Audio Add On Boards

I have asked the great God Google and have been left wanting, so I now fall at your benevolent feet…

Does RiscOS on the Pi support add on audio boards such as the Wolfson or the HiFiBerry?

Or am I restricted to separating out the HDMI, or maybe getting a USB audio device (do any of these work) to clear up the terrible noise on the 3.5mm jack?

I’d be interested in the answers to your questions wrt Wolfson, etc.

I don’t have an RPi, but FWIW USB Audio DACs that conform to the standard audio classes work fine with my ARMiniX (Panda). As do ADCs. You can find some examples discussed on my webpages. e.g

http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/HFN/ADC/USBrecording.html

for some general ADC/DACs. More info on other pages at

http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

e.g. see the bottom of

http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/software/index.html

Jim

The B+ reportedly has much better sound from the 3.5mm jack.
I believe it has its own dedicated power supply!

The current Wolfson board is not B+ compatible. I believe they are working on a new on a new compatible board.

We have a selection of USB to/from Audio interfaces in stock that work with RISC OS using the software Jim and Colin have written.

Edit: Oops … and Dave have written

I can’t speak for the audio jack, but with my model B I use a cheap HDMI to VGA adapter that I got off eBay. Sounds okay to me…

…but then, I’m not a demanding consumer in that respect.

using the software Jim and Colin have written.

And Dave!

Colin and Dave did the hard bits. I just produced a few demos and held their coats a bit. :-)

Jim

FWIW HDMI => spdif would potentially be a useful approach. But may end up needing hardware which costs as much as a reasonable USB DAC.

An HDMI => ‘analogue’ converter would give results that depend entirely on the chosen model. Can’t say more as I’ve never tried one.

Jim

Cheers guys.

I may invest in a B+ in the near future, but right now I only have a B rev 2.

So on that note, my original question still stands.

I accept that there are USB solutions that work, but I am still interested to know if the boards will work.

No RISC OS support for Wolfson or the HiFiBerry and no one working on them AFAIK.

Afraid I don’t have an RPi of any model, so can’t test it with the Wolfson, etc. My interest tends to be more on the Panda at present.

From reports on how the Wolfson behaves using Linux I assume it works well. But in general I tend to recommend USB because it gives far more choice and makes it easier to take the USB device from one OS or machine to another as things progress. As the Wolfson shows, devices physically dedicated to one host hardware can quickly become problematic as things develop.

Had enough problems of that kind in the past with previous ways audio has been made to work (sic) with earlier RO hardware! :-/

Jim

Cheers.

Case closed then.