I just want to drop in a few words of praise for the team at Allo. I reported a problem with my USBridge Sig. and Sabita forwarded my message very quickly to Jestin in the engineering dept. His response was fast and he took me most efficiently through a number of tests on the device. The problem is being resolved, well done Allo!
Hi there.
I'm also interested having a look at the Revolution DAC. The feature list sounds promising.Allo managed to pick up pretty much everything that's being discussed over here at DIYA
regarding the Sabre DAC and added their own touch to it. Great. I do hope that if the Revolution DAC is build that revolutionary that it shouldn't matter anymore what transport gets attached as long as the bits are the same and the grounding scheme is properly done. I'd guess the ASR review will tell us soon. The ASR guy usually uses standard transports, standard USB cables asf.
If the Revolution DAC shows upstream dirt immunity, this would of course make the USBbridge kind of obsolete and would put that DAC really up high in the ranking.
BTW. Does anybody know if the DAC needs the USB 5V up? Most XMOS DACs require
the 5V attached. I was also wondering if in OSF Bypass 352k8/384 needs to be fed !?!?
Looking forward to see how things are developing. Good luck Allo. (Even a prel manual is out already!
)
I'm also interested having a look at the Revolution DAC. The feature list sounds promising.Allo managed to pick up pretty much everything that's being discussed over here at DIYA
regarding the Sabre DAC and added their own touch to it. Great. I do hope that if the Revolution DAC is build that revolutionary that it shouldn't matter anymore what transport gets attached as long as the bits are the same and the grounding scheme is properly done. I'd guess the ASR review will tell us soon. The ASR guy usually uses standard transports, standard USB cables asf.
If the Revolution DAC shows upstream dirt immunity, this would of course make the USBbridge kind of obsolete and would put that DAC really up high in the ranking.
BTW. Does anybody know if the DAC needs the USB 5V up? Most XMOS DACs require
the 5V attached. I was also wondering if in OSF Bypass 352k8/384 needs to be fed !?!?
Looking forward to see how things are developing. Good luck Allo. (Even a prel manual is out already!
)
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While I design with an AP , I find subjectivel , that low noise source matters .
You cannot see it on THD+N data ..but then again we know since 1940 that there is no correlation betwen THD+N and SQ.
Rev Dac does not need to have 5V USB on...its feed from dedicated DC power. However on both USB lines and DC lines we have a rather sophisticated filter for both CM and diff noise.
I would not say its immune , nothing is 100% (including single ended galvanic isolation) but to a degree it will filter all noise on USB and DC.
You cannot see it on THD+N data ..but then again we know since 1940 that there is no correlation betwen THD+N and SQ.
Rev Dac does not need to have 5V USB on...its feed from dedicated DC power. However on both USB lines and DC lines we have a rather sophisticated filter for both CM and diff noise.
I would not say its immune , nothing is 100% (including single ended galvanic isolation) but to a degree it will filter all noise on USB and DC.
U know. I am currently more than happy with the Khadas Toneboard, fed by a properly configured Pi4. Both Shanti powered. I do use an active iFi USB filter in between.
What I like about this setup is its simplicity.
I did first consider to buy one of the Soncoz DACs - basically the Khadas Toneboard Siblings. I do think the designer does excellent work. And I also like the case/wrapping.
Why am I leanings towards ALLO Revolution now
* better measurements ( at least that's what I expect)
* better architecture
* better price
* supercap buffered rails
* several tweak options
* synchronous clocking
* oversampling bypass
* handselected parts
* high degree of upstream immunity (to be proven)
* better software/firmware support
let's leave the lack of XLR and Bluetooth HD aside.
For sure, at least from what I've seen until now, you, Allo, guys, do a lot better on the SW/firmware side.
That's IMO important. It seems that the Revolution firmware update procedure is already working. Nice.
What I really don't like with the Soncoz and the Revolution are the external controls (and even remote control ).
That's IMO a huge step back from e.g. Katana. Many of us got used to control our DAC parameters via browers and apps. On DACs external controls or even IR remotes I consider leftovers from ancient times.
