AUDIOPHONICS I-Sabre V3 DAC ES9023 TCXO

[rikardo1979]

Hi guys,

AUDIOPHONICS I-Sabre V3 DAC ES9023 TCXO
Anyone have an experience with this DAC? Should I expect any trouble to make it work with XBian or is it going to be plug&play?



maybe @Skywatch

[Skywatch]

Should be plug and play Rikardo.

I use this one in the lounge for background listening, it is much cheaper now!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Audiophonics-DAC-Sabre-ES9023-I2S-vers-Analogique-24bit-192KHZ-for-Raspberry-PI-/331552761400?hash=item4d3215a638:...SwPhdVUgbt

Also consider the pcm5102a boards out there, they do go higher in resolution. Also some good es9018m2k boards from hong kong. I have one assembled and am trying to get a psu sorted out but family illness are taking a lot of my time right now.

Also of note is that with the board you posted, you loose access to all the gpio pins with this attached. I have that problem with the pifi digi. Need to do some soldering one day to sort that out!

[rikardo1979]

(3rd Apr, 2016 07:14 PM)Skywatch Wrote:  Should be plug and play Rikardo.

I use this one in the lounge for background listening, it is much cheaper now!

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Audiophonics-DAC-Sabre-ES9023-I2S-vers-Analogique-24bit-192KHZ-for-Raspberry-PI-/331552761400?hash=item4d3215a638:...SwPhdVUgbt

Also consider the pcm5102a boards out there, they do go higher in resolution. Also some good es9018m2k boards from hong kong. I have one assembled and am trying to get a psu sorted out but family illness are taking a lot of my time right now.

Also of note is that with the board you posted, you loose access to all the gpio pins with this attached. I have that problem with the pifi digi. Need to do some soldering one day to sort that out!

Thanks for reply
I have ordered this today with kit (without PSU)

I do not need GPIO so perfect for me. Easy to assemble and hope is going to work great with Tidal.
Now there is an Bubble uPnP Beta which have all the cloud streams in, Tidal included. Works like a charm
As before it was horrible to navigate Tidal on Kodi (with Yatse). It was pretty much useless

With this new Bubble uPnP is just perfect. As of now I was using RPi connected to our AVR over HDMI but cos I want to use proper HiFi stereo amp I needed some good DAC for it.

[rikardo1979]

OK, so it seems this is not going to be plug-and-play as it does not seems to work
@Skywatch what I should do to make this appear under my audio devices?

[Skywatch]

What have you done so far?

Have you added the overlay in /boot/config.txt?
Have you done the things in post 95 here.... http://forum.xbian.org/thread-2397-page-7.html ?? ( 5 steps to follow and of course just use hifiberry instead of hifiberry-digi!)
Have you selected dac output in kodi menu? Does alsa device appear there for selection?

What is the output of aplay -l?

[rikardo1979]

(8th Apr, 2016 07:06 AM)Skywatch Wrote:  What have you done so far?

Have you added the overlay in /boot/config.txt?
Have you done the things in post 95 here.... http://forum.xbian.org/thread-2397-page-7.html ??
Have you selected dac output in kodi menu? Does alsa device appear there for selection?

What is the output of aplay -l?

so far I have done nothing as I thought is just plug and play. It works fine under Volumio without any tweaks

aplay -l shows nothing, thats the problem
I will have a look into it tomorrow or weekend

[Nachteule]

If any overlay is needed, plug and play is never possible

[Skywatch]

Aha.

Here's a guide to help you out.....

In /boot/config.txt add (or edit) the following lines....

Terminal

dtoverlay=hifiberry-dac
dtparam=i2s=on
#dtoverlay=lirc-rpi
hdmi_force_hotplug=1

Then make sure that staging is allowed in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/xbian.list
Then update and then upgrade. DO NOT REBOOT AT THE PROMPT if using xbian-config!

Then make /etc/modprobe.d/xbian.conf look like this.....

Terminal

alias char-major-89 i2c-dev
blacklist snd_bcm2835
blacklist evbug

Then add the line below to /etc/modules.xbian

Terminal

#snd_bcm2835

Now reboot and aplay -l and see what it says.

Let me know which pi, kernel and dac you are using here.

[rikardo1979]

the most important question...is it possible to have HDMI out together with this DAC out?
Because if not I am afraid I need separate RPi I want to be able output movies over HDMI and music over DAC if possible
If not that I keep XBian on one RPi and I get another just for music and would use Volumio

[rikardo1979]

(8th Apr, 2016 07:18 AM)Nachteule Wrote:  If any overlay is needed, plug and play is never possible

it just does work in Volumio, I did not need to do anything
1st boot into system, I have select Hifibery in settings in web GUI, reboot and all done

[Skywatch]

That is something I am about to try.

At the moment I have one pi2 with pifi digi for 5.1 sound and another pi2 with dac for music. It may be possible to have both digi and dac connected to one pi, but even if that works I will still need to turn on and off passthrough in kodi and reboot with the appropriate dtoverlay to switch between the two. Not ideal.

Your goal should be much easier! AFAIK you cannot have audio routed to the I2S dac and hdmi at the same time (ie both playing together) but you can simply go into kodi system menu and select the output you want (hdmi for film or alsa for dac) without rebooting or changing anything as the I2S and HDMI both only have one device attached...

[rikardo1979]

(8th Apr, 2016 07:38 AM)Skywatch Wrote:  but you can simply go into kodi system menu and select the output you want (hdmi for film or alsa for dac) without rebooting or changing anything as the I2S and HDMI both only have one device attached...

this would be good enough I would be happy with this solution

[Skywatch]

(8th Apr, 2016 07:36 AM)rikardo1979 Wrote:  it just does work in Volumio, I did not need to do anything
1st boot into system, I have select Hifibery in settings in web GUI, reboot and all done

The entire point of volumio is to play high quality music out via I2S pins. So this is built in and enabled from the start.
Xbain is a media client where this function is possible as an additional feature but does not form part of it's core purpose (which is to run kodi). But it is great to have and has been integrated nicely. You just need 5 mins to set it up and away you go!

[rikardo1979]

(8th Apr, 2016 07:41 AM)Skywatch Wrote:  

(8th Apr, 2016 07:36 AM)rikardo1979 Wrote:  it just does work in Volumio, I did not need to do anything
1st boot into system, I have select Hifibery in settings in web GUI, reboot and all done

The entire point of volumio is to play high quality music out via I2S pins. So this is built in and enabled from the start.
Xbain is a media client where this function is possible as an additional feature but does not form part of it's core purpose (which is to run kodi). But it is great to have and has been integrated nicely. You just need 5 mins to set it up and away you go!

I believe our guys can ad a simple one button feature into XBian so you just select output device without any code interference

I buying a beer for all who help this happened

[PMI]

Not sure if this will be helpful, but there are a number of people in the Rune Audio forum who use this DAC with no issues, using HiFiBerry DAC settings, at least with RPi2B and now 3B. Example thread:

http://www.runeaudio.com/forum/getting-audiophonics-i2s-dac-working-t3342.html#p12772

I have used a HiFiBerry DAC+, and now the DIGI+ with Xbian and HDMI since about January and the ES9023 seems to use the HiFiBerry drivers and settings, so it should be just fine. I now use the DIGI+ with Xbian and Kodi, and a video receiver. The DAC+ is now dedicated to audio and a separate analog amplifier (it has documented issues with hardware volume control, and I just do not want to take the extra effort while watching movies), other than that, it worked perfectly with Xbian/Kodi. Obviously stereo only, not 5.1 channel surround sound or anything like that.