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Beocreate 4 (v1.0.2) - bi-amping and other questions

Glorifyday

May 24, 2023 15:52

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I have installed the latest HiFiberryOS on Pi 3B + Beocreate 4 with intention to use this set for a stereo setup with a pair of Dynaudio Audience 40.

I find the setup a bit confusing, because the channels on the board are described as CH1, CH0, CH16 and CH17, whereas the channels in the OS are called A, B, C and D. I initially thought that A=CH1, B=CH0, and so on, but this is not true: I connected the stereo loudspeakers to CH16 and CH17, hoping to feed them with 60W stereo, but it occurred that it were A and B channels that were playing. In fact, I am not even sure if I used 60W or 30W output.

Anyway... the output was surprisingly quiet. Even at the maximum volume, with no volume limits (overall and on channels), the sound reached a little-less-than satisfactory level with no chance of getting it any louder. And the loudspeakers were near me, in a small room. I can only hope that I used the 30W terminals and it will be louder on the 60W, when I make the next try...

In such a case... is it possible, safe for the Beocreate and... does it make any sense to bi-amp the loudspeakers? Dynaudio Audience have only one pair of speaker terminals per each loudspeaker, so it's impossible to feed the woofer and the tweeter separately. Thus, bi-amping would be just using the 30W + 60W channels in parallel. If this is safe for the amp and would add a bit of a volume, I would go for it... this is why I'm asking.

Or maybe I overlooked something and the sound can be louder without such tricks?

The last thing is... do I need to use the Raspberry Pi's own power supply when the Beocreate is powered with its PSU? Or the Pi is powered from the Beocreate and does not need its own power supply?

 

Best,

D. Wroblewski

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15 comments

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team May 25, 2023 04:31

  You can't connect multiple speaker outputs to the same speaker in parallel. In worst case this can damage the output stage. 
  
  You don't need a power supply for the Pi, it's also not allowed to connect 2 power supplies to the same board (via Boecreate and Pi). The power supply can only be connected to the Beocreate.

• 0
  
  Glorifyday May 25, 2023 11:42

  Thanks for your answer and confirmation that bi-amping might damage the board. So this is definitely a no-go.

  Although this is in a way intuitive, I didn't know that I have to remove the Pi's power supply when connecting the PSU to Beocreate and I run with both :-/. I hope that I did not damage anything... The OS seems to run OK...

  Maybe this was the reason for the low volume? I will be able to make a second try tomorrow, I believe.

  Are there any other ways to volume up? The Dynaudios are not too sensitive (86 dB), but still the volume level is not satisfactory and strangely low for 60W. I got a lot louder sound with Pass Aleph 3 which is 30W.

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team May 25, 2023 12:00

  My best guess is that this was caused by the parallel connection of multiple channels. Otherwise, the volume should be definitely more than "low".

• 0
  
  Glorifyday May 25, 2023 19:53

  I'm not sure what you mean by "parallel connection of multiple channels". I haven't tried any bi-amping before consulting you. One loudspeaker was connected to CH16 and the other to CH17, that's all. My only mistake was to use two power supplies at the same time.

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team May 26, 2023 05:23

  Ok, looks like I misread your posting. Do you use hardware version 1? There is a limit jumper on this one:
  https://www.hifiberry.com/beocreate/beocreate-doc/beocreate-hardware-documentation/

• 0
  
  Glorifyday May 30, 2023 14:28

  Thanks but it didn't help much.

  I placed the loudspeakers in a small room and run the decibel meter on an iPhone, placing the phone approximately 1 m from each speaker. I turned all volume controls and limits to max, played first 3 minutes of Ronny Jordan's "Tinsel Town" and took down the average:

  - 60.8 dB for 30W channels stereo with limit,
  - 61 dB for 30W channels stereo without limit,
  - 64.3 dB for 60W channels stereo.

  In a target room this is about sufficient for a normal listening, but with zero possibilities to listen really loud. It's a bit astonishing to me.

  Edited by Glorifyday May 31, 2023 09:07
• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team May 30, 2023 14:50

  Something is definitely wrong in your setup. You're running HiFiBerryOS?
  
  What's the output of

  amixer

• 0
  
  Glorifyday May 31, 2023 08:42

  Hi, it is a fresh, newest HiFiBerry OS flashed only a few days ago and I didn't change configuration a lot.

