Burned Pecan Pi


Ok , based on positive reviews I bought a Pecan Pi streamer from Orchard Audio. Let me start by stating that I am probably the least tech savvy person on earth, I want to say that upfront. Took a few days to figure out, but got it working with my Tidal account and the Volumio software loaded onto the unit by Orchard. Worked fine for about a month. Then one day my girlfriend went to listen to a song, and,nothing… no sound. No indication on the Volumio app on my iPhone that anything was wrong. It appeared to be playing as usual. First I went through all of the Settings in the Volumio app and found nothing amiss.  We had not changed or altered anything. I sent an email to Volumio and got a response telling me to read their FAQ page. ?? Of course there was nothing relevant to my situation to be found there. After a few more attempts to get help from Volumio it became clear they did not give a s**t and I was on my own. Frustrated, I closed my Volumio account (paid yearly, $40). We opened a new Volumio account and it fired right up! Played for about six weeks just fine. Then one night went to listen, and… nothing. Repeat above nonsense with Volumio CS and finally shut down my account again. Opened a new account (another $40 ), and again it fired right up, no problem. Take a wild guess what happened about a month later?! This time I Got Leo ( the owner) from Orchard on the phone and he had no answers. Sent a fervent email to Davide at Volumio literally begging for any help. He responded saying that they could not offer ANY help because,he stated “If you are using Orchard product we cannot support relative bugs and issues. Orchard uses unofficially Volumio OS and could not be full support on the latest version. They have their own motherboard and dac, so please refer to them for any incompatibility. Just to be more clear- Orchard uses the Volumio software without any kind of test and approval by our side. It’s not officially supported, it’s 3rd parties, and we cannot take care of something misused, you know” I literally could not believe this response, so I forwarded it to Leo at Orchard. His response to Davide at Volumio : “I do not understand your stance with my customer. I do not do anything special with Vol and I do not customize it. It is the standard image directly from your website running on a Rpi3B or 3B+ ; I don’t see a reason you are not able to support the customer. My DAC uses your fully supported 12S RPI-DAC overlay. Your comments to my customer about me not using fully supported hardware is not true”

Absolutely no response from Davide at  Volumio. I sent one last email to Vol stating that as a paying customer this was completely unacceptable and demanding to hear from someone other than Davide. Shockingly, crickets. Don’t know what to do at this point. Haven’t asked but I highly doubt Leo at Orchard will take the unit back for a refund. Wanted everyone on this forum to know what a joke Orchard Audio and Volumio are, and to relay my experience. Please let me know if you have any advice; I am open to suggestions. I refuse to shut down my Vol account yet again and continue with this game.

fishdoctor

While I have not used Orchard- even though I was tempted- I ran Volumio on a RPI 4 W/HIFIBERRY with great success streaming Tidal. In the year or so I used it I don’t believe I ever had a problem. With the touch screen I found it to be a very functional and cool Streamer. Startup was tough as I wasn’t that savvy. Hope you find success. 

@fishdoctor I think your issue is with Volumio and not Orchard Audio. I have a PecanPi and a Starkrimson stereo ultra and I am a very happy customer. Leo is always commutative and ready to help. I do not use Volumio though. I use Ropieee which works with Roon. I have had zero issues with Ropieee, Roon or Orchard Audio. I personally would not use Volumio because I don’t like their business model. The PecanPi supports different streaming methods. Perhaps you want to contact Leo to see what your streaming options are and dispute your Volumio charge with your credit card company. 

You don’t specify exactly how you are playing. It has been some problems recently with Volumio and Tidal Connect. It works for me when running the web interface or the Volumio app to play Tidal that way. The support forum has some information.

You could try UpnP and some other app. I shortly tried mConnect and it worked but I don’t remember if I played Spotify or Tidal then.

At the end of the day I think we will see a lot more software related issues since software becomes more and more important combined with the fact that old school audio companies may lack knowledge in this area and that it is hard to make combinations of systems work reliably over time.

[Edit] Forgot to say that I use a RPi 4.

@fishdoctor Call Andrew at Small Green Computer, he can set you up with everything you’re looking for for about $2,500 or so. He helped me, although I already had a ‘renderer,’ I still think he could meet your price point, and I know he has the equipment. 

@fishdoctor 

 

With your budget, there are a lot of choices for streamer/DAC combinations.  There are multiple threads here.

    Welcome to the world of streaming.  It’s filled with lots of hardware/software interactions with manufacturers pointing fingers at each other.  It’s hard to be the plug and play of a good CD player.