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Allo Digione Signature


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23 minutes ago, dmormerod said:

18650’s were just the most convenient for me especially with the charge board. 

 

I’m guessing you’re basically using the ‘back end’ of the Studer 900, so effectively bypassing the rectification and using the Studer’s smoothing capacitors and voltage regulators to give a nice, clean output voltage?

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2 hours ago, RX8R3ROD said:

 

I’m guessing you’re basically using the ‘back end’ of the Studer 900, so effectively bypassing the rectification and using the Studer’s smoothing capacitors and voltage regulators to give a nice, clean output voltage?

That’s the hope!

[br]QNAP+ -> Allo DigiOne Signature -> RequisiteAudio D3rs ->  McIntosh C52 -> McIntosh MC-275 MK VI -> Harbeth 30.1's via Roon

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On 6/2/2019 at 2:16 AM, dmormerod said:

Anyone have any thoughts on what the Optimum voltage is for the clean side?

 

After another merry-go-round of where I have my LPSs in my setup, I'm currently using the SBooster 5-6V on the clean side and up until now I have just left it at 5V. I will try 6V today and see if I can notice any difference but I guess it's not much of a voltage change?

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I pulled my Auralic Aries Femto out of hibernation last week and made sure it was properly warmed up to do another head to head with the Digione Signature with Volumio OS in my setup this weekend as a follow up to the original comparison I did in December last year. I've found that sometimes a revisit of a comparison can be surprising and question initial impressions.

 

Anyway, so I pitted the Aries using the SBooster LPS with Ultra against the Signature with HD Plex 200W LPS on the dirty side and SBooster 5-6V LPS on the clean side, both feeding the Chord Qutest DAC (mostly) and occasionally the Metrum Pavane via Mini DSP Dirac room correction. I also compared without any room correction direct to the DAC/s. The user interfaces were Auralic's Lightning DS on the Aries and Volumio on the Signature. Both units were fed via ethernet from my wireless bridge.

 

The Aries won handsomely on all fronts except the most important one......sound quality.

 

It really was a pleasure to use Lightning DS again - so easy to navigate, looks great and the Tidal integration is first class. Volumio is OK but it is a long way behind the higher end UI. I was actually using the Lumin app drawing from Minimserver with the Signature despite it being a little buggy, until a recent Volumio update created a new bug where adding a track or album to the playlist stopped playback 🙄

 

Interestingly I found the sound differences between the two much more pronounced this time around, I thought it was a close call the first time around and concluded that the Aries was probably better on some material but the Signature won out in most cases. The big difference between the two at the time was soundstage with the Signature having a much bigger more enveloping presentation. The difference in soundstage was obvious again but I can't say that I played a single track where I preferred the Aries this time around. There is an underlying edginess or brittleness to the Aries sound, the Signature in comparison is smoother with a silkier midrange and high frequencies but not at the expense of detail or picking up nuances in playback, in fact I would describe the Signature SQ as more detailed with better separation. Bass response was also better (a little more pronounced) on the Signature. 

 

In the past I have read that some users considered the Aries to be overly analytical and now I think I understand where they were coming from. Maybe I'm just used to the DS sound now but I can't help feeling that there is something in the Aries playback that shouldn't be there to create the edginess I hear, whatever it is I think it has some sort of masking effect, hence the inferior bass. As always YMMV but in my setup the Digione Signature is a clear winner on the SQ front. 

 

Now here's hoping that the Volumio UI improvements move ahead in leaps and bounds and I'll be very happy 😁

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On 5/31/2019 at 3:47 PM, RX8R3ROD said:

The LED’s are a great touch IMHO. 👍 I’m taking notes, for sure. 😁

 

That is kind of odd about the temperature differences on the regulators. Like you say,  the clean side just sips tiny amounts of power and whilst it doesn’t exactly swill and guzzle, the dirty side does use somewhat more, so you would expect it to be the warmer of the two.

 

Is it feasible to swap the leads between the clean and dirty sides without blowing anything up? If there is an issue that might help pin down where it’s likely to be?

 

 

 

So I now know why the regulator temp is high on the clean side! Without load I'm at 5v output from the Studer. As soon as the Allo board fire's up my voltage reading jumps to 12v on the output. Question is, why?

[br]QNAP+ -> Allo DigiOne Signature -> RequisiteAudio D3rs ->  McIntosh C52 -> McIntosh MC-275 MK VI -> Harbeth 30.1's via Roon

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It seems suspicious that the Allo board is pulling 12v, which is about what you’ll be getting out of the battery board. To me this almost suggests that somehow the battery board might be bypassing the regulation on the Studer board, or that the regulation on the Studer might not quite be working as you’d hope?

 

I was going to suggest swapping the leads between the clean and dirty sides (feed clean feed to the dirty side and dirty feed to the clean side), but I don’t think the Pi tolerates excess voltage like the Allo board does, so maybe best not to try that!

 

Could you power the Pi up with a separate 5V SMPS as a test, and then try swapping the leads to the Allo board?

 

if you get 5v from that (dirty) lead into the Allo you know the problem is with the original clean circuit. If you get 12v again into the Allo, it suggests the problem is both clean and dirty circuits ... if that makes any sense?

