After spending months enjoying the rewards of listening to the Schiit Modi 3 in my living room setup now connected via Mini Toslink to a Google Chromecast Audio, used as a Spotify Cast Streamer. I wanted to bring that same DAC presence upgrade to my Coffee Brew Bar aka Kitchen setup. The Kitchen setup is a much lower and spares setup designed to bring me Hi-Fi sound and a small playground for gear. A friend surprised me by posting some photos of speakers and because my Modi 3 is my current must tell the world of better things message in digital audio i.e. get a DAC. I started googling again and reluctant previously to spend £100-£200 pounds on a DAC for the kitchen. I find a Schiit Modi 2 on eBay for £60 and I win the item by hitting. “Buy it now”.
My plan is to use DAC this with a Raspberry Pi Model B+ I already have Volumio installed on.
I install the Spotify connect plugin and plug in my Schiit Modi 2. The light is on but it’s not working. I reboot the Volumio Streamer Pi and I hear via the Schiit Modi 2 the startup sound. I know the Pi can send audio to it. I decide my old Pi model B+ does not have enough CPU capacity to handle the stream to the DAC. I order a Pi 3 Model B. Why a Model 3 and not a 4 I hear you ask? I have an orange PiBow case that will fit the Pi 3 and I don’t have another USB C power supply at present.
In the meantime I enjoy my Schiit Modi 2 on a Mac Mini El Capitan with Spotify running hooked up to my Q Acoustics 3010s on the Coffee Brew Bar.
I rehouse my Pi3 as seen above reinstall Volumio, and install the Spotify Connect Plugin. It is so much faster it’s actually pleasant. I select the Schiit Modi 2 in the configuration as below. And again no sound?
Again I can hear the startup sound! Time to google – I find nothing of any help and a lot of “it doesn’t work” but this cannot be true I can hear the startup sound. It doesn’t play but seems to get stuck. Time to mess with settings. Some of which I confess I don’t know what they are.
I change mixer type from “Hardware” to “Software” and it is working!
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