Has anyone heard about what’s going on with Allo? The USBridge is out of stock, and there’s no indication of when they will be available again. I’ve reached out to them and haven’t gotten a reply.
Maybe this is a good sign and we are about to see a new product. If not, then they really need to work on their website and at a minimum ask if a customer would like to be notified when a product is back in stock.
Allo is really great at hardware but not so good at anything else. If they had a reasonably good marketing person they would be so much better at customer communications. I’ll take great hardware with poor marketing over great marketing and poor hardware every day. Hint: PS Audio.
I got mine last week. so it would seem they are shipping them out as they become available.
I personally just need quality, reliable endpoints. I would prefer Sonore products, but I would like to deploy 6 more zones, which puts Sonore and SoTM on the expensive side of things. From what I have read once the USBridge is deployed, they are pretty much stable. I have read that upgrading them can occasionally cause an issue, but, for me at least, that’s something I can handle. If I were a dealer I would steer clear of any RPi solution for a majority of customers.
I recently sold my USBridge in favor of a Sonore product. The SQ is better. But you are correct, the cost is higher. If I had six to buy I guess I would go with Allo.
I have a microrendu on my main system in the living room. It is quite good with a completely noticeable ad verifiable improvement. I may purchase another for my headphone rig. The rest of the house is more casual listening. I’m hoping a less costly solution will be just what those locations will need. They are all vintage Marantz systems with various DAC’s. I really like refurbing them and feeding them with state of the art audio.
I bought a B stock microRendu and saved a few bucks. If they still have them it might be a good alternative.
Thanks for pointing out the B-Stock. I looked at them last night. I was hoping to get an idea of how long the wait for the USBridge was going to be. I did hear somewhere along the way that Allo had something new in the works. I don’t know if the current USBridge out of stock state is just a post holiday shortage or is it a sign of something coming.
Around Christmas they were out of stock also. They informed a few days later. Maybe the USBridge is too popular. 
I personally am torn. I’d love to see something new from them, but tried and true is attractive.
You mean PS audio is poor hardware? Could you please expand on this?
I could but I would get fried by the PSA fans. If you want to see what is happening with PSA just go on to their forums and take a look at the DAC and memory player postings. I owned both and sold them because of all the software bugs which still exist to this day.
How many problems vs satisfied customers?
Does that really matter to the people with issues?
Interesting… I did hear their products in various setups, but never had direct long term experience with them. Even so I held them in high regard.
So you say, the issues were more software related than sound quality?
My feeling is that unfortunately many brands in audio suffer (and much more so due to size) with issues even many smartphone manufacturers suffer: software is hard. Same goes for UI, UX, the whole experience.
This is why we use Roon i guess. I didn’t go for any player / streamer / dac all in one as I have had quite a few either owned or testing for a few days (from few hundred euros to many thousands) and without exception the overall experience was poor. Don’t even get me started with the top of the line Aurender issues :))
So yes… Allo’s products are an absolute steal for their cost. I bumped into this thread as I’m also looking to add a Digione and Usbridge to my system, I’m really curious how this will stack up against the sotm sms-200 ultra.
The biggest issue isn’t that it’s hard — I would argue that the biggest issue is that it’s not a priority. Most companies simply doesn’t get software development and that it takes a long time commitment. Even really big companies still think it’s something like: Get a team to code the thing and then it’s “done”. 
a slight exaggeration but unfortunately holds a lot of truth (if you’re not a tech gigant).
Probably why in audio too few companies offer new versions for anything from UI to firmware. It’s cheaper not to.
It’s should do as its an indication that they are a minority and underwrites the overall quality of the product that they own.
Obvious really.
That is funny. Because the number of people with problems is in the minority then they don’t matter. I get it now. Thanks.
Interesting interpretation, wrong assumption. The reassurance of the quality would mean they are a minority and that there is a solution through the manufacturer
I knew that when I mentioned PS Audio as a trouble spot that I was putting the cross hairs on myself. Fact is that I was once an owner of both the DirectStream DAC and the Memory Player so I speak from experience. They were so bug riddled that I ended up selling them both at a significant loss of money just to get rid of them. If you ever went to the PSA web site and read through their forum you would see that there are lots of people complaining about the same bugs over and over. The DAC sounded great. The fact that I had to reboot it every day made me move on to something more reliable. PSA continues to do code releases but never seems to cure the product. Now they have discontinued the Memory Player and they want to build a new DAC. Same people doing to firmware though means more of the same. You think that because there are not more complaints that people are not experiencing problems? Take a look at Audiogon and see how many of the DirectStream DACs are for sale. Silent minority giving up and selling.