Allo Digione Signature

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9 minutes ago, wanta911 said:

Well my Digione Signature arrived today, complete with a loose screw rattling around inside - LOL. No biggie, it was a quick retrieval and fix but 2 of the other 3 screws on the Digione board were not tightened down properly ?

 

Anyway, after a brain fade that wasted a good 45 minutes (I turned i2s off), we were up & going.

 

I got the Volumio OS but I'm controlling playback with the Lumin App that's drawing from Minimserver on my NAS. Dirty side is powered by SBooster LPS and the clean side by the Uptone LPS 1.2. So the head to head with the Aries Femto has begun....

 

 

I am looking forward to read your findings! It is a shame that Allo do not seem to be able to implement a good quality control of the assembly process. In reassembling the DigiOne Signature boards, I have found something like https://www.amazon.de/Bolt-Base-Nylon-Unterlegscheibe-Plastik-Stück/dp/B00LCGI94K to be useful. One has to be a bit careful: a too tight connection can set the boards under stress, a too loose connection can lead to undervoltage errors.

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I have just received the GhentAudio cables to directly connect the JS-2 and the LPS-1.2 to the dirty and to the clean sides of the DigiOne Signature, respectively. The build quality is very good. The cables are black, pleasant to the touch and more flexible than the UpTone Audio cables. I can highly recommend the GhentAudio cables (see  https://www.ghentaudio.com/part/dc29.html), for instance, to avoid the mess with the USB C to 2.5mm and 2.5mm to 2.1mm adapters that come with the DigiOne Signature. 

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2 hours ago, LowMidHigh said:

Maybe someone can share their knowledge?

 

A. Is the 5V/3A input sufficient If I connect an SDD drive (Samsung T5)?

B. Is it possible to connect my computer to the signature and play off it (Mac => UBS => Signature).

 

 

 

A. It is definitely sufficient.

 

B. It is likely possible but why would you like to do so? The RPi that hosts the DigiOne Signature is perfectly capable of both UPnP rendering (upmpdcli) and of UPnP serving (MinimServer, etc.) files? If you wan to deploy the DS as a pure UPnP or Roon network player (no server functionalities running on the DS), then  you should connect it to a computer with an Ethernet cable or via wireless.

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9 hours ago, wanta911 said:

 

Cool! I too will be interested in your findings, even if they are just a case of making everything neater.

 

IIRC the clean side of the Signature can take higher than 5V....have you tried 7V or 9V using the LPS 1.2?

I find it very difficult to compare different power supplies or cables when swapping A and B necessarily requires rebooting the system. That said, I have the impression that getting rid of the Allo USB C to barrel adapters and of the 2.5mm to 2.1mm adapters has improved the sound quality. I'll go through more careful listening test and report.

 

I have tried 7V when I received the LPS-1.2 and didn't notice obvious differences between 5V and 7V. Thus, I settled on 5V for safety reasons. Again, I should probably now repeat the comparison and go through more careful listening tests. Another question is whether it is possible to power the dirty side with 7V. I do not remember this to be the case and I do not want to fry my Signature but perhaps Allo could clarify.  

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4 hours ago, LowMidHigh said:

 

Thanks for chiming in. 

 

I have to confess ignorance, since I've been out of the digital game for a long while. My wish it to redirect the sound from my computer to the DS so I can use my speakers with YouTube and Skype. I envision a USB cable from my MacPro to the DS whereby the USB audio data will be converted to SPDIF and go out to my re-clocker. But may be there's a way to do it through the shared network?

 

I can imagine that it is possible to install packages on the RPi that hosts the DS that allow it to work as a USB to S/PDIF transport. But this is certainly not the kind of application for which the DS has been designed.

 

Does your re-clocker have optical S/PDIF inputs? In this case, you just need a Toslink cable, the MacPro has an optical Toslink output integrated into its 3.5mm jack, I believe.

 

If your re-clocker only has electrical S/PDIF inputs or if your MacPro does not have S/PDIF outputs, you could buy a Meridian Explorer for about 200 EUR. It has electrical and optical S/PDIF outputs as well as a headphones output.  I have used mine to connect an old iMac to a Naim DAC but also as a portable headphone DAC for my laptop. It is a very light, plug-and-play device.

 

 

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7 minutes ago, RX8R3ROD said:

IMHO it’s well worth a try, the different power sources can sound quite different... as you’ve already discovered by varying your input voltage ?

But the max. voltage for the dirty side is still limited to 5V right?

