Are they worth it? Which one to get for an emulation/video streaming box? I’ve got a multitude of speakers from shelf style speakers on up to some big floor speaker set, the Yamaha NS-A1237 and Technics SB-2660, so more power = more better so as to power the “big guns” if at all possible.
This will be my first Raspberry Pi anything, but I’ve been using Linux for many years now and am looking for a good useful project that might also help to get rid of some old hi-fi equipment for a setup that uses less power and space to provide equivalent audio performance and increased capabilities over the old PC lined out to an old component system, most of which goes unused these days with all of my music digitized.
I have not seen an RPi AMP that could power normal book shelf speakers. I have seen the AMPs that are good for headphones or conditioning the line to then send to a receiver.
The RPi can pull 2 AMPS max due to the power delivery system. You could save money and go with an ASUS ticker board or another RPi clone that has much better audio delivery capabilities out of the box. None of these will be able to push the wattage that you need for stand alone speakers though.
Either way, you will need a hat that takes in its own power source and amplifies the speakers that way. I have not seen anything like this ready made. You will more than likely need to build it from scratch.
I haven’t used any of their stuff but I remembered seeing it in an email. The specs mentions “Maximum power output of 2 x 55 W ( 2 x 30 W RMS).” For that price it would probably be cheaper to buy a used receiver locally and hook the TV up to it. Depending on how loud you really need it then you might not need that much. At my desk I have a smaller pair of speakers running off one of these:
It can be powered via 5V USB and the PCB is roughly postage stamp sized. I couldn’t justify my receiver pulling 30W+ to listen to sound from my computer. It certainly isn’t top quality, is susceptible to noise, and probably won’t be loud enough to make the neighbors call the cops. If you want cheap, low power, and makes sound come out of speakers then you could use something like that or one of the hundreds of small import amplifiers. Perhaps some sort DAC hat or USB sound dongle can feed it better sound than the headphone jack on the Pi.
Cheaper upfront isn’t what I’m after, it’s cheaper to operate and considerably smaller than the current setup which is an older component stereo setup with amp and an old desktop pc feeding it via line out. I want more space in the room and less crap drawing power unnecessarily.