ALLO USBridge Signature

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2 hours ago, uniquesnowflake said:

I plan on bypassing the Type-C altogether, and go direct from the good ol’ 5.5x2.1 to the digione sig clean input. I also plan on adding a CLC filter between the connector and PCB.

 

This obviously voids warranty, but IMO a small price to pay for a good (potential) SQ increase.

I hate what Allo have been doing with connectors, USB C to barrel adapters and captive cables! Why didn't they stick to 5.5x2.1mm connectors from the very beginning and avoid all this mess?

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What would I need to do to shut down the USB bus and the HDMI output of the USBridge Sig? It is just as for the RPi or does one need USBridge Sig specific instructions? Thanks, nbpf

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1 hour ago, suzywong said:

 

In fact I pulled my SD card (MoOde Audio) out of the DigiOneSig-RPi3B, and plugged it straight into the DigiOneSig-USBridgeSig and simply rebooted. All good

That's good to know, thanks!

 

The bugger is that I would not be able to switch off the USB bus and the Ethernet interface on the USBridge Sig (as I do on my RPi to reduce the energy consumption down to about 200 mA) because the USBridge Sig does not have any onboard wireless!

 

Too bad, I really would have liked to try the USBridge Sig!

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5 minutes ago, suzywong said:

 

Allo are listing a dual-band dongle for around 20 quid. I think the idea it that it goes into one of the USB ports on the front panel on the aluminium case

Sure but that would force me to turn on the USB (and Ethernet) bus of the USBridge Sig and thus more than double its energy consumption. This is not a very good idea as more energy potentially means more noise.

 

Perhaps it would be worth trying it but I do not want to be left with another small SBC laying around and no return option. Thus, given things as they are, I'll stick to the RPi and wait for Allo to come up with something that better fits my needs.  

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7 hours ago, allo.com said:

May be sufficient but not possible to know for sure until you try

 

 What I know is at 1.2A it will fail .

This is a bit disappointing if you consider that a RPi3 + DigiOne Signature combination can be setup to consume less than 0.3A when streaming over the wireless! Why does the USBridge Sig not have wireless onboard? This would make the USBridge Sig much more usable and a serious alternative to devices like the Sonore and SOtM streamers and the new Primare NP5 network player.   

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32 minutes ago, dontfeedphils said:

 

Man, we get it, you wish it had WiFi built-in. 

Sure I do. With WiFi on board and good software support, the USBridge Sig could become a true alternative to microRendu, UltraRendu, etc. Without, it will be another niche product. Good for tinkerers but finally of limited popularity like its predecessor, I am afraid. 

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4 minutes ago, allo.com said:

...

We tested WIFI on Usbridge Sig board and rejected the idea based on the ammount of interference that it generated . Sorry but its not good enough for us (while we do understand that its more convenient )

...

Interesting, does onboard WiFi generate more noise than onboard wired Ethernet interfaces? What about HDMI? Is it supposed to be used for high quality audio output or is it there just for convenience? What is the motivation for a (non audio dedicated) HDMI output in an audio device? Perhaps I am misunderstanding the purpose and the design of the USBridge Sig ...        

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36 minutes ago, dontfeedphils said:

 

My point being, you don't have to parrot the same thing over and over.  

Given the difference between 1.2A and 0.3A, a bit of repetition is at place, in my view: higher energy consumptions potentially imply more electromagnetic interference. Thus, I am not happy with a design that require a (relatively) high energy consumption just to support a wireless connection. As the design of the RPi3 demonstrates, there are more energy effective ways to do so. That said, it is perfectly conceivable that Allo have very good reasons to support (non audio dedicated) USB, HDMI and wired Ethernet but not WiFi. In this case, they have here a very good opportunity to explain their design choices and make the USBridge Sig more appealing to perspective buyers. 

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6 minutes ago, naum said:

Can someone help me.
I have easy question.
If I buy USBSig with eMMC card and Volumio, can I try Moode or DietPi on microSd card? 
Also, is there any instructions on how to change the OS on emmc?
Thank you

I would expect that one can use any OS that runs on the RPi3 compute module but Allo will understandably offer support only for certain OSs. I use Raspbian in all my RPi systems as I tend to dislike the user interfaces of Volumio, DietPi etc.  

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33 minutes ago, matthias said:

 

What is the conclusion?

 

Is the DS superior to the UBS or the SPDIF input of Brooklyn superior to the USB input?

 

Matt

Perhaps both? Or neither of them and the differences are due to other factors ... One thing that bothers me is the fact that, in many of the experiments that we do, isolation (or lack thereof) might play a significant role. We typically do not test components that are very well shielded and isolated from each other. On the other hand, manufacturers of high quality streaming devices often go quite a long way to ensure some level of isolation, e.g., between streaming boards and transport boards. Thus, it is thinkable that some of our findings could be different in a different environment. For instance, I have never tried to run my DigiOne Signature and its RPi3 host in different boxes. Would that make a difference? Who knows ...

