“I have ummed and arred about getting a DAC for my Raspberry Pi since I saw the Hifiberry DAC a while back. The stumbling block for me was getting the DAC up and running and reading through the setup guides seemed quite complicated.
I saw IQaudIO's Pi-DAC+ a few months ago and it caught my eye, but due to "budgetary issues" I put buying one on the back-burner. I then read the article in the Mag Pi magazine and thought I ought to take the plunge, especially given the relative low-cost and I'm pleased to say I'm glad I did!
I purchased Pimoroni's PiBow Audio to compliment this and setting it up was a breeze. I popped the DAC onto the Raspberry Pi's GPIO's, built the case and then it was simply a case of trying a number of the OS's available.
I started with Rune Audio and within minutes, I had HD audio pumping out of our Denon Hifi and it sounded fantastic! I was streaming audio from my NAS drive and controlling playback via my iPhone! I have tried Volumio and Moode too, but I have had a few issues getting Moode working properly with the DAC - for some reason the headphone output works, but not the phono (only on Moode though).
If you are looking for an impressive hifi setup, then definitely get this. The price is fab, plus I haven't even tried to use a rotary encoder or IR receiver yet (for hardware based volume control)! Excellent product.”
“Great sound quality, easy to fit and good value. I now have a superb, tiny little network music player that sounds perfect - no fans!! Using with a Pi 2 and RuneAudio 0.3. Setup couldn't have been easier. Going to get myself one of those nice looking PiBow cases to put it all in now that I know that the Pi's going to be permanently dedicated to this new role.”
“After a long series of compiling issues for Wolfson Card for Raspberry Pi B, I got fed up and looked for a DAC that was with most of the distros for Raspberry Pi. IQaudIO Pi-DAC+ is compatible with Volumio, RuneAudio, and a little gem called Moode among others. It is compatible with Raspberry Pi HAT (A+/B+/2) and brings the Raspberry Pi the ability of playing full-HD audio up to 24-bit/192kHz.
Sound is great and it counts with a headphone output as well as RCA connectors, both giving excellent audio playback. Now I'm looking forward to receiving the pibow that fits both the Raspberry Pi 2 and the Pi-DAC+. All in all an excellent product.”
“Really great little DAC. Provides infinitely better sound quality than the Pi's 3.5 mm stereo jack.
I hooked it up via the phono connectors to my Cambridge Audio amp and it sounds great, both with high bitrate MP3s and streaming Spotify. It also works really well with one of the little Adafruit amplifier boards (connected to the breakout pins on the Pi-DAC+) and a pair of small speakers, although I had to run the voltage out from the Pi-DAC+ through an Adafruit PowerBoost to clean it up (at least I think that was the problem) before powering the amplifier.
I've also tried the HifiBerry Amp+, which is significantly more expensive, and had a very poor experience with it. Very awkward to set up, and I wasn't able to get it to work at all with the aforementioned speakers. I'd recommend the Pi-DAC+ over the HifiBerry Amp+ every time.”
“I have found that the IQaudiO Pi-DAC+ is a great addition to a RaspberryPi and gives excellent audio output, far better than the built in analog audio. However I would sound one note of caution to prospective buyers. At present it is NOT compatible with Sonic Pi, the main musical program supplied with the Raspberry Pi. This uses a program jackd to connect to the Pi's audio, which is not at present compatible with Sonic Pi. Moreover, it can upset the operation of Sonic Pi, which needs to be reconfigured to work with the internal audio when a Pi-Dac+ is present, as the Pi-Dac+ grabs slot 0 (where the internal audio normally is) and pushes the internal audio to slot 1.
If you want to use it for other purposes then it is a worthwhile investment. It would be 5 star if it were not for the problem with Sonic Pi. Because of this problem I drop it to 3”
