…an explanation of the weak mamboberry would be the reason, that i had chosen software volume control!?
Jens,
I have compiled a new kernel for tinkerboard (=primo) based on version 4.4.71 (prior to Asus’s major upgrade to 4.4.132+).
This is the version for Primo where the issues were not showing yet.
Michelangelo will check this one and compare it on Monday with the one you used for testing, we will let you know …
BR - Gé
1 Like
@Jens, please get in touch with Michelangelo for the latest image with our own kernel (not sure if it is 2.515/16 or 17 ), the I2S frequencies are now correct.
Of course, we are waiting for Asus/ Rockchip to fix the issue in their own kernel. We only undid what they “fixed”.
find power consumption of soundcheck devices here:
(playing volumio, lan connected)
RPI3 ~1,65W
RPI3+ ~2,1W
allo isolator 1.2 ~ 0,2W
katana 1.2 ~ 5,2W
applepi recklocker ~0,15W
applepi dac ~3,4W
piano2.1&kali ~0,9W
primo&tinkerboardS ~3,5W
DACBerry pro ~0,45W
DACBerry one+ ~0,05W
IQaudiO DAC pro ~0,03W
Mamboberry HD+ ~ 0,05W
Mamboberry LS ~0,15W
kali ~0,4W
Terraberry2 ~0,7W
Boss 1,2 ~0,05W
using the YZX Studio USB 3.0 Power Monitor (red)
Hall Jens
Thank you for organizing the sound check.
It’s amazing that, according to your listening tests, the boards are so close to each other.
But I am also surprised that the BOSS is not among the best. The BOSS was hailed everywhere and voted Best Implementation of the PCM5122.
I only have the comparison between Hifiberry DAC + Pro and Boss.
I am currently using the BOSS with the ifi-Audio iPower power supply. (separate supply for RPI and BOSS with 2x LT3042 from Linear (diyinhk.com)) With the PSU it seems to me, it sounds fantastic! Such a power supply is a MUST.
I am very uncertain, did I buy the wrong one with the BOSS?
regards
rost21A
My 2 cents: you did not buy the wrong DAC. You have one of the best price\quality ratio you could get. If you notice the DACs which are among the top cost many times the BOSS, so it’s not comparable.
Hi Michelangelo
Thank you for the clarification, that’s a good thing and it helps eliminate my insecurity.
Yes, it seems to me, big improvements can be achieved with a good low-noise power supply. My experiences are incredible. I think this is not very different with expensive devices … We’ll all agree on that 
regards
rost21A
I also wanted to thank Jens for arranging a soundcheck again. I was really thrilled to see if we could hear out any differences between all these DACs. The first round with all the ES9023 based boards was really exhausting. All the same DAC but different implementations. Many of them sounded almost similar and we needed some cycles to be able to determine the ones which sounded best. Glad that my RPI2+CurrymanDAC+2xPSU made it to the next round beside the mamboberry where it had to compete with all the other DACs. 
While it was really difficult and exhausting to listen to it trying to get the differences in sounding, mostly only present in nuances, there were also some DACs which sounded not good and harsh to the ear and overall auditorial experience. Over all the years building Speakers, AMPs and so on you develop some kind of expertise and also sounding preference.
So there is on the one hand the analytical approach to see which equipment sounds best and also the subjective “feeling in the gut” approach. I anted to clarify that this testing has a huge subjective component. So don’t get this List as a definitive “This are the best DAC&SBC combos”. Use this list as a rough guidance for which board you should look for and then try to test them with your own equipement and Music. I am really sure that every person would get to a more or less slightly different result than we did at this sound check.
But there were also some examples where we all agreed that the sound from the DAC/SBC combos sound kinda off or bad. This was e.g. with the Katana SQ which kinda changed the playback speed. But as we see thats a bad software implementation which is allready to be resolved by the developer.
All I wanted to say that it was impressive to see the different opinions from the attendees at this sound check and also to see that in some cases our opinions were kinda same when it comes to extraordinary bad or good experiences.
And to all those in this thread who are developing those kind of boards and giving it to Jens to being able to compete with other DACs: “Thank you for your help and a shout out to you giving us the opportunity” . 