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 8/31/2018 at 4:46 AM, matthias said:

 

I think the best will be a 6,4V LiFePO4 battery.

 

Matt

 

On 8/31/2018 at 3:19 PM, allo.com said:

Thats what I am using.

 

Old posts but I'm curious - what is the advantage of LiFePO4 batteries in this application over Li-Ion? After some reading I am assuming it is a more consistent discharge voltage.....or is there something else?

 

My apologies if this has already been answered in the thread.

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On 6/3/2019 at 3:35 AM, wanta911 said:

I pulled my Auralic Aries Femto out of hibernation last week and made sure it was properly warmed up to do another head to head with the Digione Signature with Volumio OS in my setup this weekend as a follow up to the original comparison I did in December last year. I've found that sometimes a revisit of a comparison can be surprising and question initial impressions.

 

Anyway, so I pitted the Aries using the SBooster LPS with Ultra against the Signature with HD Plex 200W LPS on the dirty side and SBooster 5-6V LPS on the clean side, both feeding the Chord Qutest DAC (mostly) and occasionally the Metrum Pavane via Mini DSP Dirac room correction. I also compared without any room correction direct to the DAC/s. The user interfaces were Auralic's Lightning DS on the Aries and Volumio on the Signature. Both units were fed via ethernet from my wireless bridge.

 

The Aries won handsomely on all fronts except the most important one......sound quality.

 

It really was a pleasure to use Lightning DS again - so easy to navigate, looks great and the Tidal integration is first class. Volumio is OK but it is a long way behind the higher end UI. I was actually using the Lumin app drawing from Minimserver with the Signature despite it being a little buggy, until a recent Volumio update created a new bug where adding a track or album to the playlist stopped playback 🙄

 

Interestingly I found the sound differences between the two much more pronounced this time around, I thought it was a close call the first time around and concluded that the Aries was probably better on some material but the Signature won out in most cases. The big difference between the two at the time was soundstage with the Signature having a much bigger more enveloping presentation. The difference in soundstage was obvious again but I can't say that I played a single track where I preferred the Aries this time around. There is an underlying edginess or brittleness to the Aries sound, the Signature in comparison is smoother with a silkier midrange and high frequencies but not at the expense of detail or picking up nuances in playback, in fact I would describe the Signature SQ as more detailed with better separation. Bass response was also better (a little more pronounced) on the Signature. 

 

In the past I have read that some users considered the Aries to be overly analytical and now I think I understand where they were coming from. Maybe I'm just used to the DS sound now but I can't help feeling that there is something in the Aries playback that shouldn't be there to create the edginess I hear, whatever it is I think it has some sort of masking effect, hence the inferior bass. As always YMMV but in my setup the Digione Signature is a clear winner on the SQ front. 

 

Now here's hoping that the Volumio UI improvements move ahead in leaps and bounds and I'll be very happy 😁

Thanks for the report! Why are you actually using Volumio if you do not like its user interface? I also gave it a try some time ago and found its UI to be quite irritating. You can run upmpdcli and Minimserver in a standard Raspbian lite installation instead of Volumio. This gives you all the advantages of a UPnP server+client solution and you can browse your music collection using Linn Kazoo, BubbleUPnP, Lumin or any other UPnP compatible control point.   

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7 hours ago, nbpf said:

Thanks for the report! Why are you actually using Volumio if you do not like its user interface? I also gave it a try some time ago and found its UI to be quite irritating. You can run upmpdcli and Minimserver in a standard Raspbian lite installation instead of Volumio. This gives you all the advantages of a UPnP server+client solution and you can browse your music collection using Linn Kazoo, BubbleUPnP, Lumin or any other UPnP compatible control point.   

 

Good point, I'll give it a try. I already have Minimserver on my NAS & the Lumin app on my iPad.....so is it a case of just flashing a micro SD card with Raspbian Lite & installing it in my DS? Will Lumin then see the DS or do I have to do anything else?

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4 hours ago, wanta911 said:

 

Good point, I'll give it a try. I already have Minimserver on my NAS & the Lumin app on my iPad.....so is it a case of just flashing a micro SD card with Raspbian Lite & installing it in my DS? Will Lumin then see the DS or do I have to do anything else?

If you already have Minimserver running on your NAS, you only have to install upmpdcli (and hence MPD, see https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/upmpdcli/) under Raspbian Lite.

 

Once this is done, Lumin (Linn Kazoo, BubbleUPnP, etc.) will see both Minimserver (as a library) and upmpdcli (as a renderer) and you will be able to select albums or tracks for replay.

 

There are a few optimizations that you can do to Raspbian. But these are easily implemented and we can discuss them in detail once you are there.

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On 7/4/2019 at 8:27 AM, nbpf said:

If you already have Minimserver running on your NAS, you only have to install upmpdcli (and hence MPD, see https://www.lesbonscomptes.com/upmpdcli/) under Raspbian Lite.

 

Once this is done, Lumin (Linn Kazoo, BubbleUPnP, etc.) will see both Minimserver (as a library) and upmpdcli (as a renderer) and you will be able to select albums or tracks for replay.

