DIY Phono preamp
DIY Headphone Amp
DIY Hi Fi Streamer
Diy HiFi Streamer 2016
Strawberry pi 3 and HiFiBerry digi plus pro board
This DIY hi fi project is a Hi Fi Streamer.
Would it be any better than a windows pc playing back computer music and is it even possible to build as a DIY project?
What follows is long and detailed because a lot of simple detail is missing on the internet about these devices leaving the beginners to scramble around looking for information and from a DIY perspective, its not just a matter of getting the hardware together, but involves dealing with software as well.
Perhaps I better start at the beginning because a streamer is fairly new Hi Fi source in history terms and doesn't seem to have quite standardized itself in the Hi Fi equipment realm as yet.
A streamer might better be described as a digital music file player, whether those files be from a computer, usb stick, or played over your network or from the internet, via something called a live stream. I guess 'Streamer' is a lot more catchy than 'Digital music file player'.
These digital file streams need to be fed to a DAC before they can be put through your Hi Fi system. Very often the DAC is built in, but you can use your own if you prefer.
If your thinking of buying a comercially built Streamer device, look at its features, what it can play, what it doesn't and what you need to get it working. It varies widely from model to model and brand to brand. In some cases they need a particular brand of mobile phone or tablet to control them and a separate DAC.
If you don't know what a DAC (Digital Analog Converter) is I suggest you google it before continuing.
DAC's have been around a long time, the earliest cd players had them, you didn't notice them because they were built into the circuits. This is the circuit that changes the digital signal, coming from your cd, or music file, or other digital signal source to an analog signal that your average Hi Fi equipment can except. You may be familiar with analog signal from sources such as your record player, FM tuner and you may even have an old cassette deck. These all output what is known as an analog signal and don't require any digital conversion, because there all, well... already analog.
The reason for this is because your speakers, and indeed the power amplifier that feeds them, only use analog signals and cannot except a direct digital one.
No matter what any digital labels stuck on them might seem to suggest.
It has only really been in perhaps the last 10 to 15 years were separate DAC's have become popular as a separate piece of Hi Fi equipment, because as all us Hi Fi enthusiasts know, separates are generally better then intergrated equipment.
Okay enough history and on to the project at hand.
To build a DIY streamer, I found it is actually quite easy, particularly in the last 3 years or so. This has been because to listen to you're digital files all you need is a computer.
Yes, you say; I've been doing that on my ipod and or laptop for over a decade or more now.
Some of you no doubt have even connected said device to your hi fi, but it wasn't...well quite the best Hi Fi sound. Some of you may have even connected you're devices to a separate DAC in between your computer and the Hi Fi system, probably via usb cable, or if you were more of an adventurist used a coax cable or even optical cable. Sure it was better, but you still hankered for that real hi fi sound experience and perhaps more conveniance as well and to be honest with you so was I. In fact I was seriously considering a commercial product, that is until I found a mini computer on the market that could be tailored specifically for Hi Fi playback. It was available at a very reasonable price and it even has add on cards made for it from compainies serious about Hi Fi sound.
The one I used is called the Strawberry pi. There are others as well, google and Youtube are your friends here. The model I'm going to use is the pi 3b and it was easily obtained from a local electronic suppliers along with the Hi Fi Berry sound card. Well not really a sound card as computer speak of old, but rather in my case a digital signal output card, with coax and optical connections that can be connected to your you're separate DAC. Okay for the newbies a coax is a wired connection and toslink is light transmitted connection both can be accepted as a digital input to most DAC's with the same port connections.
Why do I need both types of connection? Well some devices out there have one or the other and not always both and from a sound point of view, some audiophiles prefer the sound of wired and some prefer the more electrically isolated idea of using light as a transmit medium. There's usually not a lot of difference on the whole, but they do sound different; in the end you be the judge.
In case you're wondering do you really need a separate DAC? Or even separate card for that matter. After all this a DIY project and I'm sure you were hoping to save a few pennies. Well there is a version of an Hi Fi Berry card that comes with an inbuilt DAC that has been said to be pretty good. I'm not using it for this project because I already have a hi quality DAC, but no you don't need to purchase a separate DAC and the HiFi Berry Dac card is also very reasonbly priced. You can of course use the USB output straight from the pi to what ever USB dac you might have as well. However the Hi Fi Berry add on card is built for sound quality, where as the usb output from the Rasberry pi is just an ordinary computer USB output.
PICTURE
The Rasberry pi is readily available from electronic suppliers. Schools have been using literally millions of them to use as an education device. It can be used for all kinds of computer purposes not just hi fi ones. This means there is lots of support for it out there, which is a very good thing when it comes to computers. Microsoft have even got on the band wagon and made a lite version of windows 10 for it, although details are sketchy at the moment. Don't worry there are dedicated free Linux OS Hi Fi distributions available for it as well that cost nothing but an internet download.
