This guy must have been doing this at exactly the same time as me. I used shairport-sync and whilst I eventually got it working last week it wasn't plain sailing. Getting the service setup to start upon powerup was a real pain in the ass. I've also had to move it onto a separate wifi network as an RPi camera was hogging the bandwidth which caused audio dropouts on the shairplay-sync server.
Also as many of you will probably comment, the Rpi audio out stage is awful. I'm waiting for my Dad to return my USB soundcard so I can use that instead of the headphone socket on the Pi.
Absolutely. I'm the article author and yes, adding a DAC is definitely recommended because the output from the audio jack is terrible.
I'm intending to do a follow-up article on this, but so far I've tried IQAudIO Pi-DAC+ with an RPi 3A+ and HifiBerry DAC+ Zero on a Zero W. I was extremely surprised by the good quality of the HifiBerry.
I noticed the writeup has your output set at +4db. That implies it’s substantially overdriving the output, which will cause obvious distortion. I have a rpi plugged into my high-end-ish stereo for other reasons, and find the output to be more than good enough.
If you’re complaining about audiophile nuances like warmth and presence, and also using 24-bit, high sample rate audio files, then fine, but if you’re encountering obvious distortion or buzzing then something’s wrong with your setup.
(Thanks for writing this up, by the way; it didn’t occur to me that I could set up an AirPlay server with stuff I have laying around.)
[edit: I forgot that I’m using hdmi audio. Still, the +4db thing is a red flag]
HDMI audio from the Pi is fine. It’s analogue audio from the 3.5mm TRRS connector where the sound quality is poor, quiet and hissy.
I first discovered how bad it was building a bespoke car stereo out of a Raspberry Pi 1 - and ended up buying a USB DAC because of it. But it seems to still be an issue even in the later boards because emulation forums are often talking about using HDMI or an addon board for RGB+Stereo if your display doesn’t support HDMI.
How has it managed to escape me, immersed in tech every day for many years, that there is such a thing as a USB soundcard? Crazy how things can slip through the cracks, be so close yet missed.
They're definitely useful. Also, even at the low end, often better than onboard simply because they get so much less interference. There are also some really nice higher end options if you ever want to do multi-channel mixing/capture.
Aside: for anyone considering a hackintosh, USB audio is about your best bet in this space.
Note these are often called by other names ('soundcard' is not very descriptive to me because they look nothing like the PCI cards you're imagining installing in your desktop PC). A 'USB audio adapter' or 'USB DAC' are the same thing.
I made a Shairport server for 6 audio zones years ago on an ancient desktop computer and multiple PCI sound cards. After it died, it was hard to migrate to a single Raspberry Pi due to the USB audio cards devices scrambling on each boot (so the kitchen may become the living room, etc.).
Shairport-sync also has small audio glitches, and I ended buying an airport express. Certainly cheaper than buying a raspberry pi and good DAC. The airport express DAC is very good.
And a recent-ish firmware update for them enabled AirPlay2, so I can now stream to all three of my Airport Expresses in sync from my phone or iPad. I was quite pleasantly surprised by Apple still providing useful software updates to hardware they no longer sell (I'm guessing the probably won't push an AirPlay2 update =for my original AppleTV though, since they'd prefer I upgrade it to a newer one which they're still selling...)
I mean, you say "new" but it's been around for over a year. And it's a huge improvement. Are all the people here complaining about audio quality, complaining about this improved driver or the original poor driver? My ears are not great but I find the new one very usable with an amp; it's not great with headphones but that's hardly surprising.
Also as many of you will probably comment, the Rpi audio out stage is awful. I'm waiting for my Dad to return my USB soundcard so I can use that instead of the headphone socket on the Pi.