Computer Audio Asylum

Posts: 876
Location: Midwest
Joined: September 1, 2015

I’ve have RPI 3s and 4s in my systems. I’ve used Picoreplayer, Hifiberry and Volumio OS systems. Sound quality is the same from any combo of these. All of the RPI systems for music are the Linux OS stripped down to just those modules need to run the RPi for music duty. There are a number of others besides the ones I’ve tried. I use Picoreplayer with my RPi 4 for USB out in my main system and Hifiberry for my RPI 3 / HFB DAC2HD player in my other system. I passed on Volumio as it was flaky when indexing my local library, but that was not a sound quality issue.

What does make a difference is how they are used in the system. If you use a HAT as your DAC, which one you use will indeed affect the sound quality. I’ve used the Hifiberry standard, Pro and 2HD DACs and they are respectively better in that order. I’ve also used a Hifiberry Digi Pro out for SPDIF feed to an external DAC, as well as the USB output. Those last two feeds were identical in sound, with the specific DAC used determining what you hear.

One note about the USB output is that the RPi 3 circuit shares the USB connections with the ethernet connection. This makes the RPi 3 rather unstable for use with a USB DAC. The RPi 4 doesn’t have this problem and the USB output works without problem.

So, my view is that you chose which RPi OS based on features and ease of use for your particular setup and preferences.