8xOUT for Raspberry Pi5 Installation guide

Installation guides
1

This is the user guide for 8xOUT for Raspberry Pi 5

This DAC offers 8 channels of high-quality analog audio output (4 stereo pairs) via four TI PCM5102A DACs. This innovation is ONLY possible with the Raspberry Pi 5.

Insert the 8xOUT into your RPi 5 like this:

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To use it with the official case, first insert the riser:

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Then assemble it in the official case :slightly_smiling_face:

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Automatic installation (tested on Raspberry Pi OS)

  1. Update to the latest Pi 5 firmware:
    sudo rpi-update

  2. List your audio devices:

aplay -l

You should see something like:

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In this example the DAC is on card 2, device 0.

  1. Play a simple 8-channel test:
    speaker-test -D plughw:2,0 -l5 -c8 -t wav

    You should hear audio on each channel in sequence.

For applications that only support stereo, you can create four virtual stereo devices and assign each app to a different virtual card.

Quick start guide for the 8xIN 8xOUT

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First, a quick hardware note:

  • The green jacks are inputs.
  • The red jacks are outputs.

Driver information

The output section is identical to the 8xOUT board — it uses the exact same driver.

To check if your device is properly detected, run:

arecord -l

You should see something like this:

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:warning: If you don’t see any recording device:
Your Raspberry Pi OS might be outdated. In that case, run a system update.

Recording your 8 channels

In the above example, the ADC appears as card 2, device 0.
You can record the 8 input channels with:

arecord -D plughw:2,0 -c8 -f S32_LE -r 48000 test.wav

Visualizing the recording

You can easily open the recorded file with Audacity:

sudo apt-get install audacity
audacity test.wav

You should see your 8 audio tracks displayed:

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Quick loopback test

You can verify everything works by physically connecting the outputs back to the inputs like this:

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Then, run a simple playback and record test:

speaker-test -D plughw:2,0 -l5 -c8 -t wav &
arecord -D plughw:2,0 -c8 -f S32_LE -r 48000 test.wav

:white_check_mark: That’s it — you’re now recording 8 channels simultaneously!

Manual installation

  1. Update to the latest Pi 5 firmware:

sudo apt-get install rpi-update
sudo rpi-update

  1. Edit /boot/firmware/config.txt:
    sudo nano /boot/firmware/config.txt

  2. Remove or comment out the built-in audio line:
    dtparam=audio=on

  3. Add the HiFiBerry DAC 8X overlay at the end:
    dtoverlay=hifiberry-dac8x

  4. Reboot:
    sudo reboot