 

I'll run some more tests during the next weekend but I have a strong impression that replacing the UpTone Audio cables with the shorter GhentAudio cables has made a difference in sound quality.

 

The difference might be finally due to differences in the end voltages: the UpTone Audio cables were 1.5m long and I had two adapters between the end of the cables and the USB C ports of the Signature.

 

Now I have 1m cables with USB C connectors at their end that directly go from the JS-2  and from the LPS-1.2 to the DS without adapters in between.   

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28 minutes ago, quanghuy147 said:

Hi,

Is it normal to enable i2s dac in Volumio settings? 

 

I am confused because I use Volumio and Signature to get digital signal then feed the external DAC. Why do I have to enable I2S DAC?  

 

I tried to disable I2s DAC then got an error message when trying to play any song.

What do you mean by "disable I2S DAC" precisely? In my /boot/config.txt file I have

 

#dtparam=i2c_arm=on
#dtparam=i2s=on
#dtparam=spi=on

 

but also

 

# Configure the Allo Digione audio card
dtoverlay=i2s-mmap
dtoverlay=allo-digione

 

I understand that the DigiOne Signature is an I2S to S/PDIF transport, thus perhaps some functionalities related to I2S must be enabled?

 

 

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6 hours ago, LowMidHigh said:

Thanks for all the help. 

 

Is it possible to set up the DS only with a browser, or attaching a keyboard/monitor is necessary? 

 

I have neither and purchasing both for occasional tweaking seems like a waste. 

Sure, for Raspbian check https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=191252. If you use Volumio or similar distributions, setup is typically via web interface or app on mobile device.

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On 12/12/2018 at 10:21 PM, RX8R3ROD said:

...

Look forward to hearing the results of your tests on the cables ?

 

I have reported some impressions here:

 

 

Best, nbpf

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6 hours ago, linuxfox said:

Hi

I'm looking for a 100EUR alternative, so I have tried an aqvox usb power supply that I was using with my old audiophilleo. Results are not so good: it sounds lazy specially on the upper frequencies: it sounds worse than the audiophilleo

 

What does "it" refer to here? To the same thing? To different things? Could you please elaborate a little bit?

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1 minute ago, linuxfox said:

Sorry I'll try to be more specific. The Allo Digione Signature (with the Aqvox usb power supply) sounds less dynamic and engaging than the audiophilleo2 (whith the Aqvox power supply). They both feed a Naim Dac. The audiophilleo is a very good match for the Naim Dac but is a little too forward for me (it seems that all the instrument are very close to the listener). This problem is solved with the Allo Digione Signature but I'm missing the dynamic sound of the audiophilleo. A solution that beats them all is using the usb port of the NDac with an usb stick with wav files: so I know that the Ndac can sound a lot better and I'm trying to find a soltution that goes closer to the usb stick performance. Did you compare the Ndac usb input with wav files vs the Allo Digione Signature with LPS-1.2? How they differ?

Thank you

 

Thanks, interesting! I have not already done this comparison but I'll do it and report my findings. Best, nbpf

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6 hours ago, linuxfox said:

Sorry I'll try to be more specific. The Allo Digione Signature (with the Aqvox usb power supply) sounds less dynamic and engaging than the audiophilleo2 (whith the Aqvox power supply). They both feed a Naim Dac. The audiophilleo is a very good match for the Naim Dac but is a little too forward for me (it seems that all the instrument are very close to the listener). This problem is solved with the Allo Digione Signature but I'm missing the dynamic sound of the audiophilleo. A solution that beats them all is using the usb port of the NDac with an usb stick with wav files: so I know that the Ndac can sound a lot better and I'm trying to find a soltution that goes closer to the usb stick performance. Did you compare the Ndac usb input with wav files vs the Allo Digione Signature with LPS-1.2? How they differ?

Thank you

 

I have tried replaying the three tracks (in .wav format) that I have used for all my comparisons from a 4GB USB drive and from the Allo DigiOne Signature (transcoding from .flac to .wav) and my impression is that replay from an USB drive still sounds better than replay from the Signature. I have not done any blind test but I have asked my wife to also listen to one track and she came up with the same conclusion. That said, I am not sure that I would be able to distinguish the two sources with instrumental music in a blind test. But I believe that I would distinguish them with vocal music. I would say that the USB presentation is a little bit more natural and perhaps more coherent. I will make another test with the original UpTone Audio cables to confirm or confute these findings.        

