Allo Digione Signature

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On 1/16/2019 at 12:12 AM, 01svtL said:

Well after a lot of trial and troubleshooting over the weekend, it has been determined that the Signature board in my new D1S Player is no good.  I have been able to get sound out of the onboard RPi headphone jack, but no dice with the Signature.  I even went out and purchased a microSD card reader/writer and new card and flashed a new Moode program to make sure it wasn’t a corrupt Moode file, but it performed exactly as the original.  

 

I’m waiting on Allo to provide me with next steps.  As I am in the states, I’m really hoping they’ll send me a new one with a return label for this one, otherwise who knows how long I’ll be without the device that I paid for in mid-December if I have to send this one back first.  If this is not what they are prepared to do, then I may just purchase a new one and have them credit me back once this one gets back to them.

I had the same problem. Ordered from Audiophonics in France. Defective DS board, so I returned. Within a few days I had a the unit back, working, pretty sure it is the same one, not a replacement. 

Annoying with regard to Allo QC, but worth the wait. 

Hope you get it sorted quickly.

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On 1/6/2019 at 2:59 PM, wanta911 said:

 

Yeah - I ordered a 5V one yesterday based on a recommendation I saw on another thread here where they tested a heap of other LPSs including some well known more expensive ones and this unit came out on top.....I can't remember the thread title or the poster 🙄

 

I have four 5V applications that are already using LPS but I am curious in comparing this (cheap) one to my current units.

Have you had chance to compare this relatively cheap LPS against any of your others? Thinking of ordering if it is likely to outperform the batteries I am currently using. I am in the UK, going to check if they will ship here.

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I am getting a worryingly loud 'crackle' from my speakers when changing tracks sometimes in Roon. I think it may be when changing from one bit depth/format to another.

 

Anyone experienced anything similar? Concerned I may damage my speakers...

 

I have not had this issue when using my previous pi/kali streamer.

 

I’m not incredibly technically minded, but I do know I get a similar kind of sound if I switch off my pre/power in the wrong order, so assume something is not protecting/grounding somewhere? 

Should I need to earth the two power supplies of the DS? Assuming the Allo PS I am using on the dirty input is earthed, would it be the battery pack powering the clean side that is the problem?

 

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Really helpful to know I'm not the only one!

 

Have to admit, having had an afternoon of (proper) listening I am very impressed with the DS. As you state, without going into hifi speak, it makes for a very musical, enjoyable experience. I stop doing that annoying thing of listening to the system, waiting for clues as to what is right and wrong, and just enjoy the track that is playing.

 

So, I will stick with it, hopefully someone will solve the issue and report, I will try power variations too.

 

I am pretty sure that it only occurs when swapping samples rates, so I can avoid it for the most part. Inconvenient yes, but worth the trouble, also a yes!

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16 hours ago, wanta911 said:

 

I'm actually a little stunned by how good this power supply is. This Studer 900 design has a bit of a cult following it seems and there is quite a bit of talk about it, particularly on the DIY Audio sites. This includes some hypothesizing on trying to work out why it does such a good job. The board only sells for the princely sum of around 18 bucks. Maybe @ClothEars can shed some more light on it, it was his recommendation that got me on to it and because I'm stupid, I can't find some of the links he put up.

 

As to how it sounds with my Chord Qutest.....clarity and punch are all improved compared to my other 5V power supplies - it's so clean and removes a little bit of haziness that I didn't even know I had. It just sounds so focused, I'm particularly impressed with drums/kick drums and percussion in general, it hits so much harder. The bass is nice and tight without getting dry or losing too much extension. So in my setup it is a (big) winner!

 

Anyway for the minimal outlay it is well worth trying. 

 

Take a look at this:

 

Prepare to call me a muppet, but just looked at ordering from one of the other suppliers, and from the images the fully assembled units look different to the one no longer available. Smaller/more caps, and a different transformer I think?! Others might be able to educate me. The out of stock one seems to have the same single cap as the kit version and refers to an output tube.

Dont want to order an inferior unit by accident.

 

Also, the 24v PS to my Rega P6 turntable has just died (unreliable British Hifi 😉), wondering if I could use a 24v one of these as an upgrade. MCRU sell one for £400 to go with my TT😳

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15 minutes ago, Gustav9 said:

I have been happily using my DigiOne Signature using the latest version of Moode Player. I now want to use the Raspberry Pi as a Roon  endpoint. I have tried several times to install the Roon Bridge software using RoPieee on a new SD card  , but I cannot get this to work. What am I doing wrong? When loading RoPiee should I power the Pi from its own micro USB socket or should I use the two power sockets on the Allo DigiOne Sigature?

 

 

 

 

Use the two power inputs on the DS, one supplies power to the pi via the dirty side of the DS.

Try reflashing the SD card with ropiee.  Make sure you power the clean side 40 seconds or so before the dirty.

I have used ropiee for the last year or two for Roon, very stable. Now trying Dietpi to have the added flexibility of using Airplay with Tidal and Spotify, which has been useful for the family.

Also, download the pdf instructions for installing ropiee, you have to be patient, it tells you to go make a coffee whilst it installs! The step by step guide really helped me as someone new to Rpi.

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have you tried another SD card/different software?

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Sure you won’t rule out having a faulty pi, recall someone else’s DS being bundled with a duff one. 

 

Hope you get it sorted 

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After owning for a while, getting used to the idiosyncrasies of the DS, some things about the design have informed my use habits, and I am sure not by accident on Allo’s part. The two power inputs are far more easily used on a daily basis by disconnecting/connecting at the supplied adapters, rather than direct to the usb board inputs.

