Volumio updates and new gizmos

There’s no summer for Audiophiles Music Player…!

That is why I’m still here in the middle of august, doing some code here and there… I am thinking to implement various new functionalities, and Volumio’s community has played a major role in defining the top priorities for Volumio. You can follow the development on Volumio’s GitHub and even submit some code via pull requests to help Volumio grow. So, by the end of August you could expect to find lot of new features to your favourite Audiophile Music Player. Just to quote some:

Update Mechanism. You’ll be able to backup your settings and library and restore them when a new version is released. After this has been achieved, I’ll work on an update system which won’t force you to download a new image every time. It’s quite a tricky part, but is definetely in my top priority list.
Integration with Radio directiories, such as Jamendo and more, to retrieve easily new songs. What about Spotify? yes I’m still looking for a viable solution (hope to achieve that very soon).
Better I2S DAC handling, allowing to use Hardware Volume control for capable devices (like IQaudIO PI-Dac)
Playlist management and general UX improvements
Social sharing and better connection with the forum and help sections.
Raspberry PI B+ compatibility and I2S DACs patch.
Improving Sound Quality: this is not to be forget, as is the real core feature of Volumio.
Various little tweaks and additions (such as starting volume, OhMedia support for UPNP and more)

Then I have plenty of new gizmos to play with:

Takazine’s IrBerry DAC

The New IrBerry DAC, from Takazine. It works out of the box with Volumio, and features a carefully designed layout. Plus it comes with an handy IR Receiver which can be used with an Apple Remote to control playback. You just have to lauch a little script which will handle IR signals and send them appropriately to MPD’s backend. The website is in Japanese, but just hit translate to your language and you’ll understand how much care has been put into this. Unfortunately, it seems that this DAC comes in a kit and you’ll need to solder it by yourself, hope that something ready to use will be considered in the future. I’m really eager to try it (need days with more than 24 hours) and write here my thoughts. And why not, integrate the Remote Control script into Volumio for the IrBerry Profile, thats’ really worth it!

Sellarz DAC-24192-ABR for BeagleBone Black and Raspberry Pi

It’s a long time I’m delighted with Sellarz electronics products, you may remember my Reference DAC build. This guys makes outstanding products, nothing to say about it. Now he released a new I2S DAC for Raspberry PI and BeagleBone Black. This are the features (quoting from Kim Itself):

Input Voltage : 5Vdc from R-Pi and Beaglebone Black.
Low Pass Filter for Power Supply( for noisy switching power as USB)
Ultra Low Noise Regulation Circuit : 8nV/√Hz @1KHz(0.25uV)
High Precision and Low Jitter Noise Clock : +/-0.5PPM / 0.08ps RMS

The DAC chip itself is the beloved ES9023, and it can be used both with Raspberry PI and BeagleBone Black. The Power Section of the circuit is quite remarkable (that’s a distinctive feature of Kim’s design) and you’ll have an onboard low phase noise oscillator for the DAC (mandatory with this chip). Since it’s compatible with not just the Raspberry Pi, don’t expect this to be a snap-on solution, you’ll need to wire it up propery, but that’s a little price to pay and allows lot of flexibility if you mind to box your creation.
You can find the DAC-24192-ABR on EBAY.