Hello
I am Vladimir from St.-Petersburg, Russia, an audio enthusiast and audiophile. I have been using Volumio on Allo’s DigiOne player (based on Raspberry PI3) for several months. My “system” for that is Synology DS216ii+ NAS -> DigiOne player -> Benchmark DAC1 USB (over SPDIF) -> different over-ear headphones from which I prefer Fostex TH900 and Grado PS500e for that setup. I did notice a significant sound improvement of DigiOne player after several weeks of its use. Practically no problems with Volumio, except that finding the proper way to enter the path to the NAS at setup required several attempts. The other slightly annoying thing is that changing headphones requires a full reboot. Most probably it is a combination of the Benchmark and DigiOne player. I use Volumio’s Android application to control the DigiOne.
I recently purchased Allo’s USBridge in the hope to use my excellent JKDAC32 with it but unfortunately it did not work. Neither it worked with Benchmark DAC1 USB. I tried both Volumio and DietPi (O!MPD and Squeezebox Lite). Fortunately, my two other DACs from the Volumio compatibility list worked; iFi DSD nano and Chord 2Qute. I immediately heard an improvement of iFi nano with USBridge feeding Audioengine A2 active speakers in comparison to a HP PC with JRiver as a streamer.
I am listening to a temporary setup while writing this post which consists of NAS -> USBridge -> Chord 2Qute -> Teac HA-501 -> Sennheiser HD600/Grado PS500e. It sounds pleasant and is quite comparable to my “reference” headphone setup: NAS -> Lenovo ThinkPad x230 (with JRiver) -> JKDAC/2Qute -> Graham Slee Solo Ultra Linear DE.
Congratulations to Volumio on a reasonable product!
It will be interesting to compare excellent Allo’s streamers using Volumio with my 10 times more expensive streamers Yamaha NP-S2000 and NAD M50 in my “regular” (i.e. not for headphones) setups.