Pi2AES - Make your Raspberry Pi a true HiFi streamer

black box let's see what's inside hi guys and welcome back to my channel now today we are going to talk about pi2aes and it's meant to be used with a raspberry pi now if you're not familiar with how you approach to using raspberry pi as a streamer and what type of operating systems you have to install and how all of that works i have a video dedicating to making a raspberry pi an audio streamer it's like that beginner's guide and if you're not familiar with it you should watch that one first i'll link it down below the video but here today i'm going to assume that you already know about raspberry pi and its ecosystem and its os's and what a hat is so i'm quickly going to open this one i'll start from there as you can see this is a streamer based on a raspberry pi that is this board down here and on top of it is the actual motherboard of a product called pi 2 aes now when these two are put together enclosed in this nice black box also there is a clear one you can choose between these two they make a fully functional streamer and today we are going to talk about its features connectivity its sound quality which is the most important one and like price to performance ratio few comparisons in the end of course so is this a streamer that you should pay attention to in short yes yes it is but let's start with connectivity part as you can see uh this is quite rich this lower part of the board is from the actual raspberry pi and this upper section everything you see from my hand upwards are the connections of the actual pi 2 aes so as you can see we have b and c coaxial connection but also rca those are all digital connections so i'm not going to repeat that every time we also have optical one and finally aes connection which is not that often found especially on a budget streamers so as you can see connectivity is pretty rich and you can choose between lots of options here that said i'm not going to comment on how each of these outputs sound because that's immensely difficult to do because each dac has slightly different inputs no dac sounds exactly the same depending on if you're using it with coaxial optical usb or aes also if you're using different cables and they have to be different for different type of connections that also again offsets the results so i'm going to talk about the device in general and uh that's basically the most important because all of the qualities or shortcomings that i mentioned compared to some other devices they still hold no matter what output you actually use differences between outputs are much smaller than differences between different devices so the thing i forgot to mention is that spy 2 aes costs 200 us dollars that's board only if you want to buy acrylic case you pay like 15 bucks additionally now if you want to purchase power supply to power it you pay 30 bucks more they used a fairly uncommon 24 volts dc and i'm saying it's unusual because most of dc power supplies are actually 5 or 12 volts but this this one is 24 and when you actually connect these 24 volts to this power input here you immediately at the same time power the hat and the pie board that said you can if you want to remove this small jumper here on a board and by doing that you separate power supplies for both boards meaning that you have to power main computing boards of a raspberry pi with its own 5 volts as if you were using it alone without a hat and then you power this one separately if you want to do that you can i find it more convenient if i can power everything from one power supply less cables less clutter but if now you're thinking like oh man i already have a nice power supply maybe it's a linear power supply or any other type of low noise power supply and it's 5 volts and i wanted to use that one well there is a small hack that you can use and actually do that and it's very simple you'll just have to get an adapter a resembling to this one and hook it up directly to five volts pins on the pi 2 aes hat this way you can power this whole device with 5 volts and that's good why because maybe you have a high quality 5 volts power supply like i do for example aloe shanti and doing this i'll actually make this whole unit sound better than when it's powered with its own power supply and this whole hack was actually published on the golden audio website i saw it there thanks for that guys and i'll leave the link down below the video so you can follow it and see what kind of cables and connectors you exactly need to do this if you want oh yeah small warning if you decide to use 5 volts power supply the creator of this board says that then you lose power protection circuitry that circuitry is meant to work with this higher voltage so if anything would happen to your power supply maybe it's malfunctions or something like that if you're using 24 volts there is a protection circuitry on the board that will prevent the boards to die together with the power supply if you use a hack and the 5 volts if anything like that happens both your hat and your raspberry pi will be in a danger there is no protection preventing power supply to kill this hat and raspberry pi so yes that's a risk decide for yourself should you try something like that or not now if you're asking me about the features and can you use this streaming service or that streaming service that will fully depend on the os that you decide to install on a raspberry pi some of the most populars are volumio mood i personally use row pi xl but again if you don't know anything about it you should watch that introduction video like raspberry pi audio streaming for beginners because now we are going to move to the most important part and that's sound quality of this hat and right out of the bat the sound quality is great i started listening to it with its switching 24 volts power supply that's the most basic most affordable configuration that you can assemble all together that's 250 and you can choose do you want to use raspberry pi 3b plus or four you get all of these different sides so you can adjust them to each model because these pi versions have slightly different connectors but in the box you get different sides so you're covered for each of these raspberry pi versions and like all that in total would cost around 300 us dollars raspberry pi hat case power supply and with that starting point with that starting base pi 2 aes already sounds great first of all it's so clean and precise baseline is tidy and neat and quick and well controlled there is no bloat whatsoever and the same goes for the mid bass it's so neat and tidy and controlled mid-range is crisp is clean and same goes for the highest frequencies everything just sounds perfectly neutral and the most interesting stuff that we are going to talk