So im looking to improve my mums audio on her pi 3b with OSMC. Is there any plug and play options at all? or am i going to have to start getting use to using command?
There are DACs and Amps that are just plug and play. Check out HiFiBerry: https://www.hifiberry.com/build/guides/enabling-hifiberries-in-osmc/ Hopefully our in-house raspi specialist can indicate something better or exactly what HiFiBerry you need. @Gareth Halfacree
You rang? First question: what's actually wrong with the audio? Second question: Are you using the analogue output (which, to be fair, is bobbins) or the HDMI output? 'cos if it's the latter, It Be Digital: you ain't going to improve nuffink over that. If it's analogue then something like a HiFiBerry DAC+ Light would work, as per @yuusou's recommendation, for £20 - with the pretty big proviso that the tools picked an audio chip that doesn't support ALSA volume control, meaning it outputs at a fixed volume (which you could then adjust at the destination, i.e. your amplifier, TV, hi-fi, whatever.) A cheaper alternative with functional volume control would be a USB soundcard for about a fiver, so long as you make sure it's happy with Linux (and doesn't require closed-source drivers, 'cos nobody'll have compiled those for ARM.)
First answer: She will be getting some half decent 2.0 speakers to run off this and iv heard the pi's audio is a bit meh from the 3.5mm jack. Second answer: currently just using the TV speakers, but shes going to be upgrading soon to some active 2.0 The Pi is for her TV, could i plug the speakers into the TV which takes a HDMI signal from the Pi? So Pi>TV>speakers? The speakers will be self amp'ed active units so this should be the simplest way to do this? Cheers
That's the way I'd do it, assuming the TV has an output for the speakers. You'll get a range of advantages that way: you don't have to spend any more money, you're bypassing the Pi's crappy analogue audio output, and you can control the volume with the TV's remote. That's a win-win-win, far as I can see.
This is the way I do it, albeit with an RPi 1b (512MB RAM). HDMI to the TV, some simple, quite old Logitech 2.1 speakers with audio jack plugged into the TVs' headphone out.
