The ALLO Audio music steamer - Pic heavy review

[jonners]

Tried Moode 2.7 first – never really tried this before but thought it would be a change and was curious to see how it performed. Installed and booted up fine and after a bit of tinkering, hooking up to my NAS and the like started to have a listen. All sounded fine for a couple of tracks – until I tried to pause a track. Then I had the same problem that jonners was experiencing – the last second or so of the track is repeated before pausing.

This was a problem with the early Kalis. Allo.com will send you a replacement if you contact them. Mine arrived quickly and all is now OK.

[Simon_LDT]

Any benefit of using just the reclocker board into my Arcam DAC (which is currently running straight from a RPi 2 via Coax)?

[ALLO.com]

Any benefit of using just the reclocker board into my Arcam DAC (which is currently running straight from a RPi 2 via Coax)?

Hi Simon,
yes you will see great improvement.
KALI will sync the clocks of the RPI and the DAC, no info lost, better sound quality.

[jonners]

Any benefit of using just the reclocker board into my Arcam DAC (which is currently running straight from a RPi 2 via Coax)?

Via coax? That suggests SPDIF, an output which the RPi doesn't have. Or are you using USB? To use the Kali you would have to route the I2S signals from Kali into the DAC. There's no SPDIF or USB out from Kali.

[The Black Adder]

True, no SPDIF out on the RPI2.

[Simon_LDT]

Via coax? That suggests SPDIF, an output which the RPi doesn't have. Or are you using USB? To use the Kali you would have to route the I2S signals from Kali into the DAC. There's no SPDIF or USB out from Kali.

Sorry, forgot to include that I'm using the HifiBerry Digi+ board which fits onto the RPi2 board and has optical/coax outputs. I've read on the Allo website that for the Kali to work with a DAC other than the Piano, it needs to be a slave DAC. How can one find this out?

[jonners]

Sorry, forgot to include that I'm using the HifiBerry Digi+ board which fits onto the RPi2 board and has optical/coax outputs. I've read on the Allo website that for the Kali to work with a DAC other than the Piano, it needs to be a slave DAC. How can one find this out?

The Digi+ works in master mode and is not compatible with Kali. There's some discussion of the master/slave issue on the HiFiBerry forum.

John

[Simon_LDT]

The Digi+ works in master mode and is not compatible with Kali. There's some discussion of the master/slave issue on the HiFiBerry forum.

John

Thanks John, will take a look over there.

[Starterman]

See also post #91.


Good moaning, I have had my 'Allo 'Allo DAC running for a couple of days now.

Why buy it?
I have been running a Pi2 + IQAudio DAC+ for the last year or so and have been optimising the 5V supply for it over the last few weeks. A bit of research and some pcb tracing shows that the supply arrangements are: 5V from the Pi is fed to an on board LDO which supplies 3V3 to the analogue side of the DAC, the Pi's 3V3 supply (from a switching reg) supplies the digital side of the DAC. Comments on DIYAudio claim the IQ DAC+ has some design deficiencies. I am not sure if this is what they mean. In comparison the Piano 2.1 DAC has separate on board LDOs for the digital and analogue supply pins and it gets its feed from the KALI, so avoids the switching reg in the Pi.
In addition there is the well known problem of the Pi clock not being a multiple of 44.1Khz so they need to do some manipulation of the clock to get near to the right frequency. The KALI sorts this and also removes the alleged high levels of jitter on the I2S output.
Conclusion: lower jitter and better supplies ough to provide much better sound and all the review seem to back this up.

Listening session 1:
Swapped the IQ DAC+ for the Piano 2.1. PS still fed from the Pi2 and still using Moode 2.3 (yes, I know it's over a year old). The Piano worked exactly the same and no settings needed to be changed (hardware vol and Low latency IIR with de-emphasis filter).
Initial impression, with low level listening, was of a bit more detail and control over the DAC+.
I left is playing for several hours and then listened again. Same impression.

Listening session 2:
As everyone else was out I was able to enjoy some more enthusiastic replay levels :-)
1st off tried the Piano without the KALI. Similar impression to the 1st session but also noticed a lack of dynamics and a somewhat flat and narrow soundstage compared to what I was used to with the DAC+. Had a good blast for 1/2 an hour then decided it was time for the "gamechanger".
With great expectation I fired up the Pi2/KALI/Piano2.1 stack, powered via the KALI from the same external 5V supply.
Initial impression was that is was a bit cleaner and tidier sounding than without the KALI. BUT... the same lack of dynamics and feeble soundstage remained.

I then went back to Pi2 & DAC+. Better is every way! The music is back in my living room!
The simple fact is that the IQAudio DAC just makes me want to listen louder and longer, and to a wider range of music.



Officer Crabtree: [climbing out of the rubble] There is obviously no piss for the wicked.

[roob]

Nice honest review Dave.