  Sound:
  Speaker Preset: Other Speaker,
  Listening Mode: Optimal,
  Channels / Advanced:
  - A / Right / 0 dB
  - B / Left / 0 dB
  - C and D muted
  Volume Limit:
  - Sources on Raspberry Pi: 0 dB
  - Optical Input: -59.4 dB (not used by now)
  Room Compensation: Off
  Chaining: Off
  Parametric Equaliser: Flat
  DSP Programs: 
  - Beocreate Universal, Version 11
  - Mute Unknown Programs
  - Upgrade Automatically

  I don't know, maybe the fact that I run it first on a Pi without Beocreate (and added Beocreate on a later occassion, with running the Beocreate wizard configuration) matters?

  Here is an amixer output with all volume limits put to maximum. Seems OK, I guess:

  # amixer
  Simple mixer control 'DSPVolume',0
    Capabilities: volume
    Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
    Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
    Limits: 0 - 255
    Front Left: 255 [100%]
    Front Right: 255 [100%]
  Simple mixer control 'Softvol',0
    Capabilities: volume
    Playback channels: Front Left - Front Right
    Capture channels: Front Left - Front Right
    Limits: 0 - 255
    Front Left: 255 [100%]
    Front Right: 255 [100%]

  Bottom line:

  It sounds nice, the overall tone response seems OK, the only thing that concerns me is the volume. I would expect such a level for a 1/2 - 3/4 of the volume scale, but not at the full settings.

  Edited by Glorifyday May 31, 2023 09:07
• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team May 31, 2023 10:24

  Ok, synchronisation to the DSP might not work correctly. What's the output of
  
  dsptoolkit get-volume
  
  Also post the output of
  
  cat /etc/hifiberry.state

• 0
  
  Glorifyday May 31, 2023 11:25

  # dsptoolkit get-volume
  Volume: 1.0002 / 100% / 0db
  # cat /etc/hifiberry.state
  CURRENT_PIMODEL=3B
  CURRENT_MIXER_CONTROL="DSPVolume"
  CURRENT_SECONDARY_MIXER_CONTROL=""
  CURRENT_CARD="Beocreate 4-Channel Amplifier"
  CURRENT_HW="card 0"
  CURRENT_HW_SHORT=0
  CURRENT_SYSNAME="Beocreate"
  CURRENT_PLAYERS=""
  CURRENT_HATINFO=" "
  CURRENT_FEATURES="pi localui pi3orlater arm7 dsp toslink"
  CURRENT_DSPTYPE="Beocreate 4-Channel Amplifier"
  CURRENT_INTPIN="1"
  PIVERSION=3
  #

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team May 31, 2023 11:52

  Looks all fine. What do you do to play music?

• 0
  
  Glorifyday May 31, 2023 12:05

  Currently I am using "Maximum MPD" iPhone app to control the MPD playback, but I tried Airplay, Spotify Connect, playback via Squeezelite and radio playback via the HiFiBerry OS web interface. All sources have similar levels.

  I haven't yet tried the optical input as it is not convenient to connect anything with the optical output in the location where the beocreate is now.

• 0
  
  HiFiBerry team May 31, 2023 12:07

  In this case, I can't say what might be wrong. You can send in the board for a hardware check. We haven't seen this ever before. If you want to do this, please contact us at support@hifiberry.com including the information when and where you bought the board.

• 0
  
  Glorifyday May 31, 2023 14:20

  I bought the board directly from the HiFiBerry site, but haven't implemented it for a few years (many reasons :-/) until now. I don't know what is the warranty period for this board, but I suspect that it might be gone by now.

  The other thing is that the shipping cost (Poland to Switzerland) will be a substantial part of the full deal... let me think...

• 0
  
  Glorifyday June 13, 2023 16:40

  I have made an experiment: flashed a new HiFiBerry OS img to a new SD card and run the setup from scratch. It was in fact the same version but a new instance.

  Miracle! Now all seems to work OK. I have limited the output by 21 dB, added two dips in the bass range in the equaliser and it is still a few dB louder than it was previously on 0 dB limit. And the sound is nicer, too, especially in the higher ranges.

  So it seems that my Beocreate is working OK.

  Anyway, the soft is buggy. At some moment, the volume limit slider just stopped working. No matter what I set, the volume is the same and now I can control the volume only from the sound source. I don't know if this is going to fix itself magically after a reboot, but now the network share is being indexed, so I will reboot later.

  Last thing.
  I am using the A and B channels (same as it was in the previous setup). This are the 60 W channels, I believe. So I wanted to mute the C and D channels (which are unused and not connected to speakers). But when I mute any of them, the sound seems to turn a bit "darker". This seems crazy, but I repeated the experiment many times and I believe to hear the subtle difference every time. So I decided to leave C and D unmuted although it doesn't seem to make sense. What to think about it?