…
Glad to see that you don’t need to spend hundrets of dollars for the hi-fi experience.
And also Thank you Jens for the nice , insightfull evening with likeminded people. 
Greetings
Ron
Hi everybody!
Can you please elaborate on the specific problems that occured during the test of Katana SQ and what actions Allo is taking to address them?
i think, ronson has confused the DAC ‘which kinda changed the playback speed.’ because of the ‘bad software implementation’.
The volumio primo was board with the problem of ‘changed playback speed’ . This was fixed in the next release of volumio for tinkerboard.
my explanation that Katana SQ disappointed with a diluted, to mixed sound is that it could be because no ‘burn in time’ was done due to the late arrival of the board.
Anyway. We are curious about the Katana Sound Quality Stage board. We are going to compare it in a small soundcheck with the THD Version on January, 10. 8PM. Stay tuned…
Thanks for you reply! I will probably have received (and burnt in) mine by that time, so I will be awaiting to compare your findings with mine!
… we compared last thursday the Katana ‘pure THD’ with the Katana ‘Sound Quality’ in a small (3 people blind test) soundcheck at my home.
The third candidate was mamboberry HD Crystek&Kali Recklocker.
We realized very quickly that the Katana THD stage sounded the best.
All three Boards where very, yes, very good! And the “diluted, to mixed sound” of the SQ board was gone. (see post last sc)
We said the THD version has more presence over all frequencies and is slightly more detailed.
we used same equipment and playlist as before (psu, cable, speaker, amp)
It was a pleasure for us to listen to all three boards.
(hopefully my neighbour too , hahah )
i will take the THD Version in the next round on febuary, 21. in Hamburg.
This will be the shootout on all the past winners.
With good LPS to extract maximum SQ.
- Katana THD ( with +15V-15V LPS and 2x 5V LPS )
- apple pi&recklocker (2x 5,2V LPS, 1x allo psu on RPI)
- volumio primo (primo shipped psu)
- mamboberry HD DAC+ Crystek&Kali (mambopower)
- piano 2.1 & Kali (allo dual psu)
- iqaudio dac pro (ifi ipower)
- DACberry ONE+ (ifi ipower)
the official invitation comes a little later - thank you for your interest.
ok. got the khadas (generic) tone board. will put it in the next soundcheck…
thanks for your testing Judydudi,
Now I have Khadas and Allo Piano + Kali at home, and I’m thinking about Katana. I’ll wait for your soundcheck. Khadas I played with Allo Digione. That sounded good.
https://jbajci.rajce.idnes.cz/Khadas/#AlloDigiOneKhadasToneBoard.jpg
Dear follower,
a small summary:
In the past, we’ve convinced ourselves that the sound of the I2S DAC boards via volumio is much better than that of using smartphone/cable or even a standard CD player.
We also found out, that the sound differs from different DAC boards.
We now have a bunch of very well sounding boards.
We also realized, the we could not find a real difference between various psu’s.
Also the distance of the best devices was not really big to distinguish.
That’s why I decided to replace our sound system with a step into higher equipment.
From a 1000€ soundsystem in a 2000€ soundsystem.
Amp is Elac EA101EQ-G Loudspeaker are Elac BS 244.3 This combo is more crystal clear.
I hope you do not forget that a good DAC board can significantly improve any sound system in sound quality, even a cheap system…
So, I like to invite you to my next soundcheck.
Let’s see us on February, 21. at 8pm in Hamburg, germany.
Would like to hear:
01 Katana v1.2 with THD stage and Isolator 1.2 with Thel NT-25HQ-09, Thel NT-7-18
02 Orchard Audio’s ApplePi DAC with Orchards Reclocker with Thel NT-25HQ-09
03 Volumio ‘Primo’ (on Tinkerboard S) with shipped psu
04 Piano 2.1 with Kali reclocker with allo dual psu
05 IQaudio DAC PRO with ifi ipower
06 DACBerry ONE+ with ifi ipower
07 Mamboberry HD DAC+ with mambopower
08 Khadas gneric tone board on USB at ThinkCentre Tiny Desktop
09 X400 DAC extension module
it’s free. just write an email to linux @ kompage.de to register and getting more information…
You are welcome.
thanks.
