Today i had the supreme pleasure of hosting a little digital bakeoff at my humble abode.

The real purpose of this was so that Steve (STD305) could come and have a listen to the Krell KSA100 MK2. Now as 90% of the gear listened to was owned by me, I am not going to say anything about how my system performed, i will leave that to Steve.

What i will say is what was used and how i felt it ranked.

System used was:

1.2A DCB1 with Khozmo preamp.
SPOTFIRE Cables
Krell KSA100 MK2
SPOTFIRE Speaker Cables
Pioneer CS-77A

First up was the Recently loaned to me Raspberry Pi With Allo Boss DAC:



I have been so impressed by this little thing that i had to buy one. I just can't fathom how this little unit does so much good for so little money. Before any one says "why is there a record weight on there" It's there to hold it down! It's too lght and the cables just move it where ever they want.

If anyone wants to know what i think of this Pi, read here: https://theartofsound.net/forum/show...nvisible-media!

We listened to a few tracks, discussed what we heard and decided to compare it to Steves GBP1200 Cyrus CD player:



We used Steve Miller for this one and in about 30 seconds, Steve turned it off. "That sounds Shit!"

We tried another CD and it sounded better but to me, it didn't reach the HD levels of the Pi. We were a little surprised and to be honest, we laughed a bit too. This little box of Pi was kicking Ass.

I then threw my Sony CDP into the Mix. It came to me via the generousity of Macca so it really owed nothing at all :



Once again we laughed. The feebie Sony was prefered to the Cyrus but still sits well behind the Pi. What is this little gadget doing to all of my pre conceived ideas of HIFI!!!

In next went a left field CDP. My Yamaha CDP- 385 (?) Unfortunatly, i didnt take a Pic!!

This was when things became very interesting. The Pi, or me was still better but this closed the gap. It showed the Sony to be muddy, almost smeared. It also had a little more richness or "luxury" in the mids compared to the Pi but it coudnt match the Pi's HF quality.

Again though, the Cyrus was lacking in the rankings now dropping to fourth against the PI, Yamaha and the Sony.

We were very surprised. So surprised we spent the next 30 minutes looking at Pi's for Steve lol.

We also played a bit of vinyl but as that was all my gear, i'll leave Steve to describe how he thought it sounded.

Overall, a great day and totally interesting to see how everything compared.

A few gratuitous pics of the rig: