Hello,
since a few years I have a RPi 1 with the first gen HifiBerry DAC and Volumio 1.55 running.
Currently I’m considering an upgrade to the highly praised Allo Kali + Piano running on a RPi 3.
I mainly listen to the online radio “Radio Swiss Classic” as well as Spotify playlists. Now I’m wondering if the hardware improvement would also benefit the sound quality of those streaming services as well?
Thanks and regards
Andy
[edit: added Spotify]
Hi,
I know that a good DAC will mostly benefit uncompressed sources like FLACs.
The Radio Swiss Classic does stream highest with aacPlus Stream Quality: 96 kbps.
Spotify Premium Service streams with approx. 320 kbps Ogg Vorbis.
I understand these are not very high quality sources. But I’m simply interested if a high quality DAC will improve the sound of those services as well.
If anyone is able to share some experience I’d be very happy. Thanks!
Cheers
Andy
Yes, a good DAC helps and even more when the quality of the sources improves.
A good DAC either has or benefits a lot if both timing and jitter of the signal it gets is good as well.
When feeding a DAC with an asynchronous signal, like via USB (not really a good option when using a Pi), the DAC takes care of the timing using its own clocks.
When a DAC get the signal via SPDIF or I2S (like from a Pi), the timing is done based on the clocks that generated the signal. This is were the Kali/Piano combo works well.
But also look at your Amp. Does it just amplify the analog signal or does it do digital processing? If so, just feed it digitally as it will do D/A conversion anyway ( and thus skip the internal A/D conversion).
Hope this helps 
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Hi Patrick,
many thanks for your reply.
My Hifiberry DAC is connected directly with cinch cable to a pure analog amplifier. I don’t have optical inputs on the amplifier.
I’ll give the Allo Kali+Piano solution a try.
Best regards
Andy
This is what I’ll be doing. I’ve purchased a Kali + Piano 2.1 DAC, along with an iFi 5V power supply.
This combo will all be plugged straight into the back of my Cambridge Audio amp using the analogue RCA connectors.
Hoping that I’ll hear significant improvements over the amps own DAC.
Fingers crossed!
PS: I’ve read that the Piano 2.1 DAC is better than the standard Piano DAC, even if you only intend to run it in 2.0 mode (i.e. without a sub). Something to do with it using higher grade chips ?
Apparently Allo and the Volumio team are working on allowing us to use one chip for the Left channel and the other chip for the Right channel (initially the second chip was intended to feed the subwoofer outputs).
I’m not entirely clear on the benefits of doing this, but wanted to have the hardware to try it out at some point in the future (the standard Piano DAC has only one DAC chip).
Hope this helps?
Two thumbs up! Thank you.
REMOVED THE PREVIOUS POST SINCE IT SMELLED OF ILLEGAL (breaking services TOS)
Hi,
I can confirm that the differences are very clear.
My wife, which is not so enthusiastic regarding the technical aspects, hears a clear difference between the dedicated RPi-DAC and the built in DAC of the AV receiver.
To “simulate” the difference, just put some pillows on your loudspeakers, listen your favourite song and then in the middle of it take all pillows away.
I have a RPi with Allo Piano 2.1 (dual mono), Kali reclocker, and one singe toroidal power supply for the entire construction.
As a conclusion, it makes a difference but the DAC must match the entire audio system.
Regards from Munich
Adrian
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