Another thing… Can anyone compare this dac agains the fine chinese dacs based on the same chip?
The smsl m8a and the topping d50 both have thr same chip and are highly regarded.
Enviado do meu SM-A320FL através do Tapatalk
Hi Bernd, I use one generic power supply (to power the pi)and one IfI iPSU to power the MCU (which you can also find on our shop).
Hi
with all the respect for Michelangello, and without knowing the Katana, if the power supply is as critical as the rest of the products Allo has not heard nor 50% of what katana can give.
99% of rapsberry pi audio users listening with headphones or computer speakers are likely to need no more. But I checked Allo dacs with quality linear power supply (between 200 and 300 euros only power supply) left in ridiculous teams of thousands of euros (dac and pc or streamer). If you have a best speakers you have here a winning solution against dacs/streamers of thousands of euros, I am completely sure. I expect a review with high level power supply.
One track, the linear power of my Philips Tda1541A streamer / dac is formed by Sellarz Audio ultra low noise power supplies and LDO regulators, if you add the transformers 800 euros (one third of the total cost) up to that point the power I think It is important.
Best
Hi Michelangelo,
How is the sound after the burn-in?
Regards
Adrian
There is a thread over at diyaudio (under digital line) on all ess9038q2m boards . The main guy there is Markw4 that helps people that bought far east implementations of the ess9038 and they modify them to sound better. We sent him a sample.
The question is not if Katana beats far east implementations (it does) but can it beat the heavily modified board that Mark himself has done? (he is using some type of ASRC Ak44137 , then feeds the ess9038 in DSD only . Of course he used good LDOs on most power rails and I think he has an external ± 15V .
First round of testing was a tie (betwen his heavily modified board and Katana) on a pair of good bookshelves. The listening panel will try to listen more and break the tie…
We suggested to listen on better speakers since I think that bookshelves are not meant for hi fidelity.
The 3 DAC they are using is a DAC 3 using ess9028PRO by benchmark (2100 EUR dac) and they report its better than both Katana and his unit. I have no problem with that finding.
PS. His mods brought the price of his hardware at least 250$ and of course many, many hours of work that he put into it.
Hi,
IMHO, the comparison between Raspberry Pi solutions and the stand alone devices shall be done considering the total price for the Raspberry Pi stack, including power supply, DC filters, additional boards (On/Off), case, memory card and display (if applicable).
Especially the power supply aspect can add considerable costs to the entire construction: stabilised power supplies can be found between 100-400 €.
We need to apply a “tinker” correction factor also because the final solution shall be living room capable. The device must be usable also by other family members in order to increase the acceptance. Most of us do not have an exclusive “man cave” at home.
Regards
Adrian
Totally agree, very sensible point (even if very hard to achieve using objective parameters)
In my case I don’t have a man cave nor desire it. I believe that is a very american concept. None of my friends has it or even something similar.
The headless solution the Pi gives us is just great IMHO.
Sit down, gran smartphone, turn on the amp and enjoy. Priceless.
If the Pi solutions get too expensive then they go for a different league and that would be hard to handle since expensive hifi comes with all that mambo jambo marketing that is required to sell same performance equipment 20 times more expensive.
Enviado do meu HTC_M10h através do Tapatalk
Well, this is not as complicated as it may sound.
1 - Living room compatibility:
- simplicity in use
- similar ease of use with the neighbouring devices
- power On/Of
- remote control
- a display showing the status and/or the play list: sometimes it is enough to have a small display (see AV receivers) or only status LEDs (see stereo amplifiers)
- easy trubleshooting
- error proof (what happens if somebody disconnect it by mistake): if you need to reinstall the system and apply the settings every time this is not acceptable
- Plug and play (similar to a microwave oven)
Brand name: 7 out of 7. Raspberry pi: 4 out of 7. Correction factor 7/4=1.75
2 - Tinker correction factor: purchase price vs re-sell price in 5 years. I will give the example for DIY loudspeakers because I am following these kind of constructions already several years. This applies not only to loudspeakers but also to electronics.
- Very known brand (B&W, ELAC, JBL etc.): initial price per piece (1000 EUR), price for reselling shortly after purchasing (up to 1 year) 90%, price after 5 years 75%, price after 10 years 50%, price after 20 years 30-40%
- DIY loudspeakers with excellent sound, comparable with much more expensive brand named devices: initial 1000 EUR and after 5-10 years use maybe 10-20% (if you can find someone)
- if you are curios about electronics, try Technics, Burmester or Marantz on Ebay or local sellers.
Brand name after 5 years: 75%
Raspberry pi solution after 5 years: 15%. Correction factor 5
Total correction factor: Compatibility*Tinker=8.75
Conclusion: we need to compare the Raspberry Pi solutions with brand names with brand names with a 8.75 time higher price.
If we do not plan to sell any of the raspberry pi solutions we can ignore the tinker factor. Nevertheless we need to take into consideration that there will be always better DACs which we want to try.
This is of course a very simplistic way of thinking.
Regards
Adrian
I do agree that it would help to add a ‘tinker factor’ to determine in which ‘range’ one should look to compare against.
