After listening some hours to the tubed Rotel RCD855 it would also be lovely to stream some high quality audio with it.
After searching for days and finding a lot of information I came to the decision to connect it to a Raspberry Pi 3b+. The Volumio software seems to be a great solution to use. Then the question how to get the data to the TDA1541A with a sample frequency of 44.1Khz with 16bit resolution.
Easy, just plug an Allo Kali Reclocker board in top of the Raspberry Pi, it converts the I2S signal with a pure master clock! I2S is the same protocol Philips invented and used for the first DAC chips an still is used now 31 years later.
To make the connection from the Allo Kali board to the TDA1541A dac we need to wire it in the following order:
Because my cd-player was converted wit a NOS reclocker in place of the Saa7220 it was easy to solder the wires to it and make a bypass. First I wanted to mount everything in the Rotel but made my decision to have the Raspberry Pi/Allo Kali in a separate housing with a separate dc-supply. To listen to the CD-player or streaming from the Raspberry Pi there is a I2S to HDMI module used for switching and receiving all I2S lines. On the Raspbery Pi/Allo Kali there is an I2S to HDMI transmitter module.
The power supply to feed the Raspberry Pi/Allo Kali was made of a 12V Amplimo toroidal transformer and a case that was still on the shelf, a linear power supply module, IEC connection and a DC outlet.
Connecting everything and listen! Installing Volumio was just as easy as get it running. The only delay I found was trying to use my Apple Timecapsule as a NAS in Volumio but now it works flawlessly.
After all it’s all in the fruit!
Next part of this project is to make a nice design housing and use a touchscreen on the Pi and add I2S to HDMI ports on some other CD-players.
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Hi, which version of the reclocker do you use? The 22/24 or 44/48 version?
I have the same configuration with tda1541 and raspi.
Thanks. Nice project by the way?
Hi Ad thank you for you reply,
The 22/24 version is used for the TDA1541.
Met vriendelijke groet,
Harald
Dear Haarie,
I am so happy to find out you blog post! Complements, nice system you have.
I am also ordered Kali 22/24 to source I2S from RPi to TDA1541. I will do it directly as you mentioned.
Which driver is used in Volumio (if any..). Do you think it possable to use other soft as well, like Moode?
Thanak you.
Hi Odessa Marin,
In Volumio you use the general driver as it is for I2S.
I did’t try but I think that it would be possible for other software if it supports I2S.
Greetings,
Harald
Hi Haarie,
I’ve got inspired reading your article, so I’ve started my own project but instead using the TDA1541 I’ve come up with the TDA1540. The distro for the RPI comes from piCorePlayer (RPI I2S driver) since my other players (Transporter?Katana ) are working with LMS.
It all works fine until the FIFO of the Kali becomes empty ( changing a new stream for instance ), there is a loud tick coming out of speakers. I wonder do you experience the same issue with your Kali setup using Volumio? Or what did you so to overcome this “tick”.
Thanks in advance,
John
Hi John,
With Volumio there is no thick audible but I don’t think there you will find the problem.
I didn’t got into the data of the TDA1540 but with it’s 14bits it can’t be used without oversampling (NOS) and with oversampling it is still not a real 16bit.
Kali I2S input: 44.1 KHz, 48 KHz, 88.2 KHz, 96 KHz, 176.4 KHz, 192 KHz , 352.8KHz,384KHz- 16bit, 24bit or 32bit.
This reclocker is therefore ideal for the 16/20/24bit 192kHZ DACs based on: PCM1702, PCM1704, PCM56, PCM63, AD1865, TDA1541, TDA1543, TDA1387.