[JohnR]

The "Hi Fi Berry" website says the Raspberry Pi 2 is fine for just such a use and that the 3 wouldn't be required, so you may be able to get an even Cheaper and Cheerfuller deal on a 2 if that's what you have in mind.

The 2 is more than sufficient for audio. Apart from the inbuilt Wifi of the 3 (easily solved with an external dongle for the 2), there's not really any practical advantage to the 3 so far. And at this point there are teething issues

[randytsuch]

I had a "basic" Pi image, one I made right after I set up the network so the Pi could go headless.

I ran that on my Pi3 fine.  After that I updated the OS, and setup up wifi.

For some reason, I couldn't setup up a static IP on the pi for wifi, so I had to do that on my router.

Randy

[JohnR]

Hi Randy, cool

[Odal3]

Moode 2.6 Test Release 1 is out - should work with RP2 and 3

[dB Cooper]

Moode looks nice, with UI support for album artwork etc, but seems more tablet-oriented.The more minimalist Volumio interface looks like it may "fit" better on a smartphone screen, which is what I would be using. Volumio touts bit-perfect playback of FLAC files, Does Moode? There is very little detail on the Moode website.

[Odal3]

Moode and Volumio (and also rune) comes from the same origin and all uses mpd as the base music player. I also believe many commercial solutions are based on mpd as well.  They both use alsa to output the music and both are configured to be bit perfect by default. Note however that anytime you upsample in software or use software volume control which you can do in either volumio or moode, it's technically no longer bitperfect. (If done correctly, I have no issues with not being bit perfect).

In my opinion, the sound is identical since they use similar if not identical audio processing outputs. It's just a matter of preference of the user interface plus some different features.

Moode has had more recent work to it and I now prefer it's user interface over volumio. Works fine on my android phone.

 Note that you can also use other 3Rd party controller interfaces as well. Search for mpd interfaces in you app store to see if you like that better than the default volumio interface you use. I like the mupiece or the mpdroid.

There is a long thread on diyaudio. Don't waste your time reading it from the beginning. Start from the end instead.

[dB Cooper]

Thanks Odal3 for your valuable input. I don't use any of these (yet) but want to do a pi player, partly for a little diy fun, partly to separate primary audio duty from my laptop. Will be using iphone SE to control the player. Doing my homework for now so I will only have to do it once.

Any beginner-level info on the thread topics you could point me to would be appreciated (I have found hifiberry.com and a few others).

[Odal3]

Well, the install is pretty self explanatory. The earlier thread posts have been related to specific issues, troubleshooting or feature request, so I would only go back to the comments about the latest stable release and go forward from there and only search if you have specific questions on Dac or network setup issues, etc.

Do you have a DAC yet? I have reused an older USB based dac but I'm eying either the mamboberry or the hifiberry dac+ pro. Does anyone have experience with these?

[dB Cooper]

I have a Schiit Modi (USB) connected to my Mac but don't know how that compares to the hifiberry DAC.

[Odal3]

That's a USB2 dac, right? There used to be a bug in USB driver in Linux kernels, resulting in that USB DAC's with high speed UAC2 USB receivers require a special setting in Linux boot config. Not sure if that has been fixed by now, but either way, there is an easy fix but it requires to manually update a text file. See player fixes on the moode website.

[dB Cooper]

Yep, its USB2.

Sounds like you might be the guy to ask when I get around to hooking it all up (which may be a little while due to Life.)

One of the things I like about Volumio is the turnkey design, all you apparently gotta do is imprint a disk image onto an SD card. Haven't spent much time at all on command lines and none editing boot sequences. Is moode as easy to set up?

[Odal3]

Pretty much. Never done it with a mac, but in windows you use a special small program that writes it to the SD card. In Linux it is even easier.

A year or two ago I started to dabble with Linux to learn how to set it up a linux music computer/server from scratch. I didn't know much before about Linux and the little I knew was from years ago so it was a little bit of a learning curve, but it was kind of fun and I learned a lot. Just to be clear, I'm no linux/raspian expert by any means but know how enough to be dangerous. However, with Volumio and moode you don't need to know anything about Linux since the whole point is that someone else have done all the hard work for you. Almost like plug and play.
You should also read JohnR's article, which also have some good info.
(Knowing a little bit of simple Linux terminal of course doesn't hurt, but you don't really need it unless you need to do some serious troubleshooting for some reason or install other programs.

[JohnR]

Moode looks nice, with UI support for album artwork etc, but seems more tablet-oriented.The more minimalist Volumio interface looks like it may "fit" better on a smartphone screen, which is what I would be using.

FWIW, I prefer to use a third-party native client ("app") than the web interface. BubbleUPnP on Android is pretty good (that's what I use most of the time).

Doing it that way means that you can choose a distribution based on things other than the Web UI. It may have changed now but Volumio was the most robust of the ones I tried. So I stuck with it.

[Odal3]

I'm a little bit doubtful it will actually sound good, but kind of interesting compact tube/dac board for the RPI.

http://www.pi2design.com/503hta-dac-with-hybrid-tube-amp.html

[HAL]

Have Moode Audio latest build for the RPi3 running.  Using it with a Meridian Explorer2 USB DAC which is supposed to be supported.  First issue was actually getting the volume control to work.  Had to ssh into the OS to run the alsamixer to select the correct DAC.  That is supposed to be automatic.  Sent the correction info to Moode to correct it.

It does play HiRez files and the library system worked with my USB music hard drive. 

I ended up using my iFi IUSB to power the DAC as it did not sound good with the standard SMPS. 

[JohnR]

I'm running JRiver on the RPi3 now. It works well! It's more work to set up than prebuilt images like Volumio etc. Basically you start with Raspbian Jessie and install the JRiver packages from the command line per their instructions.

[JohnR]

I'm a little bit doubtful it will actually sound good, but kind of interesting compact tube/dac board for the RPI.

http://www.pi2design.com/503hta-dac-with-hybrid-tube-amp.html

Hah!! Love it Haven't seen yet what power supply they use for the tube, I think that will determine how it sounds (all other things considered).