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Pirate Audio: 3W Stereo Amp for Raspberry Pi Reviews

4.7 Rating 46 Reviews
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Derek Jennings
Verified Reviewer
Very pleased with this purchase. The sound quality through the 3 inch Pimoroni speakers is great. The push in speaker connectors are not so great. It took me ages to get the tinned ends of the speakers lined up perfectly to go in. Single core solid wire is a lot easier to insert. Pimoroni should replace those connectors with something better. For software I used PiCorePlayer which is brilliant. I am so pleased I discovered it. The 240x240 display works beautifully. Follow the guide at https://forums.slimdevices.com/forum/user-forums/linux-unix/108174-jivelite-on-a-pirate-audio-240x240-screen?p=1421255#post1421255 Be sure to follow the guide to the letter on a clean install of PiCorePlayer.
1 Helpful Report
Posted 6 months ago
I already had two of these and this is my third, so that tells you something straight away. Overall I'd say this is a good board if it suits your needs but if there is ever a version 2, things I would like to see are: 1/ screw terminals to attach the speakers, because the push clips are fiddly and it is hard to get both + and - connections to open at the same time 2/ switch to a DAC which has a real software volume control (you can configure asound to do this but you have to play an (empty) file at full volume after each reboot, which is a bit of a faff and 3/ (and this one is true for a lot of hats) make it easier to break out the (majority) of unused gpio pins. After all, you never know when you are going to _need_ to add a Rick Roll button, and 4 buttons is pretty much the minimum you need to have some kind of control over an audio player. Talking of buttons, I wound up buying board number 3 after knocking the retaining plastic off the top of one of the buttons when the button caught on the edge of the screen cutout in the case I made for it. If you take care during your build and leave a sensible margin for the buttons this won't happen to you. The sound coming out of the board is great and is plenty powerful enough to drive the honking 1960s speaker which I have retained in my radio conversion project. Fwiw the suggested speakers work well and have decent top end without descending into tizz. After nearly 3 years the little screen has started to flicker and sometimes does not display but I suspect this is not an inherent fault and more likely due to poor circuit design in the breakout board I added to the radio conversion project so I could control volume using a rotary encoder. If you are looking for a board for audio and a display for a quick build that doesn't need anything else other than a Raspberry Pi to drive it, this is definitely a good choice.
Helpful Report
Posted 8 months ago
Works well. Makes a nice small mp3 / internet radio player with a Pi zero 2W. Sound good when paired with reasonable speakers.
Helpful Report
Posted 11 months ago
Gordon Train
Verified Reviewer
Very good. Works great in a mp3 player with a Pi. Sounds good with some reasonable speakers. I would give it 5* if the first one received hadn't been faulty, Pimoroni were very quick to replace it.
Helpful Report
Posted 11 months ago
Christopher Wilkinson
Verified Reviewer
Really handy. A nice way to create a Pi based alarm clock, or to add sound effects to a project
Helpful Report
Posted 11 months ago
Dobrovolszki Laszlo
Verified Reviewer
Author didn't leave any comments.
Helpful Report
Posted 2 years ago
Henrik Siegumfeldt
Verified Reviewer
This is great. I bought the amp amp shim some month ago, and really liked it, but the press fit was a bit fiddly. This amp with just attaches firmly on the gpio header and plays perfectly out of the box. Sound quality is above expectations, so highly recommended.
Helpful Report
Posted 2 years ago
Now working with a Christmas tree in public library playing carols to near by persons.
Helpful Report
Posted 3 years ago