Can anyone recommend a half decent quality USB sound card for an OSMC Raspberry Pi?
I’ll be using a Raspberry Pi 2 Model B for the application, which is the main sound source for the ceiling speakers in my kitchen diner.
Criteria:
Nothing to distract from the music - no glitches, background hiss, pops, squeaks etc…
Reliability, ease of use - It needs to work after a reboot / power cycle without any user input, ie: it has to be family / user friendly for a Linux alien.
Middle of the road audio quality, as the kitchen diner is a touch ‘echoey’ having a hard floor, so super quality would be wasted in the room.
I didn’t want to blunder in with anything too cheap and be disappointed, while at the same time, I don’t want to waste money by buying something expensive only to find it doesn’t work with an OSMC Raspberry Pi.
So any recommendations / personal experiences would be more than welcome!
The hifiberry is a really good choice and supported by many distributions.
If you get the amp model you only need speakers and a single 12V powersupply. Just connect speakers and you got a full blown kitchen radio/tv powered by OSMC.
They should work with osmc out of the box. You might have to configure it in the audio options.
With a HifiBerry physically occupying the whole GPIO header, I assume only some of the pins are used - can I therefore continue using GPIO LIRC for infra red remote control (one GPIO pin required, can share power)?
Thanks Sam, it looks good, I might be wrong, but it doesn’t appear to have volume control? I currently use an old Microsoft RC6, which while most buttons are overkill, volume is handy.
We are going to make the Up and Down keys control volume during playback in a future update
Most users use pass through, and controlling audio via the AVR is almost always a better option, so we didn’t explicitly mark any buttons as volume buttons, but you can change any buttons to control volume and in a near future update we will add some functionality, including long press support
That sounds excellent Sam, thanks! XBMC / KODI has needed a good, well thought out dedicated remote for a long time…
We’re soon to replace our main TV, one of the criteria will be working CEC control. I always take a Pi on holiday with us for evening movies while kids are in bed, so I get to try them on a few TV’s, and have only really had plug and play CEC success with Samsung TV’s.
This audio system I’m piecing together will live out of sight in a kitchen cupboard, so most control will be using Yatse or html interface, but it’s good to have something to hand to quickly stop / pause / skip etc… I will install a small screen inside the cupboard for maintenance etc…