This is a review and measurements of the Allo Boss V 1.2 audio DAC for the popular Raspberry Pi single board computer (SBC). It was kindly sent to me by Allo. Retail price as of this writing is $65. The Raspberry Pi retails for $35 so the combination costs about $100. For that, you get a networked DAC in a tiny enclosure.
Allo is one of the few audio companies that performs real measurements of their device and the Boss was no exception. They are also quite active on forums which makes it a plus in my book as far as support and listening to customers. They have been a supporter and long time fan of ASR Forum since inception for which, I am appreciative.
The package as sent to me had both the RPI and Allo BOSS DAC in a cute acrylic enclosure, complete with "DietPi" version of Linux on micro-SD card:
Dietpi is one of a few canned versions of Linux operating system that turns the RPI into a dedicated networked/streamer DAC. It is a turnkey operation, not requiring any configuration or technical knowledge.
Nicely for me, DietPi comes with Roon's remote protocol, RAAT. This immediately exposed it as a networked DAC and after enabling it in Roon audio setup, I was good to go "beaming" files to it (I used hardwired Ethernet though). Previously I had tested Volumio which sadly does not yet support RAAT yet.
Because my Audio Precision analyzer cannot control networked DACs, I have to play static files manually in Roon and then measure using the analyzer. This limits the number of tests I can run but the core data is there. Let's get into that.
Measurements
As usual, we start with the response of 1 kHz 24-bit tone @44.1 kHz sampling rate:
I am showing just one channel. The other is the same.
Output is a nice, 2.1 volt which easily meets the requirement of nominal 2 volt RMS output for unbalanced RCA connections. As such, there should be no problem driving the downstream amplification to full power.
SINAD (signal over power of noise and distortion) is 93 dB. Audio Precision measurement report from Allo shows 88 dB so my unit is easily outperforming that.
Ranking the SINAD among recently reviewed DACs regardless of price we get:
The Allo BOSS DAC falls in good company of JDS Labs Element DAC and ifi iDSD Black. Then again, it is not reference quality by any means. For higher performance levels, Allo makes the Katana DAC.
Performance can be improved by lowering the volume some. Here are the results with lower amplitude source file:
So seems like the output stage is saturating some.
Dynamic range follows SINAD numbers more or less:
Frequency response was flat from 20 Hz to 20 kHz so I am not going to show