What is it?

The Amped Raspberry Pi Media Center is a compact and neatly designed hardware project that combines the power of the Raspberry Pi Zero board and the Hi-Fi audio capabilities of the TI’s PCM5100 HiFi DAC combined with a highly efficient TPA3110D2 D-class amplifier. This versatile media center provides a customizable and fully open-source hardware platform for home entertainment.

With a minimalistic but functional design inspired by commercial audio gear, it offers a seamless user experience. It aimed to support Volumio, Mopidy, or any custom firmware you may come up with.

Why did I build it

I did a few audio projects in the past, some using ESP32, some using larger Orange Pi and Raspberry Pi devices. Each has its pros and cons, and in each iteration, I'm trying to focus on the details that were working best for me while actually using them.

What is special about the Raspberry ecosystem is, of course, its community support. Being a not-so-strong software developer, I often have to rely on the work that other people did and baked into the base Raspbian image. Enabling the Ethernet and IR reader is as simple as adding 2 lines into config.txt file. Adding DAC is a 5-minute job (with attached code). All the device tree definitions, kernel drivers, and dependency packages are already in place, believe it or not.

Sure, compared to the ESP32 platform, it is not as lightweight. It requires more power, it takes some time to boot. But when it comes to rapid development, there is nothing like the Raspberry Pi.

Amped Raspberry Pi Media Center

Amped Raspberry Pi Media Center brings all the best from the HiFi model and adds an onboard amp to form a complete solution that can be paired with speakers directly. It uses an external power source to feed hungry amps and host Pi using an onboard drop-down converter. It has similar power capabilities to the Amped Raspberry DAC, but it is much simpler to use since it only needs a valid I2S signal to operate, so it is a single line of configuration in the config.txt file.

Key features

	HiFi Raspberry Media Center and Hat	Amped Raspberry Media Center and Hat	Loud Raspberry Media Center and Hat	Amped Raspberry Media Center and Hat
Image (Media Center)
Compatible with (Media Center)	Raspberry Pi Zero (W), Raspberry Pi Zero2 W	Raspberry Pi Zero (W), Raspberry Pi Zero2 W	Raspberry Pi Zero (W), Raspberry Pi Zero2 W	Raspberry Pi Zero (W), Raspberry Pi Zero2 W
Image (Hat)
Compatible with (1X Hat)	Every Pi	Every Pi	Every Pi	Every Pi
Image (Hat, 2X)
Compatible with (2X Hat)	Raspberry Pi 5	Raspberry Pi 5	Raspberry Pi 5	Raspberry Pi 5
DAC	Single PCM5100A 32bit Stereo DAC	Single (1X) or Dual (2X) PCM5100A 32bit Stereo DAC working with TPA3110D2 D-Class amp	Dual (1X) or Quadruple (2X) I2S DAC MAX98357 with built in D-Class amp	(1X) Stereo I2S DAC TAS5805M with built in D-Class amp(2X) Dual (2.1) I2S DAC TAS5805M with built in D-Class amp
Output	2.1 VRMS Line level output -100 dB typical noise level	[1X]2x 25W (8Ω, 1% THD+N) at 22V; 2x 22W (4Ω, 1% THD+N) at 16V 1x 40W (4Ω, 1% THD+N) at 20V[2X]4x 25W (8Ω, 1% THD+N) at 22V; 4x 22W (4Ω, 1% THD+N) at 16V 2x 40W (4Ω, 1% THD+N) at 20V	[1X] 2x 3W (8Ω); 2x 5W (4Ω) [2X] 4x 3W (8Ω); 4x 5W (4Ω)	[1X] 2x 22W (8Ω, 1% THD+N); 2x 32W (4Ω, 1% THD+N) at 20V 1x 45W (4Ω, 1% THD+N) at 20V [2X]: 2x 22W (8Ω, 1% THD+N) + 1x 45W (4Ω, 1% THD+N)
RGB LED	Media Center only	Media Center only	Media Center only	Media Center only
IR input	yes	yes	yes	yes
Onboard Serial Bridge	Media Center only	Media Center only	Media Center only	Media Center only
Ethernet (Media Center)	Wiznet W5500 SPI Ethernet	Wiznet W5500 SPI Ethernet	Wiznet W5500 SPI Ethernet	Wiznet W5500 SPI Ethernet
Powers from	Media Center: 5V USB-C power adapter (up to 1 A)Hat: 5V from the host Internally: LP5907 3.3 V Ultra-Low-Noise LDO	8..26V from external sourcepowering host (up to 3A cont.)	Media Center: 5V USB-C power adapter (up to 3 A) Hat: 5V from the host (up to 4A) or 5V from screw connector (powering host)	65W USB-C PD power adapter [NOPD] Up to 26V from external PSU[Hat] 7..28V from external sourcepowering host (up to 3A cont.)
Mechanical dimensions (WxHxD), Media Center	88mm x 38mm x 100mm	88mm x 38mm x 100mm	88mm x 38mm x 100mm	88mm x 38mm x 100mm
Mechanical dimensions (WxHxD), Hat	65mm x 30mm x 15mm	70mm x 61mm x 20mm	65mm x 30mm x 20mm	65mm x 56mm x 20mm

Board Pinout

How to use

You need nothing more than an SD card with a Raspbian image and a USB-C power brick. You can use any distribution you like. The only change you need to make to enable hardware is to add 3 lines to the /boot/config.txt

dtoverlay=hifiberry-dac

Hardware

Front	Back	PCB

Please visit the hardware section of the project repo for board schematics and PCB designs. Note that PCBs are shared as multi-layer PDFs as well as Gerber archives.

Amped Raspberry NOPD

The “hammer-style” solution I came up with is a NOPD version of the Amped Raspberry that lets you use a barrel power jack to supply raw voltage directly. The catch? Standard 2mm pins can’t handle high currents, so I’ve gone with a 2.5mm pin instead — it’s a bit unusual, but still common enough in the laptop world.

With this setup, you can supply more than the 20V limit of PD, giving you a bit more power for the speakers. You probably won’t hear much difference (thanks to the way human hearing works), but it could help larger speakers that need a bit more to really “open up." Other than that, the NOPD version works just like the PD version — no software changes are needed.

External voltage selection

The power adapter specs depend on the speaker you're planning to use. DAC efficiency is close to 100%, so just take the power rating of your speaker (say 2x10w) and impedance (say 8 ohms), and you'd need at least 9 volts rated at 1.2 amps per channel, round up to 3 total amps. Consider Pi itself drawing 5-10W of power when busy.

It is not recommended to go beyond the voltage your speakers can take, otherwise, the amp will blow your speakers in no time.

The absolute maximum voltage for the TPA3110 Amp is 30V, but it is not guaranteed to be thermally stable in this condition.