Thanks... I'll try to cook something like that. Until then, try out MoOd.

Thanks! I actually do use Allo Shanti PS these days, but don't want to overwhelm viewers with too much info at once... I'll make a video about it too as it easily defeated my own LPS and iFi iPower. .

@@iiWiReviews already looking forward to seeing it. Good work.

Using RoPieeeXL I used to playe 192kHz/24bits without any problems while I still had it.

I use RoPieeeXL to stream Tidal and Qobuz via mconnect app.

Thanks for the praise! Both DAC and streamer improve their sound quality with a good power supply. In your case it would be easiest to simply try rotating and listening which one reacts more to better PS. But in the end, I would probably find a good LPS with two power rails and connect both to it.

Hi. I have never tested iPhone in that capacity. When it comes to Android phones, I have tried few. They're not particularly good source in my experience when it comes to default music apps and streaming apps such as Tidal, Qobuz, etc. It's because Android resamples audio internally. If dedicated apps such as Hibby player or USBplayer are used to send bit-perfect signal to the DAC, things get better. If somebody knows how this work with iPhones, please share...

PI2AES

Yes, I'm using Shanti with it and it did bring an improvement over my previous iFi iPower. Also, OSes do sound a bit different (I have no idea why) and for that I prefer RoPieeeXL that's somehow cleanest sounding to my ears.

@@iiWiReviews can you show us how to install Roopiee on RPi4?

IMHO I think that PiCorePlayer is the best sounding OS. Maybe because it operates entirely in Ram.

I have an Allo Boss and love it. Using a usb battery rather than the standard Pi wall wort helps, too, or an upgraded linear power supply like he mentioned.

The Allo Katana DAC is probably the best DAC you can buy when on a "budget." I power mine with multiple power supplies. I had to buy a Matrix Audio Element-X to get a significant upgrade.

Hi, I have never used any macbook. The word around the web is that they do have cleaner USB outs than the average laptop of other brands with Windows. However, if I had to make an educated guess, I would bet on Pi+DigiOne to provide an improvement compared to macbook.

I too have about 2TB of Lossless music on a hard drive, plus I want to add Tidal and Spotify streaming. What is the best value streamer I can get that will connect to the i2S LVDS input of my Topping D70s DAC? How to get i2S from a Raspberry Pi4?

@@navinadv You can get it with the application that I use, Moode, on the website and forum you will easily find all the answers. And the hat that I use for the raspberry 4 8Gb, you can find it in the famous Chinese sales page, doing the search "raspberry pi AK4118" will come up.

@@juliancrun which website and forum? I tried searching that Chinese page but it did not show and AK4118 HAT board for the RPi4.

@@juliancrun ok I found “AK4118 Coaxial HIFI Sound Card DAC I2S DSD Digital Broadcasting 32BIT PCM384 DSD128”. Is this what you used?

@@navinadv Yes.

Pi + DigiOne + Linear Power supply should edge Bluesound Node 2i. But I haven't tested it personally... It's coming from a friend I trust.

Thank you for your reply, I'm boring you with another question, to feel the difference in sound quality between the two options, which must be value of the stereo system. I have an entry level one (amplifier cambridge audio cxa 60 & dac topping dx3 pro v2 & speakers q acoustics 3020i). I think an asset for node 2i, is that it has Tidal Connect.

@@Shtruck I can't tell this for certain, but I believe that even if you notice the difference, it wouldn't be crucial to sacrifice the comfort and all-in-one solution of Node 2i. I'm just personally wounded that way to strife for that last 1% at any cost. :)

Thank you, for your help. 🙏

Thanks for the input. I actually took it seriously and tried to improve it trough better editing in the last video: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/d5ukobhhqN2WnYk.html Hope it's better now. :)

@@iiWiReviews Yes, I know. I’ve already watched your latest video. Much improved noise control. Fantastic job! Now all of us Uber audiophiles can breathe a sigh of relief. ✌️✌️✌️

Thanks! In that case the quality of the HAT DAC will play the biggest role in the final sound quality. But I haven't tested those type of HATs yet.

@@iiWiReviews Hope you do so, soon! I have a couple of good hi fi systems,, and I would like to be able to stream to them via my wi-fi network! The Raspberry Pi route would appear to be a good solution to mordenize/revitalize these setups! Thanks!

SPDIF can output 192kHz so no problem there, Qobuz goes in full quality. Most DACs also accept up to 192kHz on SPDIF.

@@iiWiReviews i actually have no dac as i have a technics sl g700. Cheers!

I'll test that soon...

Allo say this about Toslink "Optical had to go… by definition it has a jitter of 4ns. That’s 4000ps. We simply removed it. However, optical has galvanic isolation so we took the decision to use a digital isolator instead that separates the outputs from both RPI and WM8805."

@@dreddguy6454 Hi Dreddguy, would you please share the link where you found this info on Allo's findings about toslink issues etc. Thank you.

Not really... But if I fined a seller with reasonable shipping rate to my country (somewhat of a problem last few months) I'll try to make a room for it in the budget.

He used both DigiOne and 2i only as streamers with a Chord 2Qute acting as a DAC.

@@iiWiReviews Thank you for the clarification.

This device would go between the Node and the DAC. Not sure how much improvement you would get, the Node is not especially well regarded for sound quality

@@joshua43214 Between? Is it not a replacement streamer? Either this or the Node2i for streaming? And I mean if you only use the Node2i as a source/transport and use the coax out into a amp with a better DAC, will you still hear diffrences between streamers?

@@toffe2ventil Generally speaking, you should put a bridge (also called a renderer) between the player and the DAC for best audio quality. I have an extremely good player (an i9 based server running Roon core and HQPlayer), and an extremely good DAC (A Matrix Audio Element-x), and it sounds very much better with my Sonore OpticalRendu as a bridge even though the streamer in my DAC is world class. So, all that said, the DigiOne is a bridge, and is meant to convert ethernet/wifi/usb into spdif. It will also function as a player, and is probably a better player than the Node, but it will function best when it is used purely as a renderer. Like I said, the Node is not very well regarded. My AVR came with Blusound (NAD T-758), and the Blusound is not especially good. My first experience with Allo was the DigiOne into my AVR, and it made a really huge improvement. This led to me trying the Allo Katana DAC, and the Allo USBridge, both of which are extremely good for the money. I got pretty good quality (by audiophile standards) repurposing an old computer to run Daphile as the player, an Odroid for a NAS, and using the USBridge with a Katana DAC (4 power supplies). This is as good as it gets unless you are ready to drop about 5K to upgrades imo. This is likely of higher fidelity than your speakers and amp, so be warned you might end up going down a pretty expensive rabbit hole...

I haven't tried Pi 4 but I'll probably dive in at one moment and test its USB outs that are supposed to be better. One Shanti is enough.

I never tried the RPi 4, most of the reviews I have seen say the RPi 3 is better sounding. This makes sense because it runs cooler and so has less thermal noise. The USBridge is a very nice device, especially when used with a good power supply, it was a significant improvement over the DigiOne as a bridge (my DAC is extremely good on both USB and spdif inputs). I used the USBridge as an RPi 3 upgrade with an Allo Katana DAC for a while as well. Allo products are very good for the money. If you want a really good bridge, I recommend the Sonore OpticalRendu - it is a whole different world provided yo have a really good DAC.

@@joshua43214 2 people told me that they find the USBridge too bright. I was thinking of using the USBridge Signature with the DigiOne Signature and Shanti power supply to build a media server that can read music from a USB hard drive. I was told the RPI 4 might be a better option from a sound quality perspective. The DAC used by my friends were Topping D70s and Gustard X16.

@@navinadv The USBridge is the USBridge sig, they also make a thing called the USBridge Signature Player which is just the USBridge in a case, and ready to play. What people refer to as a RPi, is actually a development board, and has a built in break out board. The compute module is the RPi with no break out features and is intended for enterprise use. The USBridge is essentially a fancy break out board for the compute module, so it has nice power supplies and isolated usb and ethernet (both are kinda sketchy on the RPi 3 and 4). So while they market it as an ethernet bridge, it will do everything an RPi will, only better. They do make a DigiOne and a DigiOne Sig, and I think they might have some other upgraded "sig" models, but the USBridge has always been the "sig" version. The DigiOne only has spdif output. The USBridge only has USB output. So, USBridge will output very nice USB to a really crappy USB hub on the RPi, which will use I2S to the DigiOne, which will only output to a coaxial spdif. So, if your DAC accepts USB, get a USBridge, connect a low power drive and your done. If you DAC only take spdif, put a DigiOne on the USBridge, attach drive, and your done. I played with these various combos for a couple of years, all sound good, some damn good. I never got good sound over USB or Ethernet into the RPi, wifi was always the best. For the USBridge, ethernet was marginally better than wifi, bit only if I could keep the cat6 cable away from the power cords. I preferred Volumio as the OS, mostly because the app was decent and sound is very good. The RPI3 will upsample to 192/24 very well, but SQ degrades above that. In general, I find that anything more than 192/24 is diminishing returns anyways. using an old computer running Daphile made an even bigger improvement. If you have a spare computer, using the USBridge as a bridge wont cost you anything, but some headache so worth giving it a try. Maybe swap in a fresh drive for Daphile so you don't lose your windows install. you can even experiment with different OS's and player combos, the USBridge will give you tremendous flexibility. My current system runs Debian 10 Server, HQPlayer embedded, and Roon core. This set up is not for the faint of heart, there is very little support so you need a good Linux skills or Godly Google Fu. Roon turns out to be the second best media player I have tried (I think I have tried all of them) after Daphile. The addition of HQPlayer Embedded plus absolute stability of the whole system makes it very worth while. Lastly, the RPI 4 runs much hotter than the RPI 3, so you will get an increased noise floor from that alone, and RPi is not known for mitigating noise. You will get more power, but what do you need it for? If you want a more powerful player to do 512/24 or convert to DSD, then use something at least as powerful as a Celeron, though you will need an i5 minimum for DSD conversion.

@@joshua43214 I learned more from this single post of yours than all the reading I have done about this subject. Thank you. The one part I did not get was when you said “The USBridge will output really good USB to a really Crappy USB on the RPI”. I was thinking of using the USBridge and DigiOne with a Shanti power supply. Where does the RPI come in? Thanks. Which of these statements are correct? 1. USBridge Signature will give me USB out from RPI 3 or RPI 4 compute module 2. DigiOne Signature will give me SPDIF (over Coax or BNC) out from RPI 3 or RPI 4 compute module 3. If I stack USBridge Signature and DigiOne Signature then the resulting box will give me USB or SPDIF out 4. Neither USB nor Ethernet offers good sound from an RPI 5. RPI 4 is not powerful enough for DSD 256/512 or MQA, for these formats I will need an i5 6. RPI 4 will generate more heat and hence more noise than RPI 3 so for 192/24 RPI 3+ is enough, RPI offers no significant performance gain as it can’t do MQA or DSD 256/512 anyway 7. Volumio is good as it has a nice interface and a Celeron or better machine running Volumio will offer better quality via USB than RPI. I happen to own a 8 year old ASUS mini PC with a Celeron and 4GB RAM. Would that be more suitable for a music player? The original came with a 500GB hard drive and 2GB of RAM but I upgraded it to 6TB hard drive and 4GB of RAM. Can one format the hard drive with Volumio and use this? www.asus.com/in/Mini-PCs/VivoPC_VM40B/ For my DAC i am thinking to get either a Gustad X16 or Topping D70s. My friends are happy with theirs and the DACs have both USB and SPDIF and I2S LVDS as well.

DigiOne nije DAC već digitalni interfejs koji suzbija šum i smetnje iz signala. Tako da njega izbaci iz ove grupe za sad. Od ostalih, a po tome što pominješ, ja bih išao na E30.

RopieeeXL OS I'm using can stream MQA at the highest quality... But your DAC has to be able to unfold it (there is no software unfolding here). Gapless playback also works from mconnect app that I'm using, you just have to enable it. Regarding Chromecast Audio, I never compared them so can't comment on that. Some sources say this is better.

I did it but Signature wasn't long enough with me so I didn't have a chance to film it. To put it simply, Signature digs out more tiny details and atmosphere from the recording. Plain DigiOne sounds a bit closed and less resolving in comparison.

@@iiWiReviews Thank you very much for immediate reply!

I did try several cables ranging from few bucks to few hundred bucks. They can make pretty significant difference.

@@iiWiReviews thanks for the quick answer. So, would you still say that RbPi will sound better with DigiOne daughterboard, even compared with RbPi over USB with quality cable?

@@tomislavpopinjac8232 In my opinion DigiOne with a modest cable (let's say decent Canare or Belden... just not something that's $1 from AliExpress) sounds better than USB with any cable (Intona Premium, FTA Callisto, etc.)... And only when a good USB regenerator is introduced (Intona, iFi, etc.) USB becomes an equal contender to DigiOne... than it's a tough battle and a good cable can tip it to one side or the other. I chose this route for myself because a USB regenerator is more expensive, to begin with, then it needs two decent USB cables... And I can only cry over my modest budget just thinking about it. :)

“HiFi USB cable” ok now I know this is the side of audiophillia that’s complete and utter bullshit. Really? High quality usb? There is no difference between and Amazon basics usb and whatever hundreds of dollars bullshit you’re buying. Y’all are high on some modern day snake oil my god,

This board only has digital out. It is RCA physically but it is Digital SPDIF RCA, not an analogue one. I chose it because I'm already using great external DAC (that no analog board for Pi can match). That said, if you want to keep things simple and more affordable too, DAC HAT with analog RCA outputs do exist for Raspberry Pi... I just didn't try them.

I used Denafrips Ares II... Barely afforded it but I'm loving it. :) Khadas is certainly a great DAC and tremendous value... It would work very nice with this combination.

on MacOS you can easily using Airplay. Not sure about Windows though

@@zyghom That's neat. AirPlay uses lossless compression too. I hope there is an equivalent for Windows. Was looking into NDI Codec, but it is really meant for Video and adds some minor compression...

It looks like it might be possible with: TuneBlade App (Windows PC) + Shairport on Raspberry Pi (AirPlay Reciever)

@@Timmy111888 that is how I watch on my projector: hdmi from Mac to projector and audio via Airplay from Mac to my raspberry streamer, then dac then amp then speakers.

@@zyghom No Video-Audio Sync issues? I'd also add a separate preamp after dac like Topping A90 to increase audio quality even further.

Yes, how can I help you?