Player Hardware
Which hardware is suitable for a bitwerk player today: Raspberry Pi, DAC HAT or USB DAC, optionally a touch display and amplifier. Setup is described in the Pi guide.
Status: The recommendations are based on driver and manufacturer information. The ALSA sink and the systemd units are written but not yet verified on real Pi hardware (M4). Engine, formats, and DoP are tested against a mock DAC. Overlays, device names, and values for
player.envare given exclusively in Setting up a Raspberry Pi; this page only summarizes.
Raspberry Pi
Section titled “Raspberry Pi”| Model | Suitability | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Raspberry Pi 5 | recommended | Plenty of headroom for resampling, DSD → PCM, and touch display; 5 V/5 A power supply. It has hardware timestamps for the planned PTP time base (M29). |
| Raspberry Pi 4 | suitable | Roughly 5 to 8 times slower than an x86 desktop core; resampling and DSD64/128 → PCM are uncritical. Connect USB DACs to the blue USB 3 ports; 5 V/3 A power supply. |
| Raspberry Pi 3B+ | limited | Up to 192 kHz PCM; DSD256 and USB DACs rather not. DSD512 → PCM can largely saturate one core. |
- Operating system: Raspberry Pi OS Lite (Trixie, 64-bit), without desktop, or the ready-made bitwerk image based on it.
- Network: Ethernet instead of Wi-Fi.
- Real-time: With the default buffers, the normal kernel is enough; PREEMPT_RT only for underruns with small buffers. Details in section 6 of the Pi guide.
bitwerk writes directly to ALSA hw: – without a mixer and without hidden resampling. Any DAC that Linux recognizes as an
ALSA device is in principle a candidate. The Pi guide contains overlay names, rates, bit depths,
and DSD modes per model; the DAC compatibility list on the website (from common/data/dacs/) shows each model
with its test status. hifi-client --mode dac-report shows on the Pi what a connected DAC offers and which entry
matches; a verified entry sets the player’s rates, bit depth and DSD mode by itself (auto profile).
- I²S HATs (sections 3.2–3.4):
- HiFiBerry: DAC+ Standard/Pro, DAC2 Pro, DAC2 HD; Digi+/Digi2 Pro for S/PDIF (DSD as DoP).
- Allo: Boss DAC/Boss2, Katana (up to 384 kHz, 32 bit), DigiOne/DigiOne Signature (S/PDIF), Piano 2.1.
- Raspberry Pi DAC+ / IQaudIO DAC+, DAC Pro.
- The PCM512x chips (HiFiBerry DAC+, Allo Boss/Piano, Raspberry Pi DAC+) have a hardware mixer; volume then stays bit-perfect.
- USB DACs according to Audio Class 2 (section 3.5): need no overlay. For known DACs (among others Topping, SMSL, iFi, RME, Denafrips) the kernel offers native DSD; others get DoP. Connect the DAC directly, without a hub.
- What is output how (section 3.6): table of when bitwerk outputs bit-perfect and when it resamples or converts DSD to PCM.
Touch display
Section titled “Touch display”The official Raspberry Pi Touch Display 1 and 2 (DSI) as well as HDMI touchscreens are supported (section 7 of the Pi guide). A Pi can be audio output only, display only (remote control for another room), or both. A Pi 5 with Touch Display 2 is also the basis for the planned Control mode of bitwerk Control.
Amplifiers
Section titled “Amplifiers”- Amp HATs: HiFiBerry Amp2/Amp4 run as a DAC with the DAC+ overlay, Raspberry Pi DigiAMP+ / IQaudIO DigiAMP+ with their own overlay (sections 3.2 and 3.4). This lets a Pi play directly to passive speakers.
- External amplifiers and active speakers connect to the analog or digital output of the DAC.
- Planned: control of amp HATs (hardware mixer, fault status), standby/trigger, and AV receivers in M17; protection features in M18; a custom Amp Module only if ready-made HATs are not enough.
Server
Section titled “Server”The server needs no special hardware: a Linux computer with Docker on the home network, e.g. NAS, mini PC, or home server. Setup under Setup → Quick start and Operations on the website.
If you already operate Dante devices (e.g. Focusrite RedNet): see Integrating RedNet and Dante devices.
Back to the hardware overview.