Raspberry Pi Streamer Using Volumio and an Allo DigiOne 

I've been watching quite a few Raspberry Pi audio streamer tutorials recently and this is by far my favorite. Excellent!

My favorite parts were the Satisfying Peeling, the Windows accent, and the insane lightning!!

Excellent explainer. Thanks for posting.

Excellent tutorial, thanks man.

Have to congratulate you on your explanation, I follow a content provider because he is an audiophile and because he is very concise but have to say you got this subject matter across a little better. Possibly because he makes the assumption he audience has a little background knowledge. Credit though where Credit is due. Well done and thank-you.👍

Thank you for this great presentation. I finally built it using a Raspberry Pi 3 B+ which is sufficient and even cheaper. It gets just a little bit warm but I added heat sinks anyway because it’s in a plastic case and the ventilation is not that great. I added a 1 terabyte Samsung T7 ssd drive and a DAC hat from Innomaker which features a Burr Brown converter. The sound is amazing with high quality FLAC files I ripped myself but also with 96kHz HiRes audio files. I think it can even go way higher than that with DSD files. I also added a Nobsound Little Bear T 7 for some tube sound. Great fun. Volumio also has tons of internet radio stations for free... Update The Innomaker DAC will play DSD files with 2.82 MHZ / 1 Bit as reported by Volumio playing the Aurora “Infections” albums with no problem and terrific sound quality

Nice comfortable feel to this video, and very helpful information.

Excellent guide. Thanks

very helpful video. many thanks!

Phone with player of my choice through a bluetooth adapter hooked to my Bose stereo. Best solution.

Very informative, thank you!

I use the USB interface in ASYNC mode, it's free and works flawlessly. My DAC is a Topping D70 Pro Sabre that plays marvelous: I wanted to have 12V trigger but a cheaper DAC like an SMSL D-6s would have played as nice. I used to have a Raspberry Pi 4 but i replaced it with an HP ProDesk 600 G5 DM: It is always on, runs straight MPD (Music Player Daemon, that's what's under the hood in Volumio!), RompR in a podman/docker container as MPD client. I run a couple of other VMs / Containers, like Home Assistant.

Good video... Thanks

I'm installing a pi/mpd/mycroft streamer in my garage with the newly Hifiberry DAC2 HD driving some decent powered speakers. I 3d printed a case on thingiverse. Kinda cool that I'll be able to voice command the speaker (as well as the other things you can do with mycroft) and mpd will stream from the server in my house. Instead of a "raw" mpd setup I'm toying with using volumio so I also have access to my Tidal service, but due to extra complexity of getting mycroft/volumio working nicely, I'll wait for a while and dig into that. I've tested the mycroft/mpd setup on one of my mycroft boxes and it works well. I'm just waiting for the DAC to show up on Tuesday to get the hardware ready for the garage. It's going to be fun to have high quality music when I'm playing with the cars!

There are many posts referring to a problem with the DigiOne which does not play files greater than 48 kHz or 24 bits. I have this problem too. There seems to be very little useful answers though! I did some research, and it appears (the technical descriptions are sometimes hard to understand) SPDIF is limited to 48 kHz and 24 bits max, and in some cases only 20 bits. I solved my problem by going into the Volumio settings and setting the Audio Resampling to 44.1 kHz and 24 bits. That way I seem to be able to play all (or at least most of my high-resolution music files. Frankly its way past time that Allo provides guidance on this matter and revises their spec sheet to indicate the SPDIF limitations.

Great presentation and thank you for sharing your thoughts on using a raspberry pi for streaming. I use volumio myself and I primarily use an HDD hooked up to it because I've come to the point where I just listen mostly to my ripped CD collection. The only problem I found would recommending a raspberry pi nowadays because they're hard to come by as I've seen. I wanted to buy another one a few months ago and the only one I could see to find was on eBay being price gouged for close to $250. Back when you could pick one up for 50 bucks it was a fantastic deal and I don't think there's a better setup available for that kind of money. Of course it's been a while since I've looked at anyone maybe they're becoming more available again.

Assign the Pi a static IP on your router & you'll be able to find it with the default web address.

I have exactly this. I use Tidal too, but the integration isn't great.

FYI, the only time the pi's really need heat sinks is if your doing things like compiling code. Of course they never hurt, but music streamers don't need the heat sinks. In my case I have enough pi's in operation it's just another hassle to install heat sinks on all of them.

ASMR section. Subbed.

thanks Adam, my journey starts here! ;-)

Good one. Video, that is. I like the low key presentation. I'm trying to figure out if I should integrate a pi server into my current setup. I've been thinking about it for years, so I guess my answer has been no up until now. I use PLEX (and PLEXamp) on various computers and phones. My music is on an external HD connected to an always on laptop that has my main PLEX server on it. I have vintage amps and speakers in a few rooms and I play PLEX from my phone or computer by RCA cables to the amps, or by bluetooth, in whatever room I'm in. I use a chi-fi dongle dac on my always on computer, but that's it. It's always a bit of switching and plugging and unplugging when I go room to room. It's definitely not ideal because I have to constantly switch rooms (work at home). And of course the sound isn't ideal either, but it's decent. I'm not sure what my next step is going to be. I'm considering the Loxjie D30 at the moment, but that's not going to solve all of my problems. Ideally, I'd like to have a sonos/roon situation without sonos or roon. Just control everything from my phone (with the PLEX app or something better) and hear the same music in every room, but that seems cost prohibitive to say the least. And now that Roon raised prices, I can't imagine ever paying them that much (liked your joke at the end). I can't afford that - and just on principle I don't think I'd do it if I could. Well, if I could lose that kind of money in the couch cushions and not think about it, maybe; but otherwise, no. The only potential (low cost) solution I've found to approximate sonos is Arylic, but not sure if that would work for a number of reasons. I'm also not married to keeping PLEX, but it's what I use at the moment. I also can't export playlists from PLEX and it has from poor to non-existent artist and album info (and all of the other things that Roon is better at). As I started out saying, I'm not sure how adding a Pi streamer is going to help much, but maybe I'm missing something. I guess I should find a forum to post this on, but maybe there's no good solution to this (admittedly not that significant) problem. Congrats to anyone who actually read this. I don't expect it, but I'd be happy to hear anybody's ideas on how to improve my set up or a good forum to go to for suggestions. I think I'll go throw some vinyl on now and not think about this anymore today. ;) - cheers

