 Yet another streamer, network bridge and DAC that uses the Raspberry Pi for the digital part, third party software to control it and a digital to annual converter of own design. But this time it uses true balanced analog circuits. The Raspberry Pi has brought streaming within reach of both hobbyists and small manufacturers. Just buy or design a sound card, make sure the Raspberry Pi's radio frequency interference is dealt with and you end up with an affordable streamer that you can run a number of music player or bridge software on. The Pecan Pi is offered as a headboard only, the sound card, or as a ready to use streamer with software of your choice already installed. I review the ready to use version with Volumio installed, but also tested it with Rupee, I'll get back to that later on. But first let's see where the Pecan Pi fits into your stereo. The Pecan Pi is connected to your amplifier using either XLR cables or using the supplied adapters RCA cables. The amp is of course connected to your speakers. Music might already be stored on a computer or NAS, the volume that holds the music has to be shared to the network. The computer or NAS is connected to the internet router as is the Pecan Pi that now can fetch music from the internet as well. It is controlled using a smartphone, tablet, laptop or computer using the web browser interface or dedicated app. Music can also be stored on a USB drive that is connected directly to the Pecan Pi so the computer need not be switched on. But when switched on, the shares on the computer or NAS can be accessed easily. The housing is made of very solid 2.4 thick metal and lacks the sharp edges and corners you sometimes see with other Raspberry Pi cases. It measures 124 x 122 x 73 mm and weighs almost a kilogram. The front only holds the volume control plus the drawing of a tree. On the rear the 9V DC input for the supplied switch mode power brick and next to it the left and right analog outputs on XLR. Adapters to RCA come with a unit. The Pecan Pi board is mounted on a Raspberry Pi 3B or which only the USB and the network sockets are visible. The power socket sends the 9V to a DC-DC converter. The Raspberry Pi is powered with 5V from the Pecan Pi board but removing the J2 jumper cuts the feed and lets you connect a second power supply directly to the Raspberry Pi. You do need to be a bit handy to do so and it defeats the idea of ready to use. The connections between the Raspberry Pi board and the Raspberry Pi are made using this multi-pin GPIO connector. The Raspberry Pi sends the digital audio as I2S signal to the Texas Instruments Sample Rate converter that is used for digital volume control. This SRC 4193 is developed for professional applications like mixing consoles and digital audio workstations. Clocking is provided by the Crystec CCHD575-25 Ultra-Load Jitter Oscillator. Crystec specifies jitter of 85 phantoseconds at 100 MHz. Digital to analog conversion is done by two Burr-Brown PCM1794AS DAC chips while the reconstruction filters allegedly are proprietary. The DAC chips are used in differential mode and powered from linear regulators. From there the analog signal is kept balanced using OPA1612 and OPA1622 operational amplifiers, the latter being able to drive headphones. For that you need an adapter cable that can be ordered with a peak and for $10. The software you can choose from are Volumio, Mood Audio, Rupee and Pi Core Player. I ordered Volumio since I have positive experiences with it. Rupee is the other program I use on Raspberry Pi's. It makes the Pi a rune endpoint only, which is ideal for rune users. Mood Audio shares its past with Volumio, but after a schism went its own way but is about comparable with the standard Volumio version. Pi Core Player turns the peak and pi into a squeezebox emulator, which is ideal for those that want to upgrade a squeezebox installation. As said I chose Volumio as software since it's extremely versatile and easy to use. On the home screen you see the selections you can choose from, like Favorites, Playlists, Music Library, Artists, Genre, Album, Media Servers and Internet Sources. Let's open Albums. As you can see, scrolling with Album covers is swift and if you prefer there is also a list for you. Search is also quick. Let's go to Artist. Here again scrolling is swift. If you have a nasal shower on your computer that is indexed by a DNA server that can be accessed quickly this way. I have three NASs while Volumio itself also runs a DNA server if you like. Let's open SYN3T and select Music by Album. Now the speed depends on the speed of the NAS and SYN3T is the cheapest Synology single drive NAS of last year, the DS119J. Reading in the cover art on this NAS is a bit slow. Luckily there is a better way to use music from a NAS or computer share which I will show later on. Let's go back to the home page and select Podcasts for that is