Hell of a name
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Thatās why I wrote it all out. Itās got to be top rank in your naming list.
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I fully agree, got mine as my first streamer, i was prepared to not hear any differences between using or not using a streamer and i was blown away, i also know i can have more but the bang for the buck for this piece of equipment is off the charts.
I am now trying to convince friends who donāt use streamers to give them a try every time i see a used deal on head-fi, unfortunately people are too close minded, it is HARD do get someone to give streamers and cables a tryā¦ I blame ASR myself, lol, damn those cultists.
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Yep, going to a dedicated streamer may have been the largest jump ive taken in the hobby outside of moving from pc speakers to nice headphones.
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Working to squeeze more performance from my Pi2AES and bought these.
Interesting product from IanCanada with the ShieldPi it actually has a power filter and and actual copper shield to cover the Pi to reduce the amount of noise it generates and can get to the hat. @Gothique
Something you may want to check out.
The second thing is a cool GPIO extender. Previously Iād used a 40 pin ATA HD ribbon cable. This is much smaller and easier to place within the custom enclosure Iāve commissioned. 
I thought about creating an enclosure with the power supply in it, but figured external is going to be less noise anyway and will allow me to change power supplies
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Cool tweaks, links?
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Interesting! I went with his galvanic separation / separate power supply hat between Pi and output hat and using his paired power conditioning boards. I think he does a lot of interesting things that kind of overlap or do the same kind of thing a different way. Have to kind of mix and match what suits your solution and available space.
Either way, Ian Canada makes some very cool things. Hope youāll be writing this project up? 
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It will be more bolting together than actually building something but a lot of planning, measuring because itās going to be a small semi custom aluminum enclosure with good ventilation and bling.
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Maybe just a post then lol? Still love to see such things! Especially with bling.
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@Gothique or @dB_Cooper do either of you have any insight about the Ian Canada reclocker boards?
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I generally think his boards pretty reliably do what he says they do. I didnāt choose to use one as I have re-clocking in a separate device immediately after my streamer. I like to keep what my Pi streamer is asked to do as simple as possible and focussed on delivering a clean signal
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They look pretty cool and Iāve thought about them for the geek factor. The problem is always going to be a good housing and then at what level are you simply better off just going with a Holo Red or a Mercury V3 streamer or hell a used Lumin U1 Mini can be had for about $1000 nowadays.
So youāre buying the geek diy factor.
BTW one of the interesting things about clocks is that youāre looking for their ability to reject noise and their ability to remain constant in performance over a wide operating temperature. Pico, Femto it doesnāt really matter as much as you start to get smaller and smaller in incrementation and paying for that unessesarily.
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Thank you both for the insight š«¶š¼
Definitely the geek factor at play here, I was imagining it could be done as a stand alone piece after the streamer given my streamer is built into the DAC, yet outputs via USB into USB. For reference it is the totaldac streaming board.
Phase 1 of my custom Pi build is complete.
I left my phone in the car and Iām too lazy to go get it to take a picture, maybe tomorrow. Anyway, got the IanCanada ShieldPi Pro and itās a pretty damned good given what it does. It installs on top of the Pi and itās a direct GPIO connection, nothing else. It filters and cleans the power for the pi and has an embedded in the PCB a zero current copper plate that shields the EMI generated by the Pi.
I was thinking of building a custom ultra capacitor power supply but in the end, I want the housing to be very small and going with the shield improves both power and generated noise and it doesnāt take up much space since I decided to use an external 5v power supply. The every awesome ifi Power Elite, I swear this is the best kept secret in audio and they work better than any sub $300 LPS that youāre likely to find. Thank you @elementze for the sweet SA member pricing.
On top of the Ian Canada shield, goes the Pi2AES board which is still IMO the best perforing hat in itās range and itās the only one Iāve seen that does single ended AES from the BNC output instead of the typical SPDIF output. (this can be a problem for some DACs so be warned, but I think is sounds great and itās the reason the Pi2AES punches way above itās weight.
Anyway, itās all a skeleton build with no case and I bought a milled aluminum heatsink for the base to give it heft and the temperature with it installed dropped by 10 degrees F so thatās a bonus.
Listening to it gives me no reservation in spending the money to build a custom enclosure for it. Iām always surprised by this little Pi that could as it scales so well with the investment in feeding it quality power and the benefits of the EMI shield.
Kinda cute in a Frankensteinie kind of way.
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Come again?
I use the BNC to BNC and/or RCA input on all my DACs. Does that mean my DACs have single ended AES?
It means your DAC can decode single ended AES yes. Itās just not a common implementation for the upstream. AES was the pro protocol and SPDIF was the consumer protocol, at least thatās how it developed into.
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Yay me, that means three of my vintage DACs and the totaldac all have single-ended AES!
When I put it inside the custom case, the hat will be further separated and attached via the GPIO ribbon cable I got from IanCanada as well.
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What else is there to say? @oberon can take pretty much anything you can imagine and turn it into a finished production piece.
Canāt wait to get it in house, some assembly required.
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