 

No doubt this was to save constant wear and tear on the less than robust, and rather fiddly usb inputs.

 

I have been very impressed with the sound via batteries, and found it to be less of an inconvenience than anticipated. 

 

My only gripe is the sample rate crackle that sounds like my speakers are going to blow when using Roon. I have only got over this by avoiding changing sample rates from track to track, hardly convenient. I do wonder if it is related to power supply on the dirty side, I am going to try a conditioner in the chain to see if it sorts.

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3 minutes ago, Orangecrush said:

That’s why I haven’t upgraded to the sig yet.  Learned that from the early Digione. After ‘field testing’ on consumers they made revisions.  

 one of the revisions should definitely be dealing with the issue when changing sample rates in Roon, completely destroys the experience to a point that I am considering selling my DS after just 2 months

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59 minutes ago, Tintinabulum said:

I don't have an issue changing sample rates? 

The issue occurs when there is a sample rate change from one track to the next, i.e. whilst listening to a playlist.

Going from a 44/16 to 96/24 or any other change results in a loud crackle from my speakers whilst using Roon.

 

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2 minutes ago, dmormerod said:

I've had this before but it was down to the DAC, not streamer. Can you try a different DAC?

I have a Rpi/Kali connected via i2s to the same DAC, which does not suffer from the same issue. Also a Sonos Connect connected via SPDIF does not suffer the same issue.

May have to try a different DAC just to determine what is the problem, but won't be swapping DAC's for the benefit of the DS, as it is a high spec DIY DDDAC 1794 that has outperformed anything else I have had by a long stretch.

 

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1 minute ago, RX8R3ROD said:

Most of my music is 24/96, but some is lower rate from iTunes, etc and I don’t get any noises when swapping  FWIW 

Do you use Roon via Dietpi? Wondering if I should ditch Dietpi and go with Ropiee, which is what I have on my Kali based streamer

Thank you!

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Well, I am still getting the horrible loud crackle during playback in Roon, when a change in sample rate occurs.

Tried using a power conditioner for the connection of the dirty side.

Using batteries on the clean side.

 

Don't know what to try to solve the issue.

Wondering if it might be settings in Roon, is anyone else using Roon that could share settings for sample rate etc?

 

Can someone from Allo assist?

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On 2/22/2019 at 12:06 PM, TomWoB said:

@Spenagio

For getting root cause, I think it's interesting which "CPU/Process Load" your Pi has during playing Roon. I use moOde (which doesn't support Roon so far), but on the web interface I can check the CPU/Process load (System Info), e.g. my Pi (listen to radio):

 

C P U    L O A D  

	CPU	%usr	%sys	%idle
	all	1.75	0.00	98.25
	0	6.57	0.00	93.43
	1	0.50	0.00	99.50
	2	0.00	0.00	100.00
	3	0.00	0.00	100.00

 

P R O C E S S    L O A D  

	PRI RTPRIO COMMAND         %MEM PSR %CPU
	 19      - sysinfo.sh       0.2   1  3.0
	 29      - mpd              3.4   3  2.6
	 19      - sudo             0.3   2  0.5
	 19      - php-fpm7.0       1.2   3  0.3
	 19      - php-fpm7.0       1.3   3  0.3
	 19      - worker.php       1.3   1  0.2
	 19      - systemd          0.4   0  0.0
	 19      - kthreadd         0.0   0  0.0
	 39      - kworker/0:0H     0.0   0  0.0

 

I have no idea, how much CPU performance Roon needs to run smoothly, but we should check:

• runs one process always at 100% (in case of it's Roon ... not good) ?
• single/multithreading possible/activated ?
• CPU governor: on-demand/performance ?
  performance runs the CPU always at maximum frequency, which is better for stable audio

Just to clarify if root cause is Pi or DigiOne Signature ...

I will explore, I know others are using Roon via Dietpi with the DS and not having an issue. I also have a problem where sometimes with high res files playback stops and skips to the next track, saying that information is loading slowly. 

Could be my network is slow?! 

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quick 'computer' audiophile style question on using the DS as a Roon endpoint;

 

I currently use a MacBook pro as Roon core and control device (along with iPhone). The DS acts as the endpoint feeding the streaming signal to my DAC. Happy days, works a dream. 

 

I would now like to avoid having to use my laptop for every listening session, but as all my music files sit on the SSD that is not possible. Intention is to use an iPad Pro for control, but wondering if I would merely have to move my music files to a HDD connected to my router, or somewhere else on the network to avoid booting up the laptop. 

 

Dumb question I know, but I'm not the most tech-literate....any help appreciated.

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Thank you all for chipping in, much needed help. Seems like I can’t avoid having another device as the core, as I want to stick with Roon. 

I have a desktop iMac that could act as a core, but was hoping to not have another computer ‘powered up’ purely to support my hifi. Stupid question, but would the iMac come out of standby mode automatically when I access Roon on the DS, or would I be faced with having to wake it up every time? Probably for another forum!

A NUC would make sense, tucked away in a cupboard with a HDD attached, seen a couple on eBay for under £200 so not to big an outlay.

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Thank you @InfinitelyBaffledthat sounds like a plan

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Anyone ‘upgraded’ from DS?!

 

I’m curious what is better and if anyone has done direct comparisons. I’ve seen comments that ultrarendu outperforms the DS, but that’s about it.

I’d like a big step up, looking at Innuos, Auralic, opticalRendu/Ultrarendu.

 

I use batteries on the clean side, and stock wallwart on the dirty side, wouldn’t rule out trying other power options.