You can use a device tree overlay (dtoverlay) in Raspberry Pi OS to use the PCM5122 as the audio output device for your Raspberry Pi. The device tree overlay being used is the iqaudio-dac overlay, which uses the same PCM5122 DAC on the default I2C address of 0x4C.

Wiring

Here's the Raspberry Pi wired up to the DAC:

Prerequisite Pi Setup!

In this page, it's assumed that you have already gotten your Raspberry Pi up and running and can log into the command line.

Here's the quick-start for people with some experience:

1. Download the latest Raspberry Pi OS or Raspberry Pi OS Lite to your computer
2. Burn the OS image to your MicroSD card using your computer
3. Re-plug the SD card into your computer (don't use your Pi yet!) and set up your wifi connection by editing supplicant.conf
4. Activate SSH support
5. Plug the SD card into the Pi
6. If you have an HDMI monitor we recommend connecting it so you can see that the Pi is booting OK
7. Plug in power to the Pi - you will see the green LED flicker a little. The Pi will reboot while it sets up so wait a good 10 minutes
8. If you are running Windows on your computer, install Bonjour support so you can use .local names, you'll need to reboot Windows after installation
9. You can then ssh into raspberrypi.local

The Pi Foundation has tons of guides as well.

Update the Raspberry Pi

After loading your fresh install, run the standard updates:

Add Device Tree Overlay

Edit your Pi configuration file with:

At the top of the file, uncomment these lines to enable I2C and I2S:

Then, at the bottom of the file, add this line:

To save the config, press Ctrl+X and then Y to save your changes. Then press Enter to exit the file.

Reboot the Pi with:

Testing the DAC

After rebooting, you can test the audio output in the terminal with:

You should hear white noise coming from the output. If you do, then all of that setup worked and you can start to use the DAC as the audio output for your Raspberry Pi.