Allo DigiOne: No sound after cable change or amp switch

Hi from South-Africa!

Testing out my new Allo DigiOne Player. All working very well so far. Sounds very good. Very happy with the quality of the enclosure as well.

Just have this one little bug so far. When I unplug the COAX cable, either from the BNC adaptor or the COAX port, the sound is disappears. Volumio responds and I can navigate and restart the Pi3, so it’s not a full crash. When I skip the current “playing” song, you can see it will not start playing the next track. This also happen when I switch off my headphone AMP. There is no sound no matter what you do.

The only solution is to reboot the system via the gear menu and then all works fine again.

Is this normal behaviour? Its very annoying and means you have to restart Volumio every time you have switched off your gear and want to use it again later. My other gear do not have issues like this when changing cables or switching off power to any unit. This is very strange as my headphone amp is not even directly connected to the DigiOne, yet it crashes the sound playback from the DigiOne completely when powering down…

I am running Allo DigiOne Player with latest Volumio from the website >> Schiit Modi Multibit DAC >> Schiit Magni Uber 2 headphone amp >> Audeze EL8 headphones.

Hope this is just a software bug.

Cheers,
Wietsche

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Hi

so you are unplugging the coax/bnc while playing/pause ? I assume you are switching to a different hardware …

I think that what happens is a ground issue between your systems . DigiOne is sensitive and you are changing the ground reference when its playing.

Thanks for your reply.

I wanted to listen if I can hear the difference between the BNC and RCA output on the DigiOne. So I have a 75ohm RCA/RCA cable and a BNC/RCA adaptor. Just switching between the 2 outputs on the DigiOne. Same cable and DAC on the other end. Music can be paused or playing, makes no difference. Sound always disappears if the cable disconnects. Restart required to fix it.

Apart from this, with no cable changes and fully working, if I shut down my headphone amplifier and leave the DigiOne on, if I return to my desk to listen later, the sound is gone. Same symptom. Restart required to fix it.

I am using stock Schitt Audio power supplies and the Allo power supply, which surprisingly have exactly the same original manufacurer, Xing Yuan Electronics.

Did not expect any grounding issues with this, but it sounds like a good explination for the cause. Don’t know what to do different to fix it though. No strange power or audio paths.

So by the way, I experiencing no difference in sound between BNC or RCA connectors. They could have been the same connector to my ears.

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Does anyone know if the mentioned problems are normal behaviour or not? Anyone else get the same results?

I unfortunately have some bad news for the Volumio developers. PiCorePlayer with Squeezelite plays the same DSD and 192khz FLAC files from the same file server over the Allo DigiOne without breaking a sweat, where it pops and stutters frequently over Volumio.

Where Volumio struggles to play these files over the poor performing Pi3 onboard wifi, piCorePlayer just has no trouble at all. That means Volumio is using way too much data to play the same music. I am sure the files and quality is exact, no transcoding, 100% volume. I have also tried different buffer settings on Volumio, its not helping enough.

I saw lots of guys complaining or at least metioning the same stuttering and urging the developers to focus on sound quality and fixing stuttering of music playback. Volumio looks so nice and one wants to like it amd use it. Untill you get used to the looks, and then function and performance becomes a higher priority. I think its fair to expect similar performance to the Squeezelite system, why else do this? Maybe I am missing something…

So I just thought I would just mention this to stir up some conversation and maybe some people experiencing the same sound issues.

The Allo DigiOne Player is sounding really good to me! And I think piCorePlayer just won the honour of software of choice for me on this wonderful sounding device.

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Hi Wietsche, it could be great if you could share as much informations as you can for your playback procedure. We are aware of the poor performances due to the latest kernel iteration (it’s the one that we released since couple of months) and we’re collecting data to understand where the problem is.
As always SQ is our top priority.

What I am more interested in understanding is:

  • Do you get pops and stops only with DSD or also with 24/192?
  • Are you playing directly from a NAS or via DLNA?
  • Which plugins did you install?
  • Which Volumio version are you on?

Then, your explanation is slightly wrong: Volumio is not using more data to play a file. If that would be true, that would mean that SB is somehow “reducing” data-rate, which I doubt happens. What we’re getting here is a combination of the recent kernel, hardware problems of the PI (USB bus) and the way mpd handles playback (that for sure might be slightly different from SB).
Last but not least, DSD is always resampled when played to i2s (simply because I2S needs DoP, so it’s not DSD direct).

