Hello from Cambridge UK

[MatthewH]

Hello, I am quite new to Raspberry Pi, I  bought it to connect to my TV hi-fi system and stream music from Presto Music where I took out a subscription.  Using the RPi operating system and Chrome I was able to play classical music with a good sound, apart from the newer albums which they stream at 192kHz which stutter.  So in the picture below, Mozart plays fine but Bach stutters.  I've been looking for a solution to this for over a month and haven't found one yet, tried several forums, but the store manager at the Pi shop suggested installing Mo0de as that was geared for sound, so here I am.  So far have installed Mo0de with audio jack output to my hifi and been listening to classical music internet radio stations I didn't know existed.  Need to read more of the documentation to see if it can do streaming from Presto.  I'm not on Spotify.  I saw a Forum thread here mentioning Presto.  They are great for classical and jazz, and I've bought several of their FLAC downloads and CDs - plus if you buy their CD you get access to streaming it as well.  I'm part retired and we have elderly care responsibility and a dog so not a great deal of time to solve problems but I enjoy the challenge.  Maybe I'm asking too much of my Pi (4B, 8GB).  Doesn't happen on my laptop.

[Tim Curtis]

Couple things.

1. There are no streaming Music Services directly integrated into moOde but moOde can act as a receiver/renderer for several streaming protocols including Bluetooth, Airplay and Spotify Connect, and it supports alternative audio renderers including Squeezelite, RoonBridge and UPnP client for MPD.

What this means in your particular case where you have a subscription to the Presto Music Service is that you could stream the output of the the Presto client running on your PC, Mac or SmartPhone to moOde using Bluetooth or AirPlay. Bluetooth is universally supported but AirPlay is generally only available natively on Apple stuff. For Windows etc you need to install something like TuneBlade (I think).

2. The analog audio output of the Pi via the 3.5MM jack is low quality. Best to buy an inexpensive but high quality audio HAT. Try the Pi DAC+ Pro https://www.pishop.us/product/iqaudio-da...aspberrypi

[jonners]

In the UK you can get the Pi DAC+ Pro and other DACs from The Pi Hut.

[the_bertrum]

Using a DAC should also help with the stuttering, as well as making everything sound loads better.

[MatthewH]

Using a DAC should also help with the stuttering, as well as making everything sound loads better.

Well I bought a HiFiBerry DAC+ and mounted it on my RPi4B, running Raspian, and learned how to edit config.txt so the Pi would use it.  But the same thing happened, but only with the 19kHz 24bit streams!  Any streaming music with a lower frequency worked and sounded very good.  So I think it's intrinsic to the Pi's processor not being powerful enough to decode the incoming 192kHz and send it to the DAC.  I might experiment with lighter OS.  Would a Pi5 be able to do this?  Nowhere on the web, or even in the Cambridge Pi shop have I found the answer!

A few days later I discovered that Presto Music have started selling their own dedicated streamer, costing less than RPi + DAC, so I bought one.  It's a small black box very neat that joins the home wi-fi and then is controlled from the Presto App on your phone or PC.  It has a line-out jack.  The sound from that was amazing, so I have a solution now.  Albeit it is tied to Presto, but I am very happy with their products.

Happy New Year to all.  Best wishes, Matthew

[MatthewH]

But I hadn't followed all the instructions on the hifiberry website and had left out one line to go in config.txt and also realised I was running 32 bit Raspi OS when 64 bit would be faster.
Once I corrected these mistakes it all worked perfectly!
Problem solved.

[Nutul]

But I hadn't followed all the instructions on the hifiberry website and had left out one line to go in config.txt and also realised I was running 32 bit Raspi OS when 64 bit would be faster.
Once I corrected these mistakes it all worked perfectly!
Problem solved.

Ta-dah!
Good to hear everything is ok now! :-)