Need some suggestions for a DAC for RPI zero 2w

[ovizii]

I don’t know what your esthetic principles are but in our household “the fewer cables, the better” is a consideration (according to she who must be obeyed).

However, in one of my systems I use a Khadas Tone Board (generic edition). It’s a bare board DAC with USB and S/PDIF inputs which I can package together with a Pi.

I'm totally with you on the matter of “less cables are better” :-)
That looks like an amazing product, it's just a pity that “The Tone Board only works with a Raspberry Pi via USB, not I2S.”.
I'm very curious on how you packaged it with an RPI if you wouldn't mind sharing a few details. 

Btw. I noticed it has got an I2s connection, see bottom left in this picture but I'm not sure one can connect it this way to an RPI. 
https://static.wixstatic.com/media/04a2a...71~mv2.jpg

[TheOldPresbyope]

Sorry for any confusion.

Inside the enclosure, I use a short USB cable between the Pi and the Tone Board. This cable also provides power. The board *is not* a DAC HAT for the Pi nor did I attempt to wire up the I2S pins.

As it happens, the Vim edition of the board comes with a 40-pin connector that appears to physically fit the Pi GPIO pins but that’s irrelevant. Even if the signal levels and pin-out were compatible, there’s no Khadas I2S driver available for the Pi. Apart from the presence of that connector, the two editions are identical and both can be used as a USB DAC. (Actually, the board I have is the Vim edition. I just removed the 40-pin connector because it was taking up space.)

Used as a USB DAC, the Khadas Tone Board needs no vendor-specific driver, as Al has already explained. The onboard microcontroller handles the standard USB communications.

Two notes: the board has an S/PDIF input but I don’t use it. The board can play DSD streams in addition to regular PCM streams but the board’s hardware volume control works only for PCM streams. I have no DSD material so this doesn’t matter to me. (PCM streams come from MP3, FLAC, etc., tracks.)


Regards,
Kent

[TheOldPresbyope]

As long as I'm at it, I should comment about I2S-based DAC HATs and their attendant drivers.

It's unfortunate that Allo has gone catatonic and hasn't updated its driver for the miniBoss2 DAC to work with the recent Linux kernel branch. I don't know if this is true (or necessary) for the various drivers for their other I2S-based products.

The fact of the matter is that as long as vendors provide proprietary drivers without access to the source code so others could carry on, this situation could occur with any. (The problem is not unique to the consumer audio device industry!)

Nevertheless, some of Allo's competitors such as HiFiBerry, IQaudio (now part of the Raspberry Pi family), and the like have been around for a long time and seem to be stable.

I don't think any of the competing DAC HATs in the Pi Zero form factor have the master clocks feature of the miniBoss2, but a number of full-sized HATs do.

A case in point is the HiFiBerry DAC+ Pro that I have on one of my systems. Mine's on a Pi4B but it could be on a Pi Zero just as well. The combination would be oddly shaped and require some clever mounting and encasement but should work fine. It seems that this board has been replaced in the HiFiBerry lineup by the more expensive (and more feature-full) DAC2 HD but the same principle applies.

I'm not familiar with other vendors' offerings but I imagine similar things can be said.

Will all these boards sound the same? Possibly but possibly not, depending on your system, your ears, and your source material. Which sounds better? I would not presume to say. I'm happy with my choices and that's all that matters to me.

Regards,
Kent

[Tim Curtis]

As long as I'm at it, I should comment about I2S-based DAC HATs and their attendant drivers.

It's unfortunate that Allo has gone catatonic and hasn't updated its driver for the miniBoss2 DAC to work with the recent Linux kernel branch. I don't know if this is true (or necessary) for the various drivers for their other I2S-based products.

The fact of the matter is that as long as vendors provide proprietary drivers without access to the source code so others could carry on, this situation could occur with any. (The problem is not unique to the consumer audio device industry!)

Nevertheless, some of Allo's competitors such as HiFiBerry, IQaudio (now part of the Raspberry Pi family), and the like have been around for a long time and seem to be stable.

I don't think any of the competing DAC HATs in the Pi Zero form factor have the master clocks feature of the miniBoss2, but a number of full-sized HATs do.