about is actually uh sound staging now this hat can produce an exceptionally and deep sound stage imaging placing instruments and tones inside of the soundstage is phenomenal everything is pinpointed with a great precision and i mean in a class leading precision i just kept listening to it and i realized that no matter what i play no matter what type of music i listen to it always sounds tidy clean spacious and deep tonally it's on a slightly leaner side of things but it's not completely it's not tin sounding it's not analytical it's just that from that great bass clarity and control and really tidy mid bass i needed some time to get used to all of that cleanness and i kid you not it really took some time to get used to it because i was coming from warmer sounding aloe dg1 and smsl sd9 and that actually leads me to a few comparisons that i'll immediately try to make now i'll start with alodge one it's a 100 us dollars board it has only rca coaxial and bnc coaxial output so regarding connectivity pi 2 aes is clearly more advanced device but what about sound quality okay dg1 sounds warmer and fuller it has much more mid bass but it's actually closed up top it has less high frequency presence and in general it sounds muddier it sounds less resolving everything is really pleasant is musical it's clean if you're listening just on its own but when compared directly to pi 2 aes here it's not a competition really this one just sounds cleaner tidier more spacious sound stage depth is better it pinpoints instruments and tones and everything much better and all of that goes with its switching power supply this cheap power supply even if you connect raspberry pi and allo dg1 to a good linear power supply such as aloe shanty it still cannot match pi to aes even with a switching power supply that gap only increases if you move to a linear power supply with this one too it becomes even cleaner even more precise even more subtle details are revealed there's just no competition here and next i moved to comparing it to smsl sd9 which is a 400 us dollar streamer it's actually a whole nice device with an lcd display in the remote admittedly it looks nicer and classier and i reviewed that one just recently if you want you can watch that review too but just comparing sound quality of these two again pi2as leads it sounds crisper cleaner more spacious deeper sound stage now this time the gap is smaller uh than it was with dg1 because sml sd9 falls somewhere in between it's more resolving quicker and tidier sounding than halo dg1 but not as good as pi2as and given that this one is 300 us dollars and sms lsd 9 is 400 like strictly talking about sound fidelity this one is definitely a better purchase and again that all goes with its basic switching power supply tuning it with something better with some sort of good linear power supply only increases that gap and this becomes a mighty good audio streamer and finally my last comparison is by chance a friend of mine brought just when i received this little streamer he brought blue sound node to i and he was curious to find out if they are closely matched and again the same story node 2i sonically is just no match for this one it does sound smooth it sounds pleasantly full it does not have any sort of digital nastiness it's a pretty decent streamer but it cannot resolve details as pi 2 aes can it cannot create that deep spacious sound stage and it definitely cannot pinpoint instruments and tones and details like this one can if i'm not trying to be political about it i would say this one is definitely like next level compared to node 2i that said i have to admit here that we are comparing apples and oranges here because this is like do it yourself type of product it has this cute but small plasticky case while the note2i is a fully developed just buy it and use it device and it looks really pretty and it has analog section it already has a dac inside that said i know a lot of guys that bought now 2i just because of its digital streaming capabilities they actually connected to a better external deck in that case i would definitely recommend this one over it and finally i know that i will get these questions in the comments but i did not have aloe dg1 signature that's the more advanced version of this one to compare it to pi 2 aes yes that is like a better match these two are actual competitors in the market but i only heard it shortly when a friend of mine brought it to my home like few months ago i can only comment from that memory that it seems to me that they have similar detail retrieval also it seemed to me that aloe dg1 signature is a little bit smoother sounding and a little bit richer sounding in the mid-range section while pi2as has slightly more depth and this spatial perception those spatial cues at least that's just going by my memory but you should really take this with a pinch of salt because that's really difficult to compare two devices that you don't have side by side i'm just going but what i remember how i felt about the g1 signature and how i feel about pi2as and with that said i have to say that i'm really amazed by the sound fidelity of this little device and i was sad to hear that this is actually the last batch that is ever going to be produced so if you want to try it better hurry up because it has been confirmed to me that there is only like couple dozens of them left and they will not be produced anymore instead of those the company will create mercury streamer and that's like a fully developed device in aluminum case and everything and i'm sure it's going to be great i'm looking forward to trying that out but it will probably be a little bit more expensive but back to this one if you already have raspberry pi if you maybe have something like allodgy one and you're contemplating about an upgrade this board is in my opinion a great upgrade and you should hurry up while it lasts so that's all this is my first encounter with the pi 2 design product that's the name of the company python design and i'm so glad that i got a chance to try it out because it really performs better than i would expect at this price point and because of those qualities because of its value and it has great value it's probably one of the best bang for the back streamers that i've heard so far it has my full recommendation and that would be all for today guys i hope you like this video if you did then click that button share it with your friends consider becoming a patreon too and see you next time bye [Music] you

Channel: iiWi Reviews

Views: 12,147

Keywords: Pi2AES, Pi2 Design, Allo, DigiOne, Streamer, SMSL, SD-9, Raspberry, Pi, Audio, Streaming, hifi, audiphile, iiwi, iiwireviews, review

Id: RqmYai2rT1k

Length: 19min 0sec (1140 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 09 2021