“This is a brilliant bit of kit. Before buying the Audio DAC SHIM I had my Raspberry Pi 2 hooked up to an amp using the PI onboard audio jack. Due to limitations in PI hardware it's well known that music audio quality is not great with this model. I run the PI exclusively as a 24/7 AirPlay server using the open source project Shairport-Sync. The sound quality before adding the DAC was muddy, dull and clipped easily - not very good compared to plugging an ipod/iphone into the amp. It didn't help that built-in PI output is headphone level rather than line level. Adding the DAC SHIM with Line-out boosted audio clarity, faithfully reproduced top end frequencies and transformed my bathroom speaker setup. Very easy to fit, though I do recommend using bolts to secure the board especially if your audio jack lead is heavy duty as mine is (rather than slim like in the product photo). Without the bolts a touch to the jack plug would sometimes disrupt the audio. My case needed modifying slightly to accommodate the Shim's board, in addition to an extra hole being made, but this was expected. As I didn't need Pirate Audio a change to config.txt was all I needed - just as described in the product info. As I have a separate amp I didn't need to pay for a more expensive DAC including an amp, so this was perfect. This is a great product which lives up to all expectations!”
“This device is an excellent way of adding audio output to the Raspberry Pi Zero/W in particular. No soldering is required. It is also very thin (thus the name shim) and allows other card (hats) to be plugged on top of it using the original Pi Zero GPIO pins. It is based on the PCM5100A DAC chip however it does not have any mixer controls (This is the only reason I didn't give it 5 stars). If the lack of a mixer facility isn't a problem then this is the solution for you. I tested the DAC shim using MPD (Music player daemon).”