 

There are a few optimizations that you can do to Raspbian. But these are easily implemented and we can discuss them in detail once you are there.

I am interested in similar configuration and i have a couple of questions:

1) I have my music on QNAP NAS and i have also Asset server installed there. Need to install Minimserver or Asset can do the same job?

2) How to install and configure Digione Signature driver on Rasbian Lite? There is documentation on this for Dietpi but i don't know how to do it on Rasbian Lite...

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5 hours ago, n1kcha said:

I am interested in similar configuration and i have a couple of questions:

1) I have my music on QNAP NAS and i have also Asset server installed there. Need to install Minimserver or Asset can do the same job?

2) How to install and configure Digione Signature driver on Rasbian Lite? There is documentation on this for Dietpi but i don't know how to do it on Rasbian Lite...

1) You do not need to install MinimServer if you already have Asset running. upmpdcli can communicate with any UPnP server.

 

2) You only need to add


dtoverlay=allo-digione

 

to /boot/config.txt to have the driver for the DigiOne Signature (and for the standard DigiOne) available after boot. In order to be able to replay music through upmpdcli you have of course to configure upmpdcli and hence MPD. This is very easy, just check the respective documentations. 

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  • 4 weeks later...
On 6/3/2019 at 9:50 AM, dmormerod said:

 

So I now know why the regulator temp is high on the clean side! Without load I'm at 5v output from the Studer. As soon as the Allo board fire's up my voltage reading jumps to 12v on the output. Question is, why?

 

I have the same Studer900 regulator I see in your picture. I have. Did you ever sort out how to get it working properly with batteries? Thanks in advance . . . . I was told by the eBay seller than only AC input would work but I've gotten a lot of misinformation from eBay sellers.

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5 hours ago, ChrisMcNeil said:

 

I have the same Studer900 regulator I see in your picture. I have. Did you ever sort out how to get it working properly with batteries? Thanks in advance . . . . I was told by the eBay seller than only AC input would work but I've gotten a lot of misinformation from eBay sellers.

Yes, see post #968 on this thread. You can use DC as the input. 

[br]QNAP+ -> Allo DigiOne Signature -> RequisiteAudio D3rs ->  McIntosh C52 -> McIntosh MC-275 MK VI -> Harbeth 30.1's via Roon

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@Tucker, yes you can run server software like minimserver or asset on rpi so there is no need for another server (NAS or computer) on the network. I am only concerned that you need to attach external storage on rpi which may  introduce -maybe not, i didn't try it-  a detrimental effect on sound quality (more power needed for disk, more cpu usage accessing the disk)

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On 8/10/2019 at 10:52 AM, Tucker said:

Is it possible to run a type of "server" software on digione signature itself so it really can act as a server and not just like a endpoint. Like Bluesound Node 2 which I also have. I only use tidal and internet radio, no nas etc.

I have been running MinimServer and upmpdcli (and, hence, MPD) as an intergrated server + client solution in a minimal Raspbian Lite system for many years. The data are kept in a 1TB SSD attached to the RPi. I have not noticed any degradation of the sound quality as compared to running the RPi + DigiOne Signature as a pure endpoint. I think that I have posted power consumption figures for both setups in this forum.  

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  • 1 month later...

Hi, New kid in the block here ...

 

Received the digione signature and scheduled to install it in my car this weekend  in hope to improve SQ in my high end car system setup compared to usb output from an Android Headunit into helix dsp pro but not much time to try out the dual psu option.

 

With available diy S11 5V@18A psu, LT3045 5v@1A and an ifi iusb3.0 with dual 5V output for total 2.5A, would it be beneficial to just use the iusb3.0 or S11+LT3045. The isub3.0 cost as much as the digione signature but I will go this way if it is possibly better than the S11 for the "dirty" side and LT3045 for the clean side.

 

Many thanks in advance.

 

Cheers.
 

Revel Salon 2 speakers, Sander Magtech amp, Audible Illusion L3B (Blackgate) preamp, Denafrips Terminator Plus dac, Denafrips Hermes ddc, Antipodes CX/EX/P1/P2 server/player (Oladra upgraded), Denafrips Avatar cdp, Bel Canto fm1 tuner, Airties Wireless Mesh, ifi Blue Zen BT receiver, 2X Uptone EtherRegen + AfterDark Emperor Double Crown 10M clock, Zerozone 5/7.5/12v LPS, Uptone LPS 1.2, 2x diy 2kVA Isotransformers, dedicated 20/30A lines for separate digital/analog, Nordost Quattro Fil interconnects, Acoustic Revive TripleC Ethernet/i2S cables, Shunyata Sigma usb cable with ifi Idefender 3.0, Aurealis/Apogee/Canare BNC clock cables, Cardas Clear speaker cable and jumpers, Zonotone Shupreme/5050 powercords, Garrard 301 on slate plinth/sme 3012R/Ortofon Classic Royal GM mk2/diy 301 motor PSU/graham IC90/kimber tak ag etc./Headamp Gilmore Lite Mk2+Golden Reference PSU/Grado FreeSystem fg-1 headphones

 

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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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