For everyone reading, we know there are currently problems on the PI and our efforts are on it.

Hi Michelangelo,

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

So my setup is as follows:
-Standard Allo Digione Player bundle (that I got last week).
-Running current latest Volumio from download page. Stock public version.
-No plugins or any further customisations.
-Using the Android Volumio App and standard Volumio web interface from my PC.
-From the DigiOne I feed my Modi Multibit DAC via COAX.
-Source files are shared on the network from a Windows 10 based file server with Gigabit network connectivity.
-LMS is also running on this server.
-The Pi is 2 meters away from my gigabit wireless router and I have tried and tested the wired LAN connection, Pi3 onboard WiFi and USB Wifi Dongle. Amazingly the USB Wifi dongle works best (150mbps), then LAN (100mbps), then Pi3 WiFi (75mbps).

Volumio access NAS/file server directly through a cifs mount. PiCorePlayer/Squeezelite uses the LMS server on the same server box, using the same source files.

The pops and skips happens in 192khz/24bit FLAC files as well. DSD was just the largest files that I have and most difficult to play smoothly on any system from my experience. I know its converted. Was just a test. The converted rate for the DSD was 176.4khz. 96khz FLAC files only stutter on Pi3 Wifi on Volumio, but much less than 192khz.

In contrast, the SB system plays up to 192khz/24bit smoothly and instantly without any issues. Can listen to a whole Norah Jones album in 192khz (from HD Tracks) without any issues.

Thanks for clarifying that Volumio does not use more data. It just seems that way due to the same source files behaving so much different between Volumio and PiCorePlayer on the exact same network path. I should have rather said that it is as if Volumio is chocking for more data all the time, where for piCorePlayer it seems effortless. And by a large margin. It was just a way to discribe the experience I have. Sorry for this bad example.

Hope this helps you guys. I like Volumio a lot, sounds and looks great when it works. But it must perform at least as good as SB to be relavant. Would like to see that happen.

Further tests revealed that the DigiOne also stops producing sound with the BNC/RCA cable swop, or powering off my AMP with PiCorePlayer. Full Reboot brings back the sound. So it seems this as a hardware issue, and not a Volumio issue.

Kind regards,
Wietsche

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Hi Wietsche, today I took some time to test your exact same scenario (with 2.285 from my QNAP NAS) and I only experienced some occasional dropout only with DSD128 files, 24/192 was playing just fine. All of this with the integrated wifi of Raspberry PI3 (which notoriously sucks).
So, I am really interested in knowing what is producing this different outcome on our 2 systems (maybe win10 vs NAS?)

I agree with your assumption that LMS is sending data in a different way that Volumio does. Volumio basically takes the file as it is from network, while I don’t know if LMS operates in some kind of DLNA server manner. If there is some LMS expert here, please shine a light on this (we might find a way to make Volumio better knowing their approach).

I will keep on investigating

Hi, M

Thanks for taking the time to investigate. I will try to figure this out as well.

What I’ll do is, I’ll share an external drive on a different PC on the network and see if the same problem persist with the same files. If I can manage I will setup a SMB share on some Linux based (say Ubuntu) live boot OS and see how that goes. I unfortunately don’t have the capacity to change the OS completely for this test.

I think it would be unlikely the hardware I use. My copy speed between server and other PCs on the wired network is around 100MBps so there is more than enough bandwidth from the server hardware wise. I also have a PLEX server streaming HD content effortlessly over the network to wireless devices like Chromecasts and other PI’s running RasPlex. The RasPlex Pi2 direct stream the same 192khz file also fine, but sometimes stops once or twice, but this is due to it being far away from the router, so its not really strange to me, but still performs a bit better than my Volumio DigiOne.

Please let me know if you need me to test something else.

Cheers,
W

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I can confirm the same behavior on Raspbian stretch. Thus, this seems to be a DigiOne issue. In spite of the many superlative posts, I have to say that I am not overly impressed by the DigiOne. It sound good but my old M2Tech HiFace Evo (on a Teddy Pardo PSU, however) sounds slightly more natural and refined to me. Of course, at about 100 EUR, the DigiOne is a fantastic value. I have compared DigiOne and M2Tech into a Naim DAC. Best, nbpf

Hello,

I have a similar problem. I have attached my Raspberry PI 3B and DigiOne via Coax Cable to an Arcam rDAC and NAIM system.
In addition I have attached a LAN cable and disabled WIFI for faster transmission of files from my QNAP NAS.

First, I realised the problem, when I tried to start music and volumio seemed to play, but I had no sound. After a restart, everything worked fine again. I tried keeping my Arcam rDAC turned on, but today, the sound was gone again.

Might this be a problem with the power supply of the Rasbperry PI? I am using a Rydges EU 5V 3A Micro USB.

It is definitely annoying that way

Hi,

Your PSU seems fine , but microusb connection only allows up to 1.8A.

Your issue is not with the amp or dac , I would suggest a fresh install of the OS

DigiOne is sensitive on the BNC/RCA outputs. Every time you change the cables while powered , you are changing the grounds and producing some noise . We do not recommend switching the cables BNC/RCA while powered on.

The M2tech evo (300$) + custom PSU (value 300-500 Eur) might sound better on your system . DigiOne will deliver exactly what we said , low noise and extremely low jitter on spdif interface.

I do not think that the power supply of the Raspberry Pi has any bearing on the problem, I have tried two different PSUs with the same result. Not really a big deal for me, I only realized the problem when I compared the DigiOne to my current equipment and I was switching the SPDIF connection.

Thanks for the clarification! I do not have the expertise and the equipment for measuring noise and jitter of the two devices. As I wrote, I consider the DigiOne an excellent device and a fantastic value. I do not know which other factors apart from noise and jitter can have an impact on the perceived sound quality. For completeness, I have to add that the old M2Tech HiFace Evo was connected to a fitPC3 running Debian whereas the DigiOne was connected to a Raspberry Pi 3 running Raspbian. In both cases the underlying player was MPD. A more significative comparison could probably have been done by connecting the M2Tech to one of the USB ports of the Raspberry Pi. Unfortunately, this requires specific drivers that I could not find.

Give it a few more days and your DigiOne will improve further.

Since adding the DigiOne board I need to restart my RPi about every other listening session. I do like the sound quality a lot but it’s also a pain in the neck. In a different thread Allo suggested that he would be publishing some kind of fix today. I have a friend that is a DIY’er so I’ve got my fingers crossed.

Hi Charles,

can you tell me a bit more about your system. When is your RPI shutting down ?

Hi allo,

It doesn’t shut down, it just goes silent like the original poster’s. I notice it when I go away and then come back several hours later. Sometimes I turn off the amp but at other times I have left it on. There have been times when I turn off and on the amp and the RPi/DigiOne wasn’t affected. I haven’t found any real consistency. It has never gone off while I was using it though. Doing a software reboot always sets things right but it is a slow process.

Thanks,
Charles

It does not seem to be a problem with the grounds. What software are you using (version etc) How about PSU ?

Hi Allo,

This issue is very real. It happens on any software I have tried so far. It’s not player software related, its drivers or hardware related. If it’s ground issues or power issues, I don’t know, but the DigiOne is FAR TOO SENSITIVE to these things, and that’s fine, but for it to fail completely and not be able to recover is a big problem that needs to be looked at. It sounds great, can’t deny that fact, but it’s a pain to have to restart the device after every listening break. Someone with a class-A amp that leaves everything on all the time will be very disappointed when forced to restart the device regularly.

Oh, I found another method to crash the DigiOne. Just plug in anything else into the same wall power socket. I plugged in a solder iron and the DigiOne immediately stopped working even while music was playing. I have not heard of any other audio equipment having this behaviour to power changes or increased power load from other devices.

Is there not a risk to damage the DigiOne when this failure happens? It too easy with almost no effort involved to replicate the crash by doing normal things.

If this is some kind of protection built into the DigiOne, thats great, but it needs to be able to recover from it on its own without requiring a soft system reboot (that is without cutting power).

I could not test any further as promised. Work and other duties keeping me too busy… sorry, will get back as soon as possible with more tesing.

Please have a look at this issue. It’s clearly not only me having this issue and some people don’t even know yet this is why they don’t have sound sometimes, because everything seems normal on the interface and still responds, just without sound.

Kind regards,
W

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