A case in point is the HiFiBerry DAC+ Pro that I have on one of my systems. Mine's on a Pi4B but it could be on a Pi Zero just as well. The combination would be oddly shaped and require some clever mounting and encasement but should work fine. It seems that this board has been replaced in the HiFiBerry lineup by the more expensive (and more feature-full) DAC2 HD but the same principle applies.

I'm not familiar with other vendors' offerings but I imagine similar things can be said.

Will all these boards sound the same? Possibly but possibly not, depending on your system, your ears, and your source material. Which sounds better? I would not presume to say. I'm happy with my choices and that's all that matters to me.

Regards,
Kent

The sources for Allo and other vendor overlays and drivers should either be in the Raspberry Pi Linux kernel tree or in the vendor Git repos, assuming the repos are still public.

The question is whether someone with expertise in I2S kernel drivers wants to volunteer their time to investigate the Allo BOSS 2 issue under kernel 6.1.y

[TheOldPresbyope]

True.

Come to think of it, one can start right on a moOde player by decompiling the device-tree overlay blob to dts format and examining it. I'm not up to deciphering the results or trying to learn how it's structured by comparison to another, hifiberry-dacplus, for example.

'course one still needs to know what changed in the kernel 6.1 branch to cause this kerfuffle in the first place.

So a fix may not be impossible, just TBD. My gut reaction is that if it were easy, it would have been done already by some annoyed Boss2 owner. The InterWeb™ is full of tinkers.  

Regards,
Kent

[JohnG]

Hi there,

I have a couple of RPI zero 2Ws around all of them are using an allo MINIBOSS I2S DAC, and I am very happy with them. 

I was planning to add 1-2 additional RPI zero 2Ws with the same DAC, but then I realized that some other allo DACS were having problems with the newest Linux 6 kernel, so I thought I'd ask for suggestions. 

What do you think is the most future-proof DAC for RPI 2w as it looks like allo isn't investing too much effort in keeping their drivers updated?

I'm not looking to replace my current DACs, I will try to keep using them until they finally stop working or being supported, but I don't want to invest in soon to be unsupported DACs.

I used a HiFiBerry DAC+ zero happily (until my pi Zero died)

[nosferatu_cat]

As long as I'm at it, I should comment about I2S-based DAC HATs and their attendant drivers.

It's unfortunate that Allo has gone catatonic and hasn't updated its driver for the miniBoss2 DAC to work with the recent Linux kernel branch. I don't know if this is true (or necessary) for the various drivers for their other I2S-based products.

The fact of the matter is that as long as vendors provide proprietary drivers without access to the source code so others could carry on, this situation could occur with any. (The problem is not unique to the consumer audio device industry!)

Nevertheless, some of Allo's competitors such as HiFiBerry, IQaudio (now part of the Raspberry Pi family), and the like have been around for a long time and seem to be stable.

I don't think any of the competing DAC HATs in the Pi Zero form factor have the master clocks feature of the miniBoss2, but a number of full-sized HATs do.

A case in point is the HiFiBerry DAC+ Pro that I have on one of my systems. Mine's on a Pi4B but it could be on a Pi Zero just as well. The combination would be oddly shaped and require some clever mounting and encasement but should work fine. It seems that this board has been replaced in the HiFiBerry lineup by the more expensive (and more feature-full) DAC2 HD but the same principle applies.

I'm not familiar with other vendors' offerings but I imagine similar things can be said.

Will all these boards sound the same? Possibly but possibly not, depending on your system, your ears, and your source material. Which sounds better? I would not presume to say. I'm happy with my choices and that's all that matters to me.

Regards,
Kent

The sources for Allo and other vendor overlays and drivers should either be in the Raspberry Pi Linux kernel tree or in the vendor Git repos, assuming the repos are still public.

The question is whether someone with expertise in I2S kernel drivers wants to volunteer their time to investigate the Allo BOSS 2 issue under kernel 6.1.y

Thanks for this.  I love my Boss2 and have been wondering if someone could come up with an open source driver for the 6.1 kernel. 

On my Pi Zero 2W I've used both the Hifiberry and JustBoom HATs designed for the Zero and have been happy with them.  I've been using them wired direct to a pair of Anker Soundcore Motion speakers in TWS mode in my bathroom.  I put one speaker on a shelf in the shower.  I'm not sure how things would be with higher end equipment.

[ovizii]

-removed- the problem solved itself after re-reading my own post :-(