Hey gang! Tim here at Core Electronics and I have in my hand the apex tool to bring flawless high-quality audio output onto any Raspberry Pi Single-Board Computer today is all about the IQAudio DAC+ and Volumio.

A digital-to-analog converter otherwise known as a DAC is a device that takes digital signals, streams of ones and zeros represented by voltages that are either all the way on and all the way off and converts them into analog signals that can be readily accepted by hi-fi equipment. In this guide we're going to be setting up the IQAudio DAC+ with a Raspberry Pi after going over the hardware build we will customize Raspberry Pi OS to enable the DAC as the default audio output. Once we do that I'm going to show you how to turn your Raspberry Pi DAC into an audio streaming platform with Volumio OS.

A Raspberry Pi does not have a conventional DAC on board the Pi's 3.5-millimeter jack uses pulse width modulation that results in a working audio signal but not something you would want to use with high-quality audio equipment that is why you would want to use an external DAC. This specific board has two great audio outputs on it one is an amplified 3.5-millimeter headphone output and the other is a line-level RCA output these red and white jacks provide an unamplified signal to your hi-fi equipment before going to your speakers there are other versions of IQAudio boards so if you're looking for something to drive passive speakers directly this digi-amp plus version can drive up to 35 watts per channel.

On the table before me is everything you need to make this DAC work with the default Raspberry Pi OS we have a Raspberry Pi palm-sized computer in my case a Raspberry Pi 4 model b 2GB but this DAC and Volumio is perfect to be used on earlier Pis like the Raspberry Pi 3. Naturally, you will also need the Raspberry Pi IQAudio DAC+ HAT as well as the fasteners and standoffs that all come with the board we're also going to want a microSD card that's flashed with a Raspberry Pi OS a power supply a HDMI cord and mouse and keyboard. You're also going to want a small screwdriver like this to mount everything correctly.

The natural step is to get all this hardware connected up once we have this all put together we're then going to connect the Raspberry Pi up as a desktop computer install the standoffs and push the microSD card which has been flashed with the most recent Raspberry Pi OS into the microSD card slot on the Raspberry Pi. Then line up the IQAudio DAC+ HAT with the GPIO pins of the Raspberry Pi Single-Board Computer. Push the two boards gently together until the standoffs take the weight, then screw in the four screws into the standoffs and with that the assembly is complete. From here we're going to connect up the Raspberry Pi just like a desktop computer, when using default Raspberry Pi OS we're going to set up this DAC by adjusting three settings, no external packages are needed, the goal here is to prevent the two normal audio outputs the Raspberry Pi headphone aux and the HDMI audio from being active on this Raspberry Pi.

The simplest way to get sound out of the DAC is to completely disable the two normal audio outputs we will add some changes to the config.txt file to do just this open up a new terminal window using the big black button on the top left of the screen type and enter the following line sudo nano /boot/config.txt navigate using the arrow keys on your keyboard and scroll lower until you get to this line. First uncomment by removing the number symbol in front of the dt parameter equals I2S=on this enables communication between the Raspberry Pi and the HAT. Secondly comment out or remove the line dt param equals audio equals off then underneath you're going to type the following dt overlay equals IQAudio-DAC+ doing this has disabled the default auxiliary plug and has added the specific driver for this IQAudio DAC+ HAT if a slightly different DAC is used make sure to type the correct driver here you're going to refer to the chart on the screen the final setting we're going to adjust is the line down here and all we're going to do is add a comment and type no audio doing this will completely prevent any HDMI connection from transmitting sound output having made these changes press control x y and then enter. This has saved our changes, then we're going to reboot our system type sudo reboot for a real fast way of rebooting your system.

And you're done now you can take your RCA cables and connect them into your DAC and your hi-fi system. If you want to listen to the DAC directly we can plug in a set of headphones into the 3.5-millimeter jack we plugged into this auxiliary jack our camera to test the audio coming out check the written article for some troubleshooting tips or more clarification if you need.

The goal now is to have a high quality audio output system hub we will then be able to control the hub fully through any local wi-fi connected device be it a phone, or a computer. Also adding to the goal is the inclusion of being able to control the media hub directly via the official 7-inch Raspberry Pi touch display Volumio is an open source audiophile media player OS streaming all your music in the best quality with beautiful UI also much like Kodi it can scrape information and you can add extra plugins to do darn near everything that you would want there is a paid version with extra features but everything shown here will be using the free version. To start we're going to flash a microSD card with Volumio OS using the official Raspberry Pi imager as you can see me doing right now, having done that we're going to insert our newly flashed microSD card into the Raspberry Pi with the IQAudio DAC HAT installed.

The Raspberry Pi 4 model b I have here also has the official 7-inch screen installed to it as well this screen will become our direct UI control check the description for a guide all about how to assemble this screen. Having done that the screen is going to boot up to the terminal and request a username and password the username is Volumio and the password is also Volumio you won't be able to see the letters getting typed into the screen as they're going to be invisible after you've typed one press enter on your keyboard to lock it in. The goal here now is to provide the initial setup details and the wi-fi internet details into this system I found the easiest way to do this is by directly connecting an ethernet cord initially into the system and then putting in these details using an internet browser on a locally connected device be it a computer or a phone.

So let's plug this in and pull out our phone which has the Volumio app and is connected to the same internet network as our Raspberry Pi is going to be as soon as you open this app it's going to search and identify devices on the local network that are running Volumio then it's a simple matter of telling it what language you prefer creating a suitable name for your system and telling it what DAC you're using in my case the IQAudio DAC+ setting up the DAC this way is much easier than Raspberry Pi OS you will also be able to provide wi-fi details in the wireless network settings menu.

Also be aware that you can use a browser like chrome or firefox to do this as well just type in your Raspberry Pi's ip address into the url now with that complete you can use your internet connected phone or computer to stream music just like that but the official seven inch touchscreen is still going to be in terminal mode to make the connected screen be a beautiful user interface that we can directly control our music media from we're going to need to install a plugin.

To install plugins to our Volumio setup we're going to need to create a free account with Volumio you can do this at the website here all useful links are gonna be in the description once you've created an account here we can then bounce back to our app on our phone or any computer desktop browser so long as it's connected to the local network and sign into the app with our created account.

Doing this then activates myVolumio on the Raspberry Pi device thus we can now download plugins from here we're going to click on the plugin section and find the touch display. Click on system hardware this is going to start the installation process straight away you can also install any of the other plugins that you desire at this point like internet radio, bandcamp, youtube cast receiver, or soundcloud, just to name a few. It should now restart itself and then welcome you with a fully operational UI system to control Volumio via the Raspberry Pi directly, now there is a huge amount you can do from here scraping album covers and other information is very possible using our Volumio system that we've set up right here so is connecting it to an apex audiophile system or just some cozy headphones it is very cool having a vastly connected way to play my favorite audio media all open source, and if you desire evidence that the DAC is actually working and worth it I also took a deep dive using audacity to analyze the same signal being output via the default auxiliary port and the DAC.

It showed noise and harmonic distortion products very evident on the default there is a lot to this kind of analysis so if you are interested in this type of thing I would highly recommend checking out the full written-up article where I take a deep dive into it.

So I do hope you go off and have some dance parties and have great fun you need a hand at any step come pop us a message on our Core Electronics forum or in the comments section down below we are full-time makers and are here to help so until next time! Stay cozy.