Hiya guys.

First of all, sorry for the delay in reviewing this. Life is hectic at the moment.

A while ago I was given the Allo Isolator to try.

The isolator sandwiches between the RPI 3 and the Allo Boss DAC. See pic below.

Installation is quick and dead easy. It does however need a separate power supply. This I bought from CPC. (thanks Jez).

It can also be powered by rechargeable batteries to which I've not tried yet. This option is however recommended by Allo. So this is something I would like to try later on.

Once fitted the isolator needs to be powered up first before the Pi.

Once powered up there is no difference to the boot-up time using Moode.

I've been using the BOSS DAC for some time now and I personally prefer it to the Piano 2.1 and certainly find it a good leap forward over the IQ DAC+.

The BOSS DAC is lovely sounding. It's realism and speed is simply superb. So what can be improved on? Well I would have said nothing much but once the isolator was in place I found a very nice step up in clarity and definition.

The timing is also more engaging. Everything snapping in to place and with an impressive bass improvement.

When I first switched on the bass was the most noticeable aspect which I really noticed but after a week, then after two weeks the sound just got more and more lively, more stable and more balanced.

Right now it's opened up so much. It's a much different thing to how it sounded initially so if you purchase one I'd suggest a few weeks burn-in for true lovelyness. [emoji3] [emoji173]️[emoji3]

For now I've had it running with 16bit/*.khz as I always believe in native sampling rates.

Saying that it plays all native bit/sample rates including DSF (SACD) files perfectly which is cool.

So my conclusion with this combo is you have to hear it... It's a magical sound. It's not forced in any way, it's balanced [emoji3], powerful [emoji48] yet delicate [emoji22] and therefore brings out emotion in music.

If you are lacking any of these aspects then I recommend it wholeheartedly.

With all of my reviews I make sure I play my benchmark albums throughout and I also never try to read anyone else's reviews beforehand as I find it can sometimes cloud my judgement. Any equipment that is changed between reviews will be noted for you.

I hope this is helpful to you and as always I'm open to questions. [emoji3]

Btw.. I'm running the latest moode software with the advanced kernel.



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