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1 hour ago, Tintinabulum said:

No and with a heavy heart I sent the sig back. The USBridge with good PS and signal performs really very well. I'll wait for the next big thing... Very strange and a great shame. Allo were very helpful, good guys.

It is almost ironic that the USBridge Sig does not work well with the Cisco 2960. On the other hand, the 2960 was introduced more than 10 years ago and discontinued five years later: it is not completely surprising that a new device has troubles coping with a 12 years old switch! How did it come that we reintroduced these old (and rather big and not particularly pretty) switches into our households? Why do we still need to rely on these old switches to get the best out of our newest transports and streamers? Why is replay from a local drive still not as good as (or even better than) replay from a LAN server? How long will it take until we get high quality DACs that read their data from a local memory and allow us to get rid of all these cables, switches, streamers, bridges, etc. altogether? Fifteen years later, it shouldn't be that difficult to build a memory player that is (at least) as good as the Naim CDX3, should it?  

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6 hours ago, suzywong said:

 

I do not own an USBridge Sig but I would expect it to behave like an RPi in this respect. Why should the USBridge Sig require a specific driver for the OS to recognize that two (or more) sound cards (in the specific case, the DigiOne Signature and the one connected to the "clean" USB output of the USBridge Sig) are available?

 

When I connect a USB DAC to the RPi that hosts my DigiOne Signature, I see two sound cards. I would expect the same to happen when one replaces the RPi with a USBridge Sig.

 

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2 hours ago, suzywong said:

Maybe it’s MoodeAudio, or my configuration. My default config is to run SPDIF from the DigiOneSig to the nDAC. So in Moode I have the I2S Audio Device set to “Allo DigiOne Signature”

 

As a very quick experiment, I connected up my old V-DAC2/V-PSU to the Clean USB output on the USBridgeSig and thence to my NAC82.

 

I found that I could get sound via SPDIF but not via USB, unless I changed the I2S Audio Device setting to “None” and rebooted. 

 

I confess I didn’t spend too much time on it. So perhaps I screwed something up. I’ll give it another try tomorrow.

Hmm ..., I have no experience with Moode. I use upmpdcli and this is a front-end to MPD. Any MPD client will recognize (and support activating/deactivating) two or more connected sound cards.

 

For instance, if I select both the DigiOne Signature and the Schiit Eitr in ncmpcpp (a text-based MPD client) and the DigiOne Signature and the Schiit Eitr are connected to the Naim DAC on input 1 and 2, both are active and I can switch between them by selecting 7 and 8 on the Narcom-4 remote control. 

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1 hour ago, Tintinabulum said:

I didn't want to compromise on not using the Cisco. I didn't comprehensively test but it didn't shout out. It may be specific to my set up, I'm using JS2 so the power is good already.

Do you use the JS-2 to power both the RPi and the clean side of DigiOne Signature or for one side only? Thanks, nbpf 

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33 minutes ago, allo.com said:

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 Even though the source (USB) might be better , you will get less benefits .

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Better than what? Less than what? Could you please elaborate?

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On 11/13/2019 at 10:39 PM, Tintinabulum said:

JS-2 powers both sides of USBridge (and DigiOne Sig, when using that). I'm using coaxial output but I like USBridge as I can upsample, even though I downsample (Mutec) to get coaxial. The sound just suits my ears. 

Have you ever compared the DigiOne Signature (mounted on RPi or on USBridge Sig) straight into a SPDIF DAC against the DigiOne Signature into the Mutec and into the same SPDIF DAC? Thanks, nbpf

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1 hour ago, allo.com said:

Better than last gen Usbridge , less benefits than using direct USB output straight to your DAC.

Thanks!

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1 hour ago, allo.com said:

 

 

 His system is...USbridge Sig..USB output...Mutec USB input---Spidif output---DAC

 

   In this particular case , DAC is actually feed by the Mutec and not by USbridge Sig . My opinion is that you will get less benefits when the last digital output is not USbridge. I never listened to Mutec convertors (and never seen any data on jitter of the stream) but I would think USbridge should output a better digital signal .

