned, you have much more options in the audio field, such as software, HAD boards, and so on.

lookie look..........https://forums.slimdevices.com/showt...-logitech-duet

[d6jg]

If you are replacing a Duet then take a look at the new DAC32 - https://forums.slimdevices.com/showt...music-streamer

[Viragored]

I've only just come across this thread. My Duet receiver was becoming troublesome, and I discovered PiCorePlayer while wondering what to replace the Duet with. My setup is in my signature.

Sound - I don't notice much difference between the Duet (when it was working properly), except I think there may be a bit more definition in the analog output from the HiFiBerry HAT. The digital output to my home theatre sounds the same as before.
Bonuses - (1) my power bill has dropped noticeably, because the Pi replaced a Windows PC, and (2) I can play 24-bit FLAC files.
In another six months, the Pi and HAT will have paid for themselves.
Setting up piCorePlayer was easy, and a good intro to the world of Raspberry Pis and Linux.