The MagPi - February 2020

R

aspberry Pi has its fair share of DAC

audio boards offering high-quality

sound output, but Pimoroni’s new Pirate

Audio range adds a mini LCD to show music

track details and album art. In this review we’re

focusing on the Pirate Audio Headphone Amp,

but we also tried out the other three models:

Line‑out, 3W Stereo Amp, and Speaker. We

understand that another model is also set to be

added to the range soon.

All the boards have the same slimline pHAT

form factor that fits perfectly onto a Raspberry

Pi Zero, although they’ll work with any 40-pin

model. The main difference between them is

how the sound is processed and output. On the

Headphone Amp, audio is amplified and then

output via a 3.5 mm jack – just plug in your wired

headphones or earbuds. The positioning of the

jack on the side of the board means you may need

to take your Raspberry Pi out of its case, or raise it

up using a booster header.

Setting it up

Getting started with Pirate Audio wasn’t quite

as simple as we anticipated, although an

online guide (magpi.cc/pirateaudioguide) has

since appeared that should prove very helpful.

Installing the default software itself is simple

enough, by entering three commands in a

Terminal window. This does everything needed to

configure the DAC and enable SPI for the LCD.

Based around the Mopidy music server daemon

(mopidy.com), the software enables you to play

local music files or stream tracks from Spotify,

although you’ll need a premium account for that.

The Spotify extension for Mopidy is installed

automatically, along with one for the user-

friendly Iris web interface.

The latter proves essential as you’ll need to use

it to actually start playing music on the board.

Point a web browser to your Raspberry Pi’s IP

address appended with ‘:6680/iris’ to access the

web interface – you can do this from another

computer or on the same Raspberry Pi if it’s

connected to a monitor.

Create your own mini MP3 player with this DAC audio board,

complete with an LCD to show track details. By Phil King

Just plug in a pair

of headphones or

earbuds and enjoy your

favourite music, from

local storage or Spotify

Pimoroni magpi.cc/pirateaudio £20 / $21

Pirate Audio

Headphone Amp

AUDIO

PROCESSING:

PCM5100A

DAC (24-bit

/ 192kHz),

PAM8908

amplifier chip

DATA BUS:

I^2 S for audio,

SPI for LCD

DISPLAY:

240×240 IPS

colour LCD

AUDIO OUT:

3.5 mm stereo

jack

CONTROLS:

4 × tactile

buttons

SPECS

It delivers excellent sound quality with

a warm tone, plenty of fine detail, and

sufficient bass for our ears

74 magpi.cc Pirate Audio Headphone Amp

REVIEW