Linux you say hmm...been there done that and don't wont really want to return. Well don't worry installation on a Strawberry pi is a breeze.
All you need is a micro sd card. I purchased one at the same time as the pi. It came in standard SD card adapter and with the OS already installed called 'Noobs'. You just need to plug the sd into the micro sd slot on the base of the pi, plug in a hdmi screen, usb keyboard and mouse, power it on with the dedicated switch mode power supply also available, which is only about $15 here in Australia.
One of the major upgrade paths for the strawberry pi in Hi Fi terms is to use a higher quality power supply, but we will investigate this in high detail later.
At the time of purchase I recommend purchasing the sd card from the pi supplier because some compatibility problems can exist between different brands of sd card, and usb sticks as I found out later, but most should work.
I couldn't wait to hear what the pi sounded like so I downloaded
a Hi Fi Linux distribution called Rune Audio.
Rune Audio web page
Rune audio file is downloaded as a gzip file so you may also need to download a zip program to unzip the Rune image file.
I found 7 zip to be one the best for this task on a windows pc.
Choose the second download or the first one if you have an older 32 bit pc.
7 Zip download page
You also need software called USB Image tool to write the OS image to the micro sd card available from this link
USB Image tool download page
The above all cost nothing, but you can donate to any of the above if you find them really useful and they most defiantly are.
If you pc does not have a sd card reader you will need to purchase a usb one, you're local electronics store should have one and it looks like this.
Picture
Install the USB image tool program on your pc and plug in the sd card.
Click the button to backup if you are going to use an SD card that already has Noobs or something else on it. This will backup it up as an image to your pc as a single file in case you want to restore it to an SD card again at some point. Then click restore and browse for the Rune file you downloaded and then unzipped the Rune image file from earlier and saved on your pc. It only takes a minute or so to write the bootable OS image to the card. Then plug the micro sd card into the Rasberry pi SD card socket in the bottom of the pi's circuit board. Then apply power and you now have a dedicated music playing streamer.
To get a display you need to plug in either an HDMI screen or you need to browse to the pi's web page from your pc.
Using a HDMI screen, usb keyboard and mouse is the easiest method to control Rune Audio, but many use a web browser from another computer in the house.
To do this you need to connect a wired network cable to the pi and to your house network, most likely by plugging one into your internet router, or if your a little more computer network savvy maybe a network switch, or if your very lucky a network wall socket. If you need more info on computer networking, google it. This is after all an audio web site.
To use a web browser you most likely will need the ip address given to the pi on your network and type it into a browser, but you can try typing
http://runeaudio/
into the browsers address text box instead and cross your fingers several times, you might be lucky and the pi's Rune players page may pop up.
As this is an audio site I am not going to go deep into networking. If you need more knowledge try researching on the internet via google, and quizzing your nerd friends.
I will give one hint however on finding the ip, Have a look in the routers web page, and see if it gets listed somewhere as an attached device, maybe under DHCP.
Oh I almost forgot, you will also need a DAC with a usb input. Other digital inputs such as coax and toslink will be looked at later when I attempt add a Hi Fi Berry sound card to build the ultimate digital hi fi player...
Now at this point you no doubt want know what it sounds like if only via usb, or maybe you have bought the bits connected it up and are already spending lots of time playing music.
With just the Rune software and the pi computer connected to a usb DAC it actually sounds reasonbly good. I started with some cd's that I had converted to wav files and I would say it sounded like a mid fi cd player, but not a top notch one.
I copied some cd wav files and some downloaded hi rez files to the usb stick. The one I had on hand was a 32GB verbatim, but this was not recognised. I had to rummage through my pc bits and found a 16GB Dolphin and copied the files to it. This time it worked no problems and I was set to sit back and listen for awhile. I also connected it to a network share from my pc server, and this worked as well; although I felt the usb stick was cleaner sounding.
You will need a little computer system network knowledge if you want to go down the pc server network file share path and again I suggest you google it... its really not that hard. Or if it is, call in your local friendly hi fi computer guy.
How did it sound at this point? Well I was no near down the road I was going, but it wasn't bad, in fact not bad at all.
It's been some weeks listening now, with the latest Hi Fi Berry Digi Plus pro add on card.
This is a card that plugs on top of the Rasberry pi to give a high quality digital out put via, coax or toslink. (Toslink is digital optical output) that can then be plugged into your DAC and from there to your Hi Fi system.