Soundcheck is an independent and non profit association of HI-FI enthusiasts, gathering together to evaluate with double-blind methodology several Audio equipments. (typically I2S hats for Raspberry PI)
we heard in the past:
DAC:TauDAC-DM101 with TauOUT-TP101, Dial-DAC, HIFI Shield & HIFI Shield2, SabreBerry Z, JustBoom DAC HAT
PSU: Raspberry, allo 5V3A, allo Dual, ifi Ipower, SBooster, Thel NT-25HQ-09, MamboPower
Reclocker: Kali, ApplePi Reclocker, 3R USB Renaissance, iFi iPurifier2
USB-DAC: iFi nano ione, Elac EA101EQ-G
Hi Judy
I took a look at the amp to be used in the next soundcheck namely Elac EA101EQ-G.
It advertises THD+N of 0.07 at 70W and 0.03 at 40W. (in 4Ohm) .
Just to compare it , our Volt+ D has THD+N of 0.009 at 40W and its a class D selling for less than 130$
In audio , the weakest link defines the audio experience. I think that most testing will be limited by your amp not by DACs.Hi allo
Thank you for your commitment to the soundcheck and for rating the used devices.
i use every input to improve the soundcheck.
when i understand you right, for most amps on the market and most amps in our home we do not have any remarkable improvement when using your katana board. But we did have another experience in the soundcheck.
i found in german wikipedia:
“Hifi amplifiers are nowadays usually designed in such a way that the harmonic distortion generated by them is completely below the detection threshold (harmonic distortion below 0.1%), unless the amplifier is approaching the limits of its performance.”
At the end of the day no number can help us, but we have to like the sound …
This is one point why we do the soundcheck…
I have just ordered your amplifier and will let him compete in the warm up round against the other two amplifiers.
(the marantz and the elac one). stay tuned. After that we will see further.
Hi Judi
thx you for considering my input.
Yes a good DAC will improve any audio system but I was just observing that ELAC AMP is pretty bad even by class D standards . Most people will have access to an AMP that has (much) better specs.
I am posting the links of independent review of 2 class D amplifier (at 0,03 distortion or less ) and with a cost of 135$ and 89$ and both have better specs than ELAC AMP.
audiosciencereview.com/foru … amps.5025/
You are correct in saying that harmonic distortion under 0.1% is hard to detect but THD+N is related to IMD distortion and that is detectable as sound quality . An AMP at 0.07 or 0,03 is a badly designed amp.
So your testing will be done not " From a 1000€ soundsystem in a 2000€ soundsystem" but rather to a system that has an AMP that has equal specs to a class D 100$ amp . Again I think that most people have better amps than that.
If you want to extract the best from the reviewed DACs (Primo , Orchard , etc) it should not be paired with ELAC . I see you take great care in feeding DACs using LPS and such , and then you take all that analog “pure” sound and distort it using a bad amp…
Seems to me like wasted effort and at this level of audio , you wont be able to have a true comparison , since your AMP is dominating the sound quality .
whathifi.com/elac/ea101eq-g/review
Frankly , if any DAC is the winner of your contests (not ours) is not a problem . But for the community , it matters to do it right .
My 2 cents .
Hello
I agree with my previous speaker.
If you want an unbeatable membrane control by a huge damping factor and more power, I can recommend with absolute good conscience amplifiers, which are constructed with Hypex nCore.
I myself use Hypex nCore 400. (Kit) But also amplifiers e.g. from NORD Acustics are built with Hypex nCore 500. We made comparisons and no other amp has come close to the Hypex nCore. (Balanced Audio Technology (BAT, (Pre / Power)), ASR, Devialet, Leben, …) We are talking about amplifiers up to 16000.- € and more!
Well-built Class-D amplifiers are hard to beat with AB-amplifiers - possibly regardless of price.
The tonal differences in favor of Hypex nCore are enormous.
I assure you, you will never use another amplifier!
Greetings
rost21A
Hypex amps are in a class by themselves .
Independent testing shows -105 THD+N that equals a good DAC .
audiosciencereview.com/foru … -amp.5907/
I would say its very transparent .