Misc. sharing for building Raspberry Pi 5 as music server

[hkphantomgtr]

Recently I'm building a Pi 5 music server for fun and testing.  I've built a Pi 4B Roon bridge for USB DAC before, that's much more straightforward.  This time is Pi 5 + Analogue audio hat (also digital audio hat, but not both are used at the same time), and NVMe SSD hat.  Above all,  Pi 5 itself is a power hunger.

Hardware:

From the Pi 4B, I found that adding EMI absorber inside the metal chassis can yield significant improvement for clarity, dynamic and contrast and the background is darker.  The EMI absorber I've used is https://www.digikey.hk/en/products/detai...97/5823559.  I've used it in most of my gears since 10+ years ago.  It's not only isolating the EMI from outside, also absorbing stray reflection of EMI inside the chassis.  It's been once briefly discussed here before https://forums.snakeoil-os.net/Thread-EM...ide-the-PC.

Also mechanical vibration isolation can't be skipped, particularly as Pi itself is very very light.  As shown in below pics, I used cloned spring foot.  It's helpful to prevent sound deterioration esp when the playback is loud.  In my experience, spring foot works the best in my setting, in comparing with spike and disc.  (If the gear is very heavy, e.g. big transformer, hifi rack, I use bearing foot) Besides, I also putting something heavy (laminated carbon fibre bricks in my case) on the top of the chassis to minimise its vibration caused by various reasons.  

In past I used to use some OCC (Ohno Continuous Casting Process) wires as DC cables and running them in pairs to greatly, further reduces the resistance.  It improves dynamic significantly.  In my case, I get these wires from an OCC XLR cables.

The above is not bleeding the users but very effective.  I've tested and kept using them over many years.  

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If one is keen to use Pi for audio purpose, I hope one doesn't mind to bleed.  Then, I'd suggest to replace the clock generator (or known as oscillator) on the Pi.  It's not easy as one needs to remove 3 original clocks from Pi, and the contacts are very tiny.  I get it done from some online shops.  I think I don't need to repeat the significance of a good clock in the setup, so to the audio improvement.

Back to the DC power supply, if one can cut the DC plug and solder the DC cable directly to the GPIO pin, that will be rewarding satisfactorily in sound, at the expense of 2nd hand price.