 The new Raspberry Pi 4B has been received with open arms by the computer press. It performs like an entry level desktop computer, so all your lovers want to know how much better it is for musically production. The processor of the Raspberry Pi 4B now has a quad core ARM Cortex A72 CPU running at 1.5 GHz. Although it runs at only slightly higher clock frequency, it has three times the performance of the Raspberry Pi 3B+. Add to that the LPDDR4 RAM instead of the LPDDR2 RAM found in earlier models and you'll understand why it does number crunching at far higher speed. There also is an option now to boot from USB and since Raspberry Pi 4B now also has USB 3.0 further speed improvements can be made. For video lovers the Raspberry Pi 4B now supports 4K video of two micro HDMI ports. Not a good thing about the 4B is the gigabit network adapter. Previous models were limited to 100 Mbit ethernet that had to share throughput with USB. There are three versions of the 4B, the only difference B in the amount of RAM that can vary from 1 to 4 GB. A short note on the power supply. Don't use smart power supplies like the ones that come with Apple MacBooks. Due to a design flaw in the Pi only dumb power supplies will work. That clearly is a hefty performance improvement on all sides. The question is what it will do for audio. Let me first make clear that using any Raspberry Pi for audio without the addition of a special sound card will work but the analog output sounds horrible while using the USB to feed a USB DAC also leads to very poor sound quality due to the polluted USB signal. You should use a sound card in the shape of a headboard. I've tested the Raspberry Pi 4B against the Raspberry Pi 3B+, using an Aloe Boss 1.2 DAC board and the Aloe DigiOne Signature Spidive Board. The bus was powered using the SBooster BOTW PNPE Co. In its turn the bus sent the power to the Pi. The DigiOne Signature was used with two power supplies, the same SBooster plus a cheap switching mode power supply. Both were connected to the DigiOne's specific power inputs. For a review of the bus and the DigiOne Signature see the links below this video in Youtube. I started with installing Rupee XL, the new version of Rupee that not only makes the Pi a rune endpoint, it also makes it an Airplay and DLNA renderer. A short review will follow suit. I also installed Vol. 2 to test a more processor intense program. More on both programs in their reviews. The links below this video in Youtube. In general the Raspberry Pi 4B sounds somewhat less open, has slightly less sibilance control while the stereo image was narrower. Only when playing the Bosdijk with Volumio, the low end was slightly better defined but everything else stays the same. You might wonder why a better computer produces a lower sound quality. I have no means of measuring this but in general faster processes generate more electric and electromagnetic noise for a number of reasons. The headboards are mounted on a Pi at about 2.5 cm distance. The LO bus does some filtering. The DigiOne Signature has fully galvanic separation and even then there is the influence from the Pi to the headboard. It is to be expected that simpler DAC boards even suffer more. I have not tested these though. Now let me be somewhat more precise about the sound penalty for using the Raspberry Pi 4B. If you own a stereo, like my sub 1000 euro setup 3, I wouldn't lose any sleep over the difference between the Pi 3B Plus and the Pi 4B. If your stereo is more like my 4000 euro setup 2 or better, I would definitely go for the Pi 3B Plus for as long as it is available. I am in the privileged position to be able to look inside very good sounding dedicated streamers and they almost always have relatively lightweight CPUs. And I have often hear designers saying that USB 2 is better for DACs than USB 3. It's not really strange. Normal 44.1 kHz 16 bit audio has a data throughput of 1.41 Mbps and even 192 kHz 24 bit signals only do 8.46 Mbps. USB 2 has a data signaling rate of 480 Mbps. Even if the transport overhead is subtracted here, there is ample bandwidth for 2 channel audio. The same goes for Ethernet. A 100 Mbit network is more than fast enough for audio, provided the network is not used for other high bandwidth activities like watching video and backing up large volumes while listening to audio. If there is, you might consider separating your audio network from the rest. A simple way is to connect your audio related equipment to one switch and patch that to the rest of the network. Connecting a hard disk directly to your audio gear, like a USB drive directly to the Raspberry Pi is no bad idea either. The KISS principle is still valid. Keep it simple, stupid. That's it for this week. There will be another video next Friday, as always at 5 pm central european time. If you don't want to miss that, subscribe to this channel or follow me on the social media so you'll be warned when new videos are out. If you liked this video, give it a thumbs up. Many thanks to all that support this channel financially. It keeps me independent and thus trustworthy. If you also feel like supporting my work, the links are in the comments below this video on YouTube. I am Hans Beekhuyzen, thank you for watching and see you in the next show or on theHVproject.com. And whatever you do, enjoy the music.