Audio DAC Hat Sound Card (Audio+V3) for Raspberry PI5 / PI4 / Pi Zero / PI3 / PI3B / PI3B+ / Better Quality Than USB

The RaspiAudio Audio DAC Hat is a good choice if you’re looking to add mic and audio in small package to your Raspberry Pi projects. I used it to make a voice assistant with my Raspberry Pi 3, and it worked pretty well overall.Getting it set up was fairly easy their website had directions for installing the drivers using the command line.The speaker quality is just okay, but I wasn’t expecting much from it.The mic quality is pretty good. It picks up voice clearly and works perfectly for voice commands, which is what I needed it for.All in all, it’s a nice little addition for Raspberry Pi projects if you’re not super picky about sound quality. Works great for functional stuff like voice assistants.Rating: 4/5

Driver support was easy and the hat sounds great. Additional benefit of powering the pi 3b+ using usb-c. 100w brick powering it all and loud with 60w speakers. Works great. A little wonky in size when using with a non-zero pi, but it all talks nice to the pi. Updated usb port is really nice.

Could never get it to work on Raspberry Pi 5. Tried all the support options and still a no-go, even on a fresh install of Raspbian. The device was present and showed up as an option in the system, just couldn't get any sound out of it. Since it was cheap I'm keeping it in case there are updates to drivers or support options in the future but it was NOT a "plug in and go" experience. If successful in the future, I'll update my review.

This board works but it has a light crackle when no audio is present. My board may be defective. After several emails to the seller/mfg'r, various troubleshooting efforts were made to eliminate the static. The suggestions I received were either a bad connection on the socket (faulty ground) or a problem with the amplifier/audio system or noise generated by the Pi-Zero.The crackling only appeared when the power is on and no audio was being sent to the board. When my music player Volumio is idle, not playing music, the amplifier plugged into this board would receive a light crackle. Once the music started, the crackling stopped but would return after the music ended. The crackle wasn't present when the player was playing a silent MP3 file or when the volume on Volumio was turned to "0". It's worth noting that the static only occurred when playing through an amplifier, either my audio receiver or amplified speakers, and it occurred regardless of which Raspberry Pi it was attached to or what apps were running on the Pi (it started when it was simply turned on, before the Pi has loaded the OS). I tried running the output through two 1:1 audio isolation transformers and still received the crackling.I finally resigned myself to having the crackle on this board forever and have decided not to use it when building my Volumio player. My player build is currently on hold due to other projects but I haven't decided on the audio for the project yet anyway.

I built a second Volumio-based player/streamer with a 7" touchscreen and used this DAC for simplicity. Although I'm an audio snob, I did not want to spend $$ on a Pi2AES for a backyard system, nor have I found a good I2S hat with optical output. I haven't soldered the RCA connectors on, as the 3.5mm output works great going into an AVR. After setting Volumio to output to 'raspiaudio' via I2S, the hat was recognized immediately and sounds just fine for these purposes. I'll buy another the next time I make another streamer.

So you can't go wrong trying this out for just $15. I had an old logitech squeezebox go bad and needed a replacement. I already run 3 other picore players, but wanted something in this location that could try running two instances of squeezelite on one pi. So I needed two ways to get quality audio out and this fit the bill.Soldered it up in no time, and just selected "Hifiberry DAC +Light" in picore player and didn't even have to run the script they ask you to run. The first attempt of a different Hifiberry setting failed to load, but I found that by looking in /var/log/ on the pi.Audio sounds great. I can't tell any difference. I use these with Topping TP21 and TP30. The 30 has a usb direct input from the pi, but since I already had the TP21 I needed this RCA output as well for the second instance of squeezelite running on the same pi.Love it!

The seller is not the maker so not giving any less than 5 stars. I couldn't get the driver working with the latest 6.6 kernel on raspberry pi 5. Why not just use the kernel built-in driver? rebuilding outdated kernel modules always fails.

Easy enough to solder on the headers. The website information is good to get the software installed. Worked the first time. The board is actually different than the one in the photos - looks like some breakout holes have been added to allow access to some of the GPIO pins that the headers might cover up. I walked through their instructions and it worked immediately. I had plans to solder up my own voltage converter and make my own board but this was a real time saver. The website has a place to sign up for a newsletter and get a discount code so, check that out before you buy. I might get another one because these RPi zeros are so functional.