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On 12/20/2018 at 3:08 PM, linuxfox said:

Sorry I'll try to be more specific. The Allo Digione Signature (with the Aqvox usb power supply) sounds less dynamic and engaging than the audiophilleo2 (whith the Aqvox power supply). They both feed a Naim Dac. The audiophilleo is a very good match for the Naim Dac but is a little too forward for me (it seems that all the instrument are very close to the listener). This problem is solved with the Allo Digione Signature but I'm missing the dynamic sound of the audiophilleo. A solution that beats them all is using the usb port of the NDac with an usb stick with wav files: so I know that the Ndac can sound a lot better and I'm trying to find a soltution that goes closer to the usb stick performance. Did you compare the Ndac usb input with wav files vs the Allo Digione Signature with LPS-1.2? How they differ?

Thank you

 

Talking about solutions that match USB sticks in terms of sound quality for the Naim DAC: Which devices are known to fulfill this property?

 

Do NDX, NDX2, ND555 provide S/PDIF feeds to the Naim DAC that match (or perhaps even exceed) the sound quality of USB sticks?

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3 hours ago, linuxfox said:

this is a very good question. All the options I have tried are not as good as the usb stick (I was hoping that the allo signature with a good power supply coud match the sound quality). Probably someone in the Naim forum has the answer.

I plan to make a few more tests during the weekend with the UpTone Audio Cables and also with a Schiit Eitr that I have not been using recently. I suspect that the cables between power supplies and Signature can have a significant impact on the sound quality but I need to test this more carefully. It is likely that the S/PDIF cable also has an impact on the sound quality of the Signature and it is finally conceivable that the USB interface of the Naim DAC is just better than its S/PDIF interface and that therefore a USB stick will always sound better than a S/PDIF feed. I will also try to formulate this quastion in the Naim Forum.     

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I have gone through some more listening tests today, specifically:

 

1. DigiOne Signature (server + renderer) powered via Ghent Audio cables vs. USB stick

2. DigiOne Signature (server + renderer) powered by UpTone Audio cable vs. USB stick

3. Digione Signature (only renderer) powered via Ghent Audio cables vs. USB stick

 

I have also compared transcoding vs. non transcoding and real-time kernel vs. standard kernel. My conclusions so far are that replay from a USB stick sounds consistently better than replay through the DigiOne Signature. 

 

In other words, the differences between Ghent Audio cables and  Uptone Audio cables, transcoding and non transcoding, real-time vs. standard kernel are negligible in comparison with the difference between replay from USB and replay from the DigiOne Signature. 

 

This difference is itself not day and night but clearly perceivable. I have also tried to replace the BNC-BNC Naim DC-1 cable with a Supra Coax-Coax cable with similar results.

 

Thus, my temporary conclusion is that either the S/PDIF interface of the Naim DAC is not as good as its USB interface or that the DigiOne Signature is not as good as I hoped.

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6 hours ago, LowMidHigh said:

For all you people who get Ghent, what cable grade do you choose? He's got at least 4 grades. 

I have bought the standard Canare 4S6. 

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20 hours ago, linuxfox said:

Today I have received and used the 2 x 18650 batteries on the clean side. I'm quite happy with it. It is close to the usb interface of the NDAC, the closest S/PDIF I have tried so far. The usb interface has still many advantages, but the only annoying difference (for me) is a little bit of bass authority missing.I have to try for a better PS for the dirty side (at the moment I'm using an Amazon Basics smps). Tomorrow I'll try to use batteries on the dirty side as well (an usb powerbank).

In my tests the difference between real-time kernel vs. standard kernel has always been too small: setting the cpu governor on "performace" is usually enough.

In terms of sound quality my favourite player is mpd (alone or with UpMpd), squeezelite is second.

 

For me too, the DigiOne Signature is the best S/PDIF source that I have had in my system so far. I have never tried the "canonical" NDX, NDX2, etc.

 

As I reported, I would possibly have difficulties taking apart the Signature S/PDIF feed from direct replay from USB sticks on instrumental music. But when listening to vocal music I can hear an obvious difference. In my perception, it is not a matter of more or less glare, resolution or bass authority but rather of something that I would describe like a tonal shift. Listening to track 1 of 

 

  https://www.discogs.com/Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Ophélie-Gaillard-Pulcinella-Bach-Arias/release/9874603

 

in 24bits/88.2kHz, the voice of Sandrine Piau sounds obviously more natural (to me) when replay is from the USB stick. Which leads me to the question of MPD and MinimServer settings. Here are my MPD audio output, buffering and resources settings: 