integrated as well as is Web Radio with all the known pre-selections. Let's do local stations to show you how many stations my small country already has. Time to show you some settings. What you see here is the content of the USB drive I connected to the Peek and Pie. This is also the place to link to a NAS or share to have Volumio index it for faster access. It still has a bit of a fiddle to get the right settings depending on the type of share or NAS you run but it can be done. Below that you can switch on the UPMP renderer, the SharePoint receiver that lets you send music from your Apple device over Airplay to the Peek and Pie and the DNA browser that I used to show the content of the NAS. Two other options Bluetooth input and CD playback and ripping need a My Volumio subscription. See the link in the description below this video on YouTube for the options offered. I'll show you by logging in to My Volumio account. Now all options can be selected. Also using digital and analog inputs then becomes available but that's of no use to the Peek and Pie since it has no inputs. And now you can also log in to Tidal, Cobus and Hyrazonia. But there's more for it also offers a runelike metadata service. You might already have wondered how much work it was to have the album art and the artist photos added. Well, that went automatically after activating My Volumio. And the same goes for artist information, like here for Aldi Miola. I used to look like him, I don't know where he went from. Let's look at what Coldplay shows. Quite a long story here. Opening My Look Salutu shows the album review while the artist bio is also available here. If you use a smartphone or tablet to control My Volumio and use more than one Volumio based streamer, you can easily choose which one you want to control. Furthermore, data can be synced between your players and in the future multi-room sync play becomes available. My Volumio is available for all Volumio users on a subscription basis. I use both Volumio as my Volumio player and as rune endpoint. I also change the software to Ruby by replacing the supplied microSD card inside the Peek & Pie by one holding Ruby. This makes the Peek & Pie a rune endpoint only. There was a slight difference between using rune in Volumio instead of using Ruby. When comparing the same track played by Volumio used as a streamer on its own ride and played by rune over Ruby, I heard no difference. So if you use rune and value the best sound quality obtainable, don't go for the versatility of Volumio but order it with Ruby. And there are very good reasons for it, for the Peek & Pie sounds impressively clean and immersive. The stereo image is wide and deep for its class and with rather good focus. Strings and voices are impressively natural. Quite remarkable is how well sibilance is controlled, which is one of the more critical points in digital audio. Glows have a good texture and go deep. And all this using the balance to single ended adapter since my audio note Soro SE amplifier is totally single ended, hence the SE at the end of the model number. The Peek & Pie is clearly the best hard based DAC I have heard up till now. And you can even improve the sound quality somewhat further by replacing a simple power brick for an audio file type. I've used the SBoost BOTW PMP ECO 9 to 10 volts MK2. The Peek & Pie doesn't look like traditional high-fire equipment, nor does it look like the regular housing for a Raspberry Pi based streamer. It feels sturdy and well built. The volume control on the front might be of no use to some but others will love it, for it will, in my opinion, make it possible to connect power amps directly to the Peek & Pie. Especially class D amps often offer balanced inputs which is the best way to go with the Peek & Pie. And the physical volume control makes it easy to check the volume setting and reduce the volume rapidly when set to high. Digital controls will always react slower and that's not what you want if you have a 100 watt or higher amp directly connected. But regardless on how you use it, it is a great little streamer and DAC. It's not the cheapest Raspberry Pi based streamer, but it doesn't need to be, for it will outclass any other headboard based stream I know. And on that bombshell we got to the end of this video. I'd love to see you back next Friday at 5pm Central European timing in a new video. If you don't want to miss that, subscribe to this channel or follow me on the social media so you will be informed when new videos are out. If you like this video, give it a thumbs up. Many thanks to those viewers that support this channel financially. It keeps me independent and thus trustworthy. If you like to support my work too, the links are in the comments below this video on YouTube. I'm Hans Beekhuizen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHBproject.com. And whatever you do, enjoy the music.