Seeking lower cost alternatives to Berkeley Audio Design Alpha USB converter


I am looking for a USB to optical audio converter.
The Alpha USB from Berkeley Audio Design is an external asynchronous USB to S/PDIF (or AES) interface. It's strictly a D to D converter accepting USB digital audio input and delivering digital audio output.
That's the type of product I'm looking for. However, at $1,895 the Berkeley Alpha USB is far more expensive than most similar products I've seen. Some of these products sell for less than $100.

I'm on a budget. Can anyone recommend one of the lower priced alternatives to the Alpha USB from Berkeley Audio Design?
lowoverdrive
I dunno. The Pi2AES guy recommends RoPieee which runs headless, meaning no interface.

As I have not got my cable yet I have not set it up and figured it out. For me it should just be UPnP DLNA used with Foobar, or that is my intention anyway.

I don’t stream stuff, I just need to get my files off my NVMe drive, through the Pi Bridge, to the Pi2AES, which normally outputs on all outputs, to my DAC.

I have not seen detailed instructions but I was a Linux sysadmin for some years, so I expect I can get it all to do what I want. As I have not yet, I have no real useful advice, outside of searching. I did not look very hard once I figured out what was going on.

You could email the guy at Pi2AES and ask, he might have a good idea where to look for good instructions. I’ll know in a week or so, at present mail pace. ;(
The hardest part so far has been Win 10 networking. I had to find just the right Intel driver, and I have to trick that into giving me what I want.
@pengun - thanks. I hope to hear more from you in a week or so.

I don’t stream either. My intention is similar to yours except all my devices run Linux.

Here’s the list of Pi software I know about so far:

- [moOde™ audio player](https://moodeaudio.org/) - seems to be completely free & open source. Good reviews. Some say it is superior to Volumio.
- [Volumio - The Audiophile Music Player](https://volumio.org/) - free version has limited features- [RoPieee | Software](https://ropieee.org/software/) - seems to be free
- [RoPieee | XL](https://ropieee.org/xl/) - not sure if this is a premium feature
- MPD+Rompr
- [Mopidy](https://mopidy.com/) - Mopidy plays music from local disk, Spotify, SoundCloud, TuneIn, and more. You can edit the playlist from any phone, tablet, or computer using a variety of MPD and web clients.
- [Pi MusicBox - A Spotify, SoundCloud, Google Music player for the Raspberry Pi, with remote control](https://www.pimusicbox.com/) - based on Mopidy.- [musikcube](https://musikcube.com/)- [RuneAudio for Raspberry Pi](http://www.rpimusicplayer.com/)- [Patchbox OS - Raspberry Pi OS for Audio Projects](https://blokas.io/patchbox-os/)- [MinimServer features](https://minimserver.com/features.html)- [GitHub - airsonic/airsonic: Airsonic, a Free and Open Source community driven media server (fork of Subsonic and Libresonic)](https://github.com/airsonic/airsonic)
- [openmediavault - The open network attached storage solution](https://www.openmediavault.org/)- [Music Player Daemon](https://www.musicpd.org/) - Raspbian version available. Works with tons of clients: https://www.musicpd.org/clients/



I should fire up a Slackware partition. It would be easier to network, certainly. ;)
Been playing games, and only installed the dose on my new machine. ;)
@pengun - I tried sending you a PM, but the site crashes when I try.
I have a Linux file server and I use NFS v4. All my clients (desktops, laptops) run Linux. Even my phone runs Manjaro Linux. Like you, I vastly prefer working with Linux networking and really everything else too.
Please keep me updated on your progress with your Pi2AES. This is the way I want to go in the future. A Pi will fit perfectly into my environment.