Picture
There is also a Standard Digi plus, the Digi plus pro has extra clocking and a gold plated coax connector. In practice it seems to have better separation and maybe is just a touch clearer. The earlier standard Digi is very compatible with a number of Linux audio OS. The Digi pro I could only get going on Rune Audio
OS after doing a kernel update. It wasn't easy finding the right info, but it is there on the Rune web site. There should be updates to Audio versions of Linux for the Rasberry pi soon I suspect (it is now Late Feb 2017) but if you want to or need to update Rune, you need to SSH (I will explain this in a bit) and run this command, you need to be connected to the internet of course.
pacman -Sy --force raspberrypi-firmware raspberry-bootloader linux-raspberrypi
Ok SSH. This is a means of getting to a command console in Linux from another
pc. A type of remote connection if you like. You need to download SSH from the
internet and install it on your pc. Download the version called 'Putty'
Download Putty SSH
Download the 64bit or 32bit version as needed.
Once it is running type in the Rasberry pi's network ip address
It should look something like this 192.168.1.7
If it does not work at this point you may have firewall issues.
If it does, you need to type in the black window, otherwise known as a command console.
The user name
root
Then the password
rune
Then you can run the kernel update command above.
If this makes little sense to you then get your local nerdy computer friend to help or spend lots of time on the internet with google learning. I'm afraid there is no substitute. After all this is DIY.
Now assuming you have your digi plus pro card up and running with Rune Audio, we can now look at tweaking the sound.
Apart from using good quality cables both RCA and Digital, (Don't skimp here your ears will thank you ) it has been found by more than a few audiophiles that the Rasberry pi and the Hi Fi Berry digi plus pro card can be ehanced with a better power supply in particular a linear power supply.
I have in mind to test at least 3 possibly 4 senarios of different powers supplies over the coming weeks and months
The Hi Fi Berry web site has made available the connections that need to be soldered on the Digi plus board to make this possible including the removal of a surface mount resistor if you want to add a 3 volt power supply as well.
I will describe the reason for that further on down after some more testing.
Link
For those who don't want to go down the soldering DIY trail, there is an easy way to improve the sound, by simply buying a better than average, switch mode supply. In fact I have just been testing the Ifi brand 5 volt 2.5 amp one they have available. I ordered mine through Volumio, but you may have a distributor closer at hand. The details about why the supply is so good are on their web site,
Link
and yes it is good, very good in fact, easily as good as a linear supply and probably cheaper. Although you may be able to cobble together a DIY linear supply for about the same cost. I'm still testing things in that area.
More info soon.
Diy Cavalli-Kan Kumisa III Headphone Amplifier 2015
This is a high performance headphone kit amplifier.
Although describing it as a kit amplifier is probably being kind.
How to build the Cavalli is described on the amb.org web site. The instructions are good, and support from AMB is also good.
Some of the parts can be ordered from AMB, such as the circuit board, volume control, and the matched JFET's. Other parts such as capacitors, resistors and other types of transistors must be sourced by you the builder. There is a very comprehensive parts list at the AMB site, and also some suggested suppliers. So although it is quite a lot of work, especially if you've never ordered electronic parts before, at least you have a lot of choice and it's all up to you to make the best piece of Hi Fi equipment you can possibly build. As for how it looks, well that's up to you too.
These are probably the major reasons for a Hi Fi enthusiast to go down the DIY path.
Sure you can save a little as well, or more than a little depending on your design against what is typically on offer at your local Hi Fi specialist retailer at around the same quality level.
Of course the one thing every audiophile wants to know after going to all that effort is, how does it sound?
Well it's clear, clean, slightly sweet, and tuneful. Guitars are a standout, having good texture and relaying of mood. There is a good wide stereo spread, or sound stage if you like.
Vocals sound real and articulation in the singing can be heard easily as well as being able to tell if the vocals are near or far from the mike. Piano also sounds real, with no ringing that can often be heard on less capable equipment.
Notice I mention "real", rather than accurate, because I think accuracy as a description for sound is a bit hit and miss, because no one outside of the recording engineer really knows how accurate or faithful a sound is to the original. Sweetness used to describe sound is also in the same basket, but to me sweetness is when the sound heads towards the colourful valve like sound, rather than the grey slightly hard transistor sound, although of course I'm being very general here.
Are there any minuses?
Some might find the bass isn't the heaviest they've ever heard, but it is tuneful, and not one noted, and of course this will vary a lot depending on the front end and headphones used.
I must admit when I put on the Telarc cd by the Cincinnati Pops called Chiller, I jumped when I heard the thunder sounds, I had totally forgotten how the cd started. So don't take my notes on the bass too seriously .
Oh, and as a side note, because I listen with headphones often late at night, I noticed for the first time in the dark the words Chiller on the cd cover were glowing, I kid you not! Must have been printed with some special ink.
How do I rate the sound?
Overall I would rate it towards the top end of high performance.
Is it easy to build?
If you have had a little previous kit building experience you should find this not too much of a challenge. Everything is through the hole, no smd parts, no winding of wire coils, and only 2 points to adjust the quiescent current, which can be easily done with a basic multimeter.
I had good sound at the first turn on, and have only built a few electronic kits before hand.