 

audio_output {
  type                "alsa"
  name                "Allo DigiOne"
  device              "hw:sndallodigione"
  mixer_type          "none"
  replay_gain_handler "none"
  dsd_usb             "yes"
  auto_resample       "no"
  auto_channels       "no"
  auto_format         "no"  
  use_mmap            "yes"
}

 

audio_buffer_size               "8192"  # 2018-10-28, from Volumio
buffer_before_play               "10%"  # 2018-10-28, from Volumio

max_connections                   "20"
max_playlist_length            "81920"
max_command_list_size          "81920"
max_output_buffer_size         "81920"

And here are my MinimServer settings:

+*props
aliasTags=director:conductor
.autoUpdate=true
contentDir=/media/sd/share/audio/data
displayName=MinimServer[rpi6]
http.port=9790
indexTags=composer:Komponist, work:Werk, conductor:Dirigent, ensemble:Ensemble, All Artists:Künstler, Genre, Form, period:Epoche, Date:Aufnahmedatum, -incdate:Seit, Gramophone's top 10 violin concertos, Gramophone's top 10 symphonies, Gramophone's top 10 piano sonatas, Gramophone's top 10 piano concertos
itemTags=Comment
.logFile=minimserver.log
.logLevel=info
mergeFolderAlbums=true
ohnet.debug=Default
ohnet.port=9791
showExtras=true
startupScan=true
stream.transcode=flac:wav
tagCustom=AlbumArtist.displayRole={artist}, Composer.displayRole={artist}
tagFormat=Title.displayFormat={$title$composer^^^ | }, Artist.displayFormat={$artist$ensemble$conductor}, Comment.displayFormat={$*infoFileURI^<a href="^">Digital booklet</a>$comment}
tagOptions=Album.sortTags={Album, Artist}
.updateReminder=1
+:status=0

Is there anything that strikes you as being different in your MPD settings? When you use MPD in conjunction with upmpdcli, what is the UPnP server? Thanks, nbpf

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21 hours ago, LowMidHigh said:

 

The DS gives out notebly clean signal, so I hazzard to guess the coax implementation on the Naim isn't as good as USB.

When I feed my Mutec MC3+USB spdif coax, the sound is nothing less than amazing. Switching to USB, including over SOtM 200 Neon, is big step down--the reversed situation than yours.

I am not talking about differences between S/PDIF and USB streaming. The Naim DAC does not support USB streaming. It has two USB ports for direct replay from a USB drive. It replays the files in the order in which they appear in the file system of the connected USB drive and the only possible user interactions are to skip to the next and to the previous files and to stop replay.Thus, USB replay is not very practical. But it sounds better than any source that I have so far attached to the DAC!

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11 hours ago, wanta911 said:

 

Thanks for this post. It's a reminder that after the euphoria of getting something new that all might not be as it seems. As I've hinted in a previous post/s, the SQ of the DS sometimes seems too warm and hazy (mid bass) in my setup and it was bugging me.

 

It motivated me to put the Aries back in and do some more comparisons which I've been doing all afternoon using the Lumin App for the DS and Auralic's Lightning App for the Aries....both drawing from Minimserver on my NAS. Well the difference in the bass is quite obvious and I'm not sure why it wasn't this obvious when I initially did the comparison? I run the Aries with an SBooster with the Ultra add-on after ditching the Auralic LPS very early on, which I would describe as mushy. The SBooster makes the Aries bass really tight and resolving but it can tend to sound thin on poor recordings. In comparison the DS bass is warmer, which can make it more musical but can also make some material sound muddy. For me though, the DS still has a better soundstage and more ability to unearth small details.

 

One of the advantages of using room correction is that I can make separate target curves for each unit, so that's what I'll be doing later to do some more comparisons ?

Thanks for the report, please let us know your findings with room correction!

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9 hours ago, LowMidHigh said:

In terms of SQ, the principle is the same though: the implementation that suffers from least jitter will sound best. 

I am not sure: the Naim DAC reclocks the data prior entering the DAC stage, see page 4 of  https://www.naimaudio.com/sites/default/files/products/downloads/files/naim_dac_august_2009.pdf. Thus, I would expect jitter figures to be the same for both inputs.

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3 minutes ago, RX8R3ROD said:

Really sorry to hear about your problem!

 

I’m sure Allo will reply to you on this.

 

But if you’ve unfortunately (and many of us have done this sort of thing at least once, ... I fried a bunch of Supercaps last week - Doh! ?) fried anything by accident, I think it’ll just be the Raspberry Pi part of your Signature player, which is easy and much cheaper to replace than your Signature boards.

