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Posted 20 hours ago

Allo DigiOne

£9.9£99Clearance
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About this deal

On look and feel, the Allo offering is slightly more pleasing than the JustBoom solution. It’s heavier too and therefore less conducive to mounting to the rear of an active loudspeaker. A more essential A/B is how the Allo DigiOne-loaded Raspberry Pi compares to its Just Boom equivalent. Let’s not beat about the bush: the DigiOne is markedly better. It sounds smoother, richer, more easeful and offers a slightly taller and deeper soundstage than its less costly UK rival. If you’re DAC possesses a SPDIF digital input, RCA or BNC one, and you would like to experiment with digital signal cleaning but you find USB regenerators and the use of two USB cables expensive and/or cumbersome – then Allo DigiOne could be an affordable alternative that being a HAT and not the external device requires only one digital cable. But don’t get filled by its affordable price (compared to most similar devices), this little HAT offers a very noticeable sound improvement over Pi’s USB outs (and the result would be the same if you compare it to USB outs of most PCs). days of streaming. I’ve tried the original Node 2 and owned the Connect myself. What about the DigiOne Signature versus conventional streamers? There is zero doubt in my mind that the SQ has taken another step forward with the DIGIONE Signature. And that is with OEM power supply for the Pi and battery power on the other side of the Digione. I’m not going to try and quantify it in number terms because I can’t and although I’m not very good at describing what I’m hearing in the same way as others, I do think I am hearing more detail, the sound is coming from a wider soundstage and there is something more almost “holographic” or “real” in what I’m hearing with a definite increase in depth.

Yes, my Digione Signature connects into the Modius via a standard co-ax cable. I say standard cable - in fact it’s Van Damme and I had it made up for me.Intona USB 2.0 Hi-Speed Isolator is the USB isolator that worked the best in my own system and if you’re set on using a USB connection, both this one and iFi regenerators are great options. However, neither can come close to DigiOne’s price to performance ratio. Our transports have different outputs. USBridge is feeding your DAC through USB and DigiOne is using coaxial/bnc. Depending on your DAC inputs you need to make a choice. Basically, for me at least, the DigiOne has become the only S/PDIF source that I would have in my system. I find the same level of enjoyment that I do have with the Mini86 and ipurifier (on the same DAC, but connected with its XMOS based USB receiver). I won’t be making any further comparison because it will be like comparing apple and oranges (the implementation of the USB Receiver and S/PDIF receiver of the same DAC can be of different quality level).

What you see on BNC is the right implementation as per the standards. 75Ohm all the way since cables and connectors are designed that way. Now there are other solutions to the same problem and I’ve personally owned or tested several of them. To me, the DigiOne (or DigiOne Player, if you look for a complete player) are the best choice possible as of now if you own an S/PDIF DAC, or if you know for sure that the implementation of S/PDIF receiver in your DAC is superior than the USB side.PiCorePlayer (LMS) can be configured to act as both a player and LMS server and LMS supports Deezer. It also supports Qobuz, Tidal, MixCloud and Soundcloud as well as Podcasts and Internet Radio. Although if you do go down the LMS route make sure to enable the Material Skin plugin or else it will look terribly dated. We see identical performance from both, substantially lowering the jitter and noise products from Schiit Modi 2 Uber. What is left from prior testing, is due to deficiencies in the rest of the Modi 2 Uber DAC than anything to do with digital input jitter. Once I got Volumio working it was acceptably decent to use. Not anywhere near Roon standards, but Volumio was temperamental finding my NAS. Whether the fact I use my NAS on an extender or inherent issues in Volumio (a free piece of software after all), I’m not so sure. Others I chatted to on Facebook had no such issues. Where is it placed?

To lower the noise of the USB, we had to lower noise on EACH rail. In total, USBridge Sig uses more than 30 LDOs. Even the SD card power rail has a dedicated LDO. There are zero switching elements on board. The DigiOne Signature requires two power supplies: one for RPi and one for the Digione Signature. I powered the RPI with the supplied switching supply from Allo and used my sbooster linear power supply for the "clean" power. Both inputs are UBC-C connectors.

Now, what I don’t like about this. I would have preferred to have a way to feed the DigiOne and the Pi separately. Allo claims there is no need (and they are probably right, considering the DC regulators and galvanic isolation) but I think this is anyway a Nice to have feature. I have been playing with the DigiOne with almost a month now, and I’ve been able to listen to it with a variety of DACs I do know well. Allo have designed a digital (S/PDIF) transport for Raspberry Pi audio with one goal in mind: Absolut best S/PDIF output. Congratulations to anyone who has had the patience to read to the end of this! If helps only one person to decide if to embark on the streaming journey, either via a Raspberry PI or some other way - then as far as I am concerned it will have been worth my time as well as acting as a small thank you to all those who have helped me get to this point.

if I’m honest, I think I would have needed an A/B test to tell the two Dragonflies apart - at least when listening through the speakers. As good a DAC as it is, I don’t think I could have justified buying a new Modius when I was more than happy with the Modi 3. In fact, for me the situation would be even more clear cut now as Schiit have released a Modi 3 plus, with their “Unison USB” connection. Since this is a digital stream the most important aspect for "absolut best" is jitter. Jitter in digital domain directly translates into analog errors. Second, is noise. Lowering the noise that’s injected in your DAC will produce some (small-to-none) improvements.I’ve never been a huge fan of S/PDIF interface, and I always preferred to use good old USB or I2S when it comes to PI. This is because I believe that shorter the signal path, the better (as you might know from my earlier posts). The feeling initially is that the Yamaha WXC-50 is actually pretty close to the Allo DigiOne Signature. Good bass response, nice detail and dynamics. A test between the DigiOne Signature connected solely with the Shanti and the Yamaha, might to some impress the Yamaha as being *better* on account of unsmoothed credentials.

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