Quest to Find the Perfect Power Source for my Raspberry PI3
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| Posted on February 11, 2017 at 08:19:31 | ||
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Using a Raspberry Pi3 with a HiFiBerry clone and Volumio with FLAC files over an NAS. I've been using a standard 5V 2.4A "wall wart" power supply. Sound quality seemed reasonable. Tried an external battery. Sound is cleaner, but seems a little flat andc harsh compared to the power supply Purchased a iFi Audio iPower 5V power adapter for around $50. Sound quality is better in every way imaginable. Listened to system for several days and there was no denying the difference. I had no idea how much the power supply noise was adversely affecting the sound quality until it was gone. Tried to watch a movie using Kodi. The movie sound was also better. I could even hear dialogue more clearly. Shortly after starting the movie I started getting a lighting bolt (low power). Unplugged the external USB hard drive and watched something over the network. Working fine. The next day I tried to watch something over the network again and got the lightening bolt right away. What the !?#@%? Switched back to $6 power supply. No lightening bolt. Even able to plug an the external hard drive just like I always have before. Lightening bolt with the IFI power supply. Even tried a different Raspberry PI. Power supply being returned. Ordered a 5V 2.1A linear power supply from China for around $70. Will post results. Are there any other power sources that I should consider that don't cost hundreds of dollars?
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| Thanks for the tip -nt, posted on February 13, 2017 at 14:53:36 | |
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Posts: 37584
Joined: May 12, 2000 Contributor Since: April 5, 2002 |
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| RE: Quest to Find the Perfect Power Source for my Raspberry PI3, posted on February 22, 2017 at 00:50:35 | |
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Posts: 2426
Joined: July 11, 2007 |
Hi. IMO quite some nonsense is spread in this thread. E.g 1. Dynabots comments. Just to clarify: The PI doesn't regulate 5V. It takes it as is. The external 5V (at whatever quality) will be forwarded to 1. interntal buckconverters <=3.3V 2. USB power rails 3. GPIO 4. HDMI By feeding 5V into GPIO you'll loose protection. Or 2. Abe Collins rather cynic response. One of those audiophiles who'd never consider a PI as source. He'd better stick with a crappy $8 wallwart. 3. Non of the linear supplies mentioned lists any measurements iPower are <1uV in audioband and <30uV incl. switching noise and mains noise 4. Buying a linear and filtering that with a DC iPurifier that's IMO nonsense and waste of money. *********************** I own several linears incl. Sbooster supplies. No way I'd swap out my iPower. I even prefer my iPower over a DIY LiFePO4-TPS7A4700 combo. Beside that the iPower can supply 2.5A. You don't want to replace that with a 1A supply. Obviously your application matters. If you use the GPIO or USB power rails to feed your DAC the main supply can make a huge difference. The iPower can slightly fall short - depending on application - when it comes current/time. That's a factor that can make the difference some associate to linear supplies. To squeeze most of the iPower I therefore added a fast cap buffer at the end of cable. I also shortened the cable by 2/3. Such a long cable for 5V DC as supplied by iFi IMO is a bad idea. I forwarded these proposals to iFi (Thorsten Loesch) btw. To me the 1. question is not what's better linear or switching. The first question would be: What are the relevant differences. To me this "linear PS is better" subject, must be considered old school audiophile thinking. These supplies burn more power, are more expensive and many of them are not any better then well made switching supplies. For best performance I power RPI and (HAT-) DAC separately. Good luck on your journey. Enjoy. ----------------------------------------------------------------- blog latest >> The Audio Streaming Series - tuning kit pCP
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| RE: Quest to Find the Perfect Power Source for my Raspberry PI3, posted on February 22, 2017 at 23:31:30 | |
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Posts: 2426
Joined: July 11, 2007 |
"Clean power helps!" Quality power is everything! BUT. You can't fix from the outside what's already messed up on the inside. A simple swap of capacitor or swapping out a regulator in your DAC might have ten times more impact than any audiophile external supply would ever have. Good luck on your journey. ----------------------------------------------------------------- blog latest >> The Audio Streaming Series - tuning kit pCP
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