 

Maybe there’s a sign here for us all to colour code the inputs from our power supplies?

 

Hope you can get it sorted quickly! ?

I have set the power supply for the clean side to deliver 5V precisely to avoid mistakes like the one reported. If one powers the clean side with more than 5V, it is probably useful to mark the cables and the Signature inputs to avoid frying the lower board or the RPi.

 

While I am pleased with the sound quality of the DigiOne Signature, I am not satisfied with its engineering. I had to order special cables from Ghent Audio to avoid using long chains of adapters and I find the USB C connectors of the DS board not very reliable. I frankly do not see the point of using connectors that are designed to support both power supply and data transfer (and, thus, necessarily are a compromise in comparison to connectors that are designed for power supply only) for applications that do not require data transfer and for which the power supply is considered to be critical.

 

Another  weak point is the connection between the two boards of the DigiOne Signature. With the original spacers and tightened screws, the boards are under stress. With slightly shorter spacers the connection is too loose and leads to frequent undervoltage exceptions.

 

I wish Allo will improve these shortcomings in a revised DigiOne Signature version with standard 5.5/2.1mm (or 5.5/2.5mm) connectors and a sleek inconspicuous metal case with clear max. voltage markings.  

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2 minutes ago, LowMidHigh said:

 

Throw in an AES/XLR, BNC to tether the internal clock to a 10HZ oscillator, and Chromecast Built-in, and no one can unseat the new "king" ...

 

Tell me nbpf, could my cut-off problems be hardware related? I only stream off SoundCloud, and every 2nd or more tracks, 20 to 40 minutes in, the music stops. I can immediately start it again. The problem persists across OS: I tried DietPi and Max2Play.  It could be SoundCloud plug in, but no one reports of any such issue.

I am sorry but I have really no experience with SoundCloud. Have you tried other internet streaming services? Have you checked the log files of the plug in and of the OS? Does streaming from LAN sources work flawlessly? One should of course always keep in mind the possibility of hardware problems but I would try to address the above questions before thinking about hardware failures. 

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Some energy consumption figures: in my setup, the dirty side (RPi running MinimServer, upmpdcli and MPD at fixed 1GHz in a minimal Raspbian system) requires between 500 and 800 mA at between 4.80V and 4.91V while transcoding 24bits/192kHz .flac files stored in a 1TB Samsung T5 SSD drive connected to the RPi via USB to .wav. This is far less than the 2.5 to 3A made available by popular SMPS like the Allo or the ifi iPower. Measurements with  https://www.amazon.de/gp/product/B01NAWYSVK/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1.

 

 

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5 hours ago, Shangri-La said:

 

Thank you. I tried to use the power supply that comes with the ALLO to charge my phone, and it worked. So that kind of reversly proved that the phone charger will work (has the same +/- polarity) with the Allo. 

 

Yeah when I use the Allo as the streamer then good/clean power on the clean board does make a difference. But when use it as a uPNP render it shouldn;t matter, as least I think that's the theory.

I frankly do not understand what you mean and which theory you are referring to. If you select the DigiOne Signature as an output in a rendering program like MPD, the quality of the power of the clean side will have a significant impact on the output of the DigiOne Signature. If you select a device that is connected to the RPi that hosts the DigiOne Signature via USB as an output, the quality of the power of the clean side will likely have no impact. But in this case there is no point in using a DigiOne Signature or in powering its clean side!

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2 hours ago, Spenagio said:

More importantly just hope it’s not faulty like the one I just shipped back. Appreciate these companies are reasonably new, and production is handled elsewhere, but they should by now have QC in place similar to the companies they are looking to compete with, otherwise mainstream folk like me will just return to Auralic or Bluesound (reluctantly).

My impression is that Allo are trying to do far too many things at the same time. I found that the standard DigiOne was a fantastic value, the DigiOne Signature less so, in spite of its very good sound quality. The lack of a reliable quality control and of suitable support channels independent of this forum, the inconsistency of the documentation (e.g., about the suitable voltages for powering the clean side), the mess with USB C connectors and adapters, the ambition of selling transports, DACs but also amplifiers, cases, power supplies ... that's a little bit too much even for a new company. I wish they would take a break, make the point of where they are and where they want to be in a couple of years and come up with some realistic roadmaps for what they consider to be their most defining products. The way audio companies are throwing products at the market while failing to bind customers through understandable price policies and reliable product roadmaps is just ridiculous. Allo could play a decisive role in putting an end to this madness and start building a more solid basis of loyal customers. Or just go bust as many others.