The best hint I can give is the old builders rule of measure twice cut once. In other words,
check it's the right part and it's the right way around before you solder it, and check it again after you have soldered it.
The kit does involve mains power which we all know is dangerous, if you have the knowledge and feel confident to do this part of the build, make sure all the mains areas are insulated, and triple check your wiring is correct before you turn it on. Or else save yourself the hassle and possible life destroying mistakes and get a qualified electrician to do it, or at least to check your work.
Well its been nearly a year now, and everything I said above still holds true and if anything I have found it to be quite transparent as well, a word I never gave much credit for in hi fi reviews in the press, but in this case yes a lot of the original sound source seems to come through with only small amount of its own contributing to overall sound quality.
The only problem is it gets moved around the house a lot, so I really need to build another one, or a different model if I can find something even better within budget.
Diy Phono Preamp 2012
This is a project I started about six months ago,(early 2012) putting the boards together and testing, went fairly quickly, working out the case and type of wiring to the RCA sockets took a lot longer.
So what is it exactly ?
Its a phono preamp, made from a board kit from BHL and a power supply kit from Glassware,
connected to an 18 volt transformer from the local electronics store.
How does it sound ?
Pretty good actually, certaintly one of the best sounds from vinyl records I've heard over the years.
I have a collection of about 80 or so vinyl records collected durring the 70s and 80s, and a few picked up at second hand dealers, and 1 new Brothers in Arms set purchased just recently.
Most of it is Pop Rock, with a few side steps to Jazz.
First thing I noticed was the sound stage, it was easy to locate the instruments and voices, from left to right, and even seemed to extend a little beyond. Things were a little up front, but the drumming was at the rear, and the frequency range was all there and even.
Sound was on the sweet side, but I found the wire connecting to the rca's played a part in this.
It was musical, rythmic, and just plain fun to listen to.
How would I rate it?
Well, my ears would say it borders on high end.
It was musical, rythmic, and just plain fun to listen to.
How would I rate it?
Well, my ears would say it borders on high end.
What are the details?
Ok, BHL stands for Booze Hound Labs. Don't let the name fool you this is serious hi fi stuff.
Here's a link for more info. http://boozhoundlabs.blogspot.com.au/
The power supply board is a voltage regulator kit from glassware part No. H-PS-1.
The link is http://glass-ware.stores.yahoo.net/vore.html
This gives a smooth 18 volts dc, which seems to work well for the bhl board.
An 18 volt step down transformer from the local Jaycar store, completes the power supply.
This approach for the power is not real cheap, but it does seem to give a smoothness to the sound. I did try batteries , 2 x 9v, and they also sounded smooth and quiet, but found they went flat after around 8 albums or so.
A generic 18 volt plug pack will also work, and I must admit I could hardly tell the difference, compared to the glassware kit. It also means you don't need to wire mains power, which of course you should only try only if have or know someone with the correct electronic qualifications.
This project was started more to feed my Hi Fi habit than anything else,
Lacking funds, but not time, due to economic conditions, I thought it might be a good way to get top performance at a cheap, price. This only proved to be partly true, as the costs soon mounted, when I found I needed extra bits for this and that and in the end probably cost in the region of around $250.
I'm guessing but I suspect it's equal to a ready made product of around $400.
Wish I worked at a hi fi shop so I could find out.
Never less its been a lot fun, and with the costs spread well over 6 months its still good value.
So what equipment was used to test ?
A Thorens turntable TD 280, a belt drive budget design form the mid 80s, even better when the belt was changed.
Shure M75 Moving magnet cartridge with hyphereliptical stylus.
A Pioneer A400 intergrated amp.
There are a few other pieces collected over the years, stored in the cuboards, such as a, Denon direct drive from the very early 80's and a mid 80's Luxman amp but the above seemed to work best.
Most listening was done with a pair of Sennhieser 555 Headphones.
It was also compared to cd, as I have many of the same cd's as vinyl albums.
CD was played back on a Rotel RCD-971, at first listen there wasn't a great deal to pick between them.
Lets just say after extended listening the qualities of vinyl were starting to win through.
In fact I was at times amazed, at how good the sound coming from the Shure cartridge could be, symbols could shimmer and decay nicely, something I feel cd lacks.
When I finally finish the case hopefully in around, a few weeks or so, I will post some new pictures.
Now I've found with some accidental web browsing you can build your own ESL speakers, hmm I wonder.
Its Now a few weeks later and I'm battling with the case, which has taken considerably longer than I planned, certainly a lot longer than the assembling of the electronic boards and it's still not finished.
Here's a pic of the progress.
OK, it's pretty much finished now, and it's looks, puts the average commercial cases to shame.
The switch and sockets at the back have a quality feel about them, making my other ready to run commercial brand Hi Fi, seem almost toy like in their operation.
Just need to add some lettering, sit back and enjoy.
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