That's also been one of my main issues I had with IanCanadas Sabre DAC btw.
However.To be able to run (DOP/DSD) HW volume control from inside the playback control app the XMOS FW has to offer the feature to the OS.
And that seems a challenge for USB DACs.
Did you guys manage to introduce and offer at least the HW volume control via the USB driver? Soncoz failed on that one - last time I looked. And KTB offers an external XMOS based VC, which has nothing to do with the Sabre DAC VC (which would allow VC on DSD/DoP)
What I like about this setup is its simplicity.
I did first consider to buy one of the Soncoz DACs - basically the Khadas Toneboard Siblings. I do think the designer does excellent work. And I also like the case/wrapping.
Why am I leanings towards ALLO Revolution now
* better measurements ( at least that's what I expect)
* better architecture
* better price
* supercap buffered rails
* several tweak options
* synchronous clocking
* oversampling bypass
* handselected parts
* high degree of upstream immunity (to be proven)
* better software/firmware support
let's leave the lack of XLR and Bluetooth HD aside.
For sure, at least from what I've seen until now, you, Allo, guys, do a lot better on the SW/firmware side.
That's IMO important. It seems that the Revolution firmware update procedure is already working. Nice.
What I really don't like with the Soncoz and the Revolution are the external controls (and even remote control ).
That's IMO a huge step back from e.g. Katana. Many of us got used to control our DAC parameters via browers and apps. On DACs external controls or even IR remotes I consider leftovers from ancient times.
That's also been one of my main issues I had with IanCanadas Sabre DAC btw.
However.To be able to run (DOP/DSD) HW volume control from inside the playback control app the XMOS FW has to offer the feature to the OS.
And that seems a challenge for USB DACs.
Did you guys manage to introduce and offer at least the HW volume control via the USB driver? Soncoz failed on that one - last time I looked. And KTB offers an external XMOS based VC, which has nothing to do with the Sabre DAC VC (which would allow VC on DSD/DoP)
Grrr... one more time
Players (Moode , dietpi roon etc) have "hardware volume control ". In our case this is linked to internal (hardware VC) of ess9038 so even DSD will have hardware volume control
A few players have "software volume control" (Hq player for example ) in this case internal VC will not work
Players (Moode , dietpi roon etc) have "hardware volume control ". In our case this is linked to internal (hardware VC) of ess9038 so even DSD will have hardware volume control
A few players have "software volume control" (Hq player for example ) in this case internal VC will not work
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Hmm I thought I read somewhere that DSD wasn't available when OSF bypass was used so I hadn't tried it out yet, some posts I found say though that with OSF bypass 8xfS needs to be fed to the DAC so I've only sent it upsampled data via HQplayer, I will try out native sample rate later today.
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there's two choices not three. the thesycon driver is needed for dsd512 in windows. if you don't need dsd512 in windows, the xmos firmware id will have windows auto install a driver htat works up to dsd256, that's how I understand it anyway. also you can flash either xmos or thesycon firmware id anytime you want to switch using the firmware download on allo's page
ALL players have client based software volume control.
Not all players or Operating systems offer audio device based external control though.
The external control is usually also a software volume control offered by the
DAC chip itself (e.g. Revolution) or the surrounding MCUs (e.g. KTB).
The Sabre DAC comes with a special 32bit volume control though.
From what I understood they apply volume control after they convert
the DSD stream to PCM. Therefore you can do volume control in the
digital domain with Sabre.
But again. The DAC manufacturer needs to provide access to that Sabre
VC feature through the USB interface chip (firmware/driver).
Khadas and Soncoz (last time I talked to Ben - the designer - about it) fails on that one.
Good to hear that Allo supports it. Confirming my earlier comment and generally good
impression about the Allo software/firmware skills.
No to forget. Every OS maintainer (pCP, Moode, asf) offering external VC access, needs to implement
it on a per DAC basis. That's a hell lot of extra work. And that work is highly appreciated.
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