The USBridge Sig and the Mutec MC-3+ Smart Clock USB are actually hardly comparable: the first has only USB outputs, the latter has no USB outputs. Thus, it is difficult to assess which one generates a better digital signal. The Mutec is a very well regarded device, its specifications can be found here https://www.mutec-net.com/product_mc-3-plus-usb.php#data. I have demoed the Mutec some years ago and I did not find that it was obviously better than the Shiit Eitr when fed from the same Raspberry Pi. More recently, I have compared my current system (DigiOne Signature hosted by RPi 3B+ running MPD in a minimal Raspbian installation with no HDMI, no wired Ethernet, no bluetooth and no USB) with a Mutec MC-3+ Smart Clock USB fed by a NUC running Audiolinux. The presentations were slightly different but, again, I could not say that one was obviously better than the other. Another interesting contender in this context is the Pink Faun SPDIF bridge (https://www.pinkfaun.com/shop/bridge/45-2898-spdif-bridge.html#/87-spdif_options-spdif_aes_ebu_bnc/195-bracket_height-792_mm_3118_inch/196-additional_clock_for_bridge-no). The appeal of the PF bridge lies in its modular approach: it can be mounted on any standard motherboard, relies on an external power supply and can be ordered with no additional clocks, with additional OCXO clock or with additional Ultra OCXO clock. 

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1 hour ago, allo.com said:

Hi NFB

 

  You are incorrect . Of course you can compare digital streams no matter the protocol . USB/ i2s /spidif etc , in the end they have ones and zeros .

...

In principle you are right but in practice ... how do you suggest to compare the Mutec and the USBridge Sig? My name is by the way "nbpf", not "NFB"!

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1 hour ago, allo.com said:

Hi NFB

... Fortunately , I think that the market is moving away from this type of hype marketing .

I wish you were right but I am not sure that the market is moving away from hype marketing! It certainly would be nice to have more accurate and comparable measurements of the different devices.

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18 hours ago, allo.com said:

Hi Tintibalum

I am not making assumption , but if your DAC is feed by Mutec I fail to see how to get a major improvement moving from USbridge to USbridge Sig. You are still listening to the Mutec not USBridge.

...

I get your point but, by the same argument, you could also fail to see how to get a major improvement moving from USbridge to USbridge Sig tout court: we are finally listening to out DACs, not to the front-end transports that feed them!

 

I think that the point that @Tintinabulum was making is that improving the input of the Mutec (by replacing the USBridge with the USBridge Sig) was likely to improve its output. This is obviously a simplistic assumption but it is nevertheless the basic assumption behind all our attempts at improving our sources. You could of course argue that the Mutec is a very poor interface that makes any improvements of its input streams immaterial. But this would be a rather cheap argument given that, as you point out, you do not have any first hand experience or knowledge of the Mutec.     

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54 minutes ago, reelben said:

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I hold me offside from this discussion 🎻 

Why so? So far there has been no real discussion, just a few scattered remarks. If you have opinions or first hand experiences to share, please do so!

 

Jitter measurements for the Mutec MC-3+ USB are by the way available since 2015 at https://www.lowbeats.de/test-neuer-takt-reclocker-mutec-mc-3-usb/, see diagrams in slides 1-5 and 1-2 in about the middle of the review.

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2 minutes ago, allo.com said:

nbpf

 

  I would like to ask you to keep the discussion civil . Everyone is free to join the discussion or otherwise do what they want .

 

  This is my only warning to you .

I do not know which discussion you are referring to and I do not believe to have been offensive to anyone with my posts. If you feel that this is not the case, I sincerely apologize. It goes without saying that everyone is free to do what one wants. There is no need to read or to reply to posts we are not interested in. We all know this. We share our experiences, our know-how and our opinions. It is obvious that our experiences, know-how and opinions are often very different. What's the problem?

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10 minutes ago, allo.com said:

 

   Tintinabalum , you have a lot of rhetorical .

 

I have been very clear. You want full benefits of USbridge Sig use it as the last device before DAC.

    If you are using another device , you wont get same benefits.

 

Not rhetorical .

Many of us (including myself) use DACs that only have SPDIF inputs. Many already have a USB to SPDIF converter in their households.

 

I do not see anything wrong in trying to replace our USB sources --- be these Raspberry Pi computers, NUCs, mac minis or something else --- with a USBridge Sig.

 

The results will obviously very much depend on the quality of the USB to SPDIF converter that might deteriorate or improve the quality of the USB stream provided by the USBridge Sig. I guess we all know this and we all are aware of the fact that the strength of a chain necessarily depends on the strength of its joints.

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1 hour ago, allo.com said:

...

 

Clearly , if you use the Mutec (or any other device ) to feed your DAC , you will not get full benefits ,

 

...

This is by no means clear to me: if the Mutec (or any other device) makes an accurate conversion of the USB stream provided by the USBridge Sig, one will get the full benefits of the clean USB stream provided by the USBridge Sig. Why not? 

 

Your statement becomes logically correct only if one assumes that there exists no device that can produce a SPDIF stream as accurate as the USB stream produced by the USBridge Sig. Even if the USBridge Sig is exceptionally good, this seems a rather unrealistic assumption.