Hi, I’m looking for the best solution from Allo for a Roon endpoint, and I do apologize if this has been covered elsewhere - the information can be fairly overwhelming for a relative newbie like myself.
My Roon Core is a QNAP NAS, and I have had it running to an Allo Digi One (by Ethernet cable input) and then into a Denon AVR 4308CI receiver and then B&W 705 S2 speakers.
My Allo Digi One has just died after several years of awesome work. I need to buy a new solution.
Given the excellent value point of Allo, I was wanting to buy whatever their top-end solution would be. Would this be the DigiOne Signature Player? Does this have a DAC in it? Or is a DAC also needed? Do people get both a DigiOne AND Boss2 DAC, and somehow run them in tandem?
The DigiOne/Signature one provides a digital SPDIF output - so you need to connect it to a DAC.
The BOSS2 has a DAC - and so provides an analogue line output to connect to an amplifier.
312Elements
("The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.")
6
@lunchlake did you try a different power supply or micro sd card? They’re not impossible to kill, but it’s not the first thing I would suspect if there was a problem. Also all of those components are getting hard to purchase.
312Elements
("The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.")
7
I doubt you need a dac but it might be worth trying. It depends on your avr and I would guess that the majority of people using an avr are using a dedicated dac because the avr handles the digital to analogue conversion for you.
The Allo engineer had me test voltages across both RCA and BNC with a voltmeter (read ZERO), and determined it was a buffer chip issue. Said I could send it back to factory in India and he’s still not certain what the problem MIGHT be, or they’d give me 10% off a replacement DigiOne.
Okay, so it sounds like the Denon has a pretty good built-in DAC, and the DigiOne/Signature has got pretty good SQ as an endpoint. I just see people investing hundred/thousands of dollars in dedicated streamers/DAC’s and I thought that was in addition to a dedicated amp/receiver.
312Elements
("The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.")
10
I’m not necessarily saying you wouldn’t benefit from a separate DAC. There could be very substantial gains. You would run the RCA out of the DAC into an analogue input on your AVR (Tape, AUX, etc). It depends on what happens after that. Different AVR’s handle that differently and that’s where things can get a little hairy. Some AVR’s act as a straight preamp and pass the signal directly through. Some will convert that to digital so that they can do room correction or other DSP tasks that might be handled better entirely in the digital domain like you’re currently doing. I use a separate DAC for my 2 channel setup that has a dedicated amplifier and preamp, where I just use the digital output on my home theater setup. I don’t think it’s a matter of right vs wrong as much as it is a convenience thing. Personally I would avoid a scenario which resulted in double digital conversion, but there are lots of people that do it and are perfectly happy.