The Raspberry Pi has been quite successful as it managed to get over two million units sold and today, Element 14 has announced an add-in sound card which will include some rather neat features.

The new sound card for the Raspberry Pi is currently only available at Element 14 website and has been designed in cooperation with Wolfson, an audio component specialist.

The PCB of the sound card does not exceed the edge of the Rapsberry Pi and it connects to it via P5 connector (8-pin), which is only available on revision 2 models.

When connected to the Raspberry Pi, the lower quality audio output is replaced by a line-in and line-out jacks, a SPDIF input and output as well as connectors for headphones/microphone set. The new soundcard uses Wolfson WM5102 processor which will take care of the audio, with up to 24-bit/192KHz, and has a special feature which makes it suitable for speech recognition due to its two PCB integrated MEMS microphones. It also comes with two 2-pin connectors for speakers.

Currently, the soundcard is available on Element 14 site in Europe, Farnell, which sells it for €25.01, or around €30 including shipping cost. On Element 14 site in the US, the Wolfson Audio card sells for US $33.




Source: Element14.com.