8xOUT for Raspberry Pi5 Installation guide

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:

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

Then assemble it in the official case :slightly_smiling_face:


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:

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.


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