good video for this newby thanks! One question which I'm not sure about - once you have this setup and if all your music was on an attached usb drive and the device is connected to the wifi, then would you need the ethernet connection? I dont have an ethernet and my router is nowhere near where I want to setup a my hi-fi so this type of solution would only work for me with wi-fi only.

Amazing video buddy. I’m thinking of getting one as well I was wondering would you still recommend a raspberry pi or something els for streaming

Thank you this video was helpful! But i wonder if i could use the volumio to stream from dezzer ore tidal?

Thanks! One of the best raspberry pi tutorial videos! How about any tips connecting to Tidal or QoBuz?

👍👍👍.Many thanks.

Great video, I own a DAC/Preamp that uses I2S input for best sound. Wonder if there is a Pi4 to I2S output board (instead of coax) ?

Really enjoyed this video - found it extremely helpful. 2 questions if you don't mind. If you went for the DigiOne Hat, why did you decide not to upgrade the power supplies - the clean side and the dirty side, and second question is whether you think it is difficult to enable WiFi since that is what I would need not having cable access in the room I am considering for this?

great work, is there an option to stream my video media throughout my house and shed, other than plex

Hello, I am using the USB Dac. Did you compare RPI4 USB out to the Digione S/PDIF? Which one is better. I am thinking to buy the Digione signature nowadays.

Thanks. Very interesting. Are there any costs for using volumio? From there homepage it seems as though there is a monthly fee.

Where is the i2s output? It doesn't seem DigiOne has one (I couldn't find it in the Allo Digione link as well)? I'm looking for a i2s solution with independent MCLK from Rasberry Pi, do you have any recommendation?

is there a solution that will stream from the raspberry pi to the handled device over wifi rather than just play to connected amp?

Does the OS/software rearrange/rename/retag folders and music on the hard drive? I've spent months fixing all my music/folders/tags and don't want it wrecked.

Is it possible with that setup to play the music on a tablet (I have a iPad) and have a Bluetooth speaker play it?

Hello, How do I to buy this full of Volumio + raspberry pi 4 + Allo digone streamer system. Thanks!

Funny how the rather large USB sockets have not been upgraded to the smaller variety yet

Can you please provide a link to the raspberry case ? Thanks

Can I stream from my iphone Apple Music to Pi that has DAC which is connected to my amp. I used to use airport express and Apple TV but need a DAC to e experience better quality apple lossless

What does one do when their audio rig and internet connection are on the opposite sides of the room.

Can this configuration use an itunes library on a windows pc as a data source?

Hmmm ... what is the difference to play the library from my network disk via my iPad to my stereo system via wifi ? Where’s the benefit ?

If you are still using a DAC with the hat, could you have gone straight from the pi to the DAC using USB?

Your DAC dot have USB in? Just wondering why you needed the SPIDF out….

Great video thank you! I might consider streaming at some point. But right now I’d like to just play my FLAC audio files from a memory card using the Pi and a DAC hat. How could I do that??? Thanks

Trying to use Raspberry Pi4 as streamer via USB, but nadda so far.

Are you saying it’s not streaming if a device is wired to the network? Is it streaming if you’re using bluetooth? I don’t think wireless has anything to do with it.

is it worth the $260 price tag of this combo...is it a better streamer than my i7 laptop? (soundwise)

If u use the 3 the usb gets noisy so yea... go with the 4

A much better option is to use Gentooplayer on the Allo Digione 🙂

Another thing to note is that Hans Beekhuyzen reviews (on youtube) most all of the interesting DAC's. He has very good equipment so his views are quite valuable in selecting DAC's.

Can you also stream RU-vid to it?

An excellent tutorial. May I suggest a better music interface if you have a library of CD quality FLAC files. The software is called Roon, if you are unfamiliar. With Volumio running on the Pi, Roon will see it as an endpoint. Then use a tablet, phone or PC to play music.

Very useful. Just one question. Does volumio have equalizer? And can I setup it from my smartphone?

They have a phone app

FYI - as of June 2022, Spotify plugin for Volumio no longer works

I love to use Plex and Plexamp. Couldn't stand the UI of Volumio.

Just for the record, a streamer is something that allows you to play music via the internet. does not matter if it's wired or hifi. Also the order of expence would be music player, hifi, audiophile.

How can you be giving build instructions and be going so fast, not good.

This video starts from the beginning (what else lol) with the wrong information! A streamer is not a device for wireless music! A streamer is a device for consuming digital music from a digital source - either the internet, a home network, or simply a hard disk in a home network. This can be through a wireless network at home or a wired network like the Internet... Whatever one chooses has nothing to do with the circumstances that the device is a streamer or just a network player!

Streamers, by definition, got nothing with wireless. Learn your stuff.