Determining such a factor is very debatable 
You use speakers and other components like amps, etc. to determine ‘value’, but IMHO that is the wrong category of products. Why? These categories have products that stay ‘the same’ for many years and do not evolve as fast the pieces we are talking about here.
Looking at the current pace of evolution of parts as the DAC chip and its implementation environment, the streamer and streaming protocols, transport and quality of source material/files (like hi-res PCM and DSD,DxD, etc.), I think that brand devices in this area have a much shorter life-span or at least value-span than established components like speakers and amps.
And this fast evolving area is exactly the area where the tinker solution like a Pi based solution brings benefits. Instead of a single brand device that covers streaming, protocols, ease-of-use, DAC, power, etc. all in one, and might be successful in a certain way or time-span, the flexibility to exchange/upgrade parts brings a solution that can quickly grow/keep-up with new possibilities.
At the end, it is off course up to the end-user where the preference is. For some people, they are quite happy to get a good brand device and happily use it for multiple years as their usage and source-library stays largely the same. But for those that like to keep up, try new things to hear if they matter for them and trying to improve their listening experience without buying new ‘expensive’ brand devices each year just because of an improvement of one of the internal pieces (updated DAC chip, support for newer USB inputs, higher sampling rates, new protocols, etc.).
For me, I think that this current era of fast improvements are mainly driven by 2 area’s:
- better quality source materials; recording studio’s and distribution parties recognize that better quality source materials can now be played back at home so a demand for higher quality recordings/files is rising
- new distribution ways of source materials; in the ‘old days’, the (SA-)CD or other medium sort of fixed the way materials got distributed. Now with everything going digital, ‘files/streams’ are the new standard but we are still finding out some of the details to see if we can find somekind of standard like CD was back in the day. And probably, it will never go back to just 1 standard
So back to the tinker factor, we should consider what type of pieces we like to compare. If it are ‘established’ parts like amps, sure we need to have a higher factor. But when looking at DAC’s, streamers or even power supplies (which in the past wasn’t a category of its own, but just a characteristic of good products) I think a different factor applies.
Compatibility wise; I would argue that a tinker solution has better compatibility over time than a brand solution when looking at 3-5 years.
Buy-vs-sell price wise; for the parts involved here I don’t think the sell price of a brand vs the DIY solution here is as high as suggested as the brands will become cheaper faster due to compatibility issues.
I would say looking at the time-span of 3 years, a factor between 3 and 5 would be more fitting.
But as @michelangelo said, it is very hard to determine objective parameters 
thats actually a very good way of looking at it .
However Katana + RPI + PSUs are about 400$ lets say.
You are looking at resale value and compare it with a system thats 8 times more or even to match SQ it you will spend at least 1100$
If you look simply from a enjoyment point of view , for 400$ (or less if you have the RPI already) you will get a lot of HIFI , open source software that its updated regularly and a very rich community around it .
In the end , the decision is yours.
Hi,
Even as a 450 € stack, including the RPi, it is a very good value for the money if we take into consideration the absolute performance.
And taking into consideration that we speak about a DAC and not loudspeakers or amps, the correction factors should be smaller - I accept my mistake and I must confess, that it was also provocative from my side.
On the other side, I see the RPi-based systems not only as enjoyment devices but as devices which bring a real added value to the personal life quality. Not only my life but also for my family. Tinkering is also a part of my family since I don’t want my kids to have two “left hands” later. Nevertheless, devices for day-to-day use must be beatiful, robust and simple starting with un-boxing and finishing with updates and support - like a normal internet radio.
I see the Volumio systems on their way to fool-proof solutions and I hope these discussions will trigger the optimisation steps required for the further development.
Some features still need to be implemented and, by the way, I would really like to provide my input to the developers (Volumio and Allo).
The RPi systems do not need to be tinker solutions. With the proper features they will become acceptable for the HiFi industry - also Android is a Linux version and powers meanwhile TVs, multi media devices and much more (tinker correction factor=1). The closer we get to this factor, the more acceptance and sales volume we will see.
Best regards,
Adrian
Adrian , I fully agree.
We will try very hard to make tour products become more and more hardware that can be used by anyone.
Meanwhile…
Enjoying the katana
Single, double or tripple PSU configuration?
Can you compare it with another RPi DAC?
If I understand well, you are listening three different configurations at the same time in three different locations ? How does it work?
Dominique
Just allow me to give a link to the doc talking about multiroom in volumio https://volumio.github.io/docs/FAQs/Audio_Output.html
To be simple, when you several devices running volumio, you’ll see them in the webUi and you can remote it from here.
What component changes are underway for v1.2?
Hello everyone
just a small update. Behind the scenes we are working hard to improve the Katana and bring it to a higher level in SQ
First , we changed some low pass filters that were from datasheet. I am happy to report that all hi frequency is gone (fatiguing sound )
Second we incorporated a pre IV stage filtering. Katana had a pretty good instrument separation , but this mod bring is to another level… separation depth and any "digitalis " is completely gone
So please allow a few more days for our internal testing
Strangely! Using my Katana and volumio… sometimes whever I play a file or stream. the mjsic starts to sound like smurf…
Michaelangelo, what can be the iaaue here?