HiFi Shield 2 for ODroid C1+ & C2

Description

The HiFi Shield 2 is a high-resolution Digital to Analog Converter(DAC) for the ODROID-C2 and ODROID-C1+. This is a special sound card for the C2 and C1+, that is optimized for the best fidelity audio playback quality. It delivers a nicely balanced sound, solid, deep, wide and nicely layered.  

The HiFi Shield Plus provides both stereo RCA connectors (gold-plated) to connect to external amplifiers and other audio equipment. It also offers a optical output (toslonk) for the dedicated S/PDIF interface support.
This highest audio quality is ensured by the TI's high-end PCM5242 DAC chip (known as Burr-Brown), it supports 16, 24, 32 bit audio formats with minimal THD+N ratio (0.002%) and ideal dynamics (114dB+). The sampling rates is amazing as it reach 384kHz

The dedicated S/PDIF interface is newly added which supports up to 192kHz/24bit resolution via new Optical (Toslink) output.

Using the I2S expansion on the C2 / C1+, we save a USB port and allow the user to select their audio playback system of choice, such as Volumio, Debian(DietPi) for HiFi audio playback.

Main features:

• The output ports include gold-plated stereo RCA terminals.
• Volume control via the I2C interface (great to keep great audio quality at various audio output level).
• An ultra-low noise dropout regulator for the power supply, significantly reducing power supply noise and greatly increasing the signal to noise ratio.
• The I2S interface allows for direct decoding of the digital input to analog output using master clock synchronization.
• The PCB surface is comprised of gold-plating on top of 2 oz. of copper, ensuring signal continuity and reducing signal reflection and refraction.
• Output pads for Balanced(differential signal) audio output.
• A dedicated S/PDIF interface newly added by hardkernel. It supports audio output at 192kHz/24bit resolution via the  optical output (Toslink).

HardKernel has analysed the the audio quality of the HiFi Shield Plus DAC output with the famous industry standard equipment, Audio Precision. The Audio Precision is a high performance audio analyser optimized for the digital audio product. You will find the various graphs in the product sheet.

Partial compatibility with Android

As mentionned on manufacturing website: HiFi Shield 2 is partially functional on Android. The output format is fixed at 44.1Khz/16bit stereo. There is no Analog volume control capability either due to limited AOSP audio HAL implementation.