I don’t deny the numbers are encouraging but this is an early board. Looking at it by comparison with the HFB equivalent (hifiberry.com/shop/boards/h … -digi-pro/), the Allo board is frantically overpopulated and doesn’t yet manage to be HAT-compliant. I like the idea of competing products as being good for all of us but this one’s not ready for the Big Time yet…
Not sure if you are right about the 2 products being comparable and competing. Although they both are SPDIF boards for a Pi, I have the feeling that the Digi One is intended for a more demanding group of customers that might be willing to sacrifice some ‘handy’ items (like HAT compliant, etc.) in favor of some more HiFi features. I can think of feeding the board with a separate power lines and maybe even separate wires for the I2S to be placed elsewhere instead of on top of the Pi.
The Digi+ Pro does already have the option for external power (hifiberry.com/build/documen … er-supply/), and I2S is available on P4, if you want to go that way. Still looking at the two pictures and marvelling at the complexity of the Allo board…
Imagine you have a spidif output…in fact a spidif output is nothing but the DATA (from i2s) where the clock its embedded…then the spidif output becomes 2x the DATA output (for each DATA you have exactly 2 clocks on spidif) and some other bits needed for SPIDIF stream (but still 2x DATA or rather 2x BCLK from i2s)
Now…this BCLK is in direct correlation with MCLK (in fact its an exact division of MCLK 2/4 not sure about 8)
So SPIDIF stream (2x BCLK of i2s) is happily (and jiterly ) coming out. Now using fliflops we are realigning EACH clock of SPIDIF (2x bclk) with a higher speed/jitter free MCLK
Thus the SPIDIF stream is perfectly jitter free (or rather = mclk jitter) and the jitter we published its the jitter of the SPIdif stream (0.6ps)
Have I explained clearly ?
ps. From what we know…absolutely no 10k EUR transporter/Spidif cleaner/Oil snake in alu case against RFI + vodoo capacitors…nothing is coming even close to our device. If you have a spifid receiver, this is the top game .
(from published and public online data)
Ordered a DigiOne at the EU store - they are up for orders now - expected dispatch - June 14. Looking forward to try it with my Nuprime DAC-9. Let us see(hear) if it is worth the extra $.
What would be the best ‘Hi-Fi’ way to power the DigiOne?
The obvious way is just through the RPi GPIO pins, is it only using the 3.3v or also/only the 5v?
I noticed on the pictures that their seems to be 2 points that look like contacts to solder a direct power input onto. Is that correct? And does it need 3.3/5/other input voltage?
If/when powered directly, does it ignore the power input from the RPi, or does that input have to be blocked or some otherway to disconnect it from the RPi?
Will it also power the RPi when powered directly like the Kali does?
And could the power source than be something like the Allo PSU, iFi, DIAL audio, SBooster or a DIY toroidal transformer?
Interested to hear thoughts and suggestion and official statements
Basically analog (DAC) vs digital (digione) boards PSU.
Analog is very sensitive to power fluctuation or noise. Digital , much less.
Digione was designed to be powered by a isolated DC/DC convertor with a 100Khz sw frequency and then we used PI filters in front and after to reduce the noise by 30db.
From there, we take power for each stage…and each stage has LDO + another LPF depending on what we clean. For example on oscillators and buffers we use a PI filters with an inductor on air core that keep its inductance up to Ghz range. (since you have 44Mhz oscillators + harmonic noise)
Basically what I am saying we do not recommend to replace our DC/DC convertor with your own solution. Digione wont improve.
Looks like you’ve made amazing device, but there is one flaw in your products. Would be great to have access to GPIO pins to add LCD screen or IR receiver in project like with Hifiberry boards. Of course you still can use GPIO expansion shield but it’s better if the i2s signal will be as short as possible. Hope you will add the place for additional GPIO pins in your next releases. Cheers and go on!
It sounds really impressive! There is just one thing I’m not sure about…
From reading the announcement, it seems that you need a “special” version of Volumio to make this device work. I’m a little nervous about that. I hate to buy something that only works with one particular version of Linux and/or audio player.
Will this device have drivers available in other Linux flavours like most of the Raspberry add-on boards do? and all you do to activate such a device is to add the appropriate overlay option to the config file.
It already works with recent linux kernels but as Volumio currently is using an older kernel, they created a special version with a newer kernel so some newer device like Hifiberry Pro devices and the DigiOne can be used already. I expect that in the near future, the main Volumio branch will receive a newer kernel as well so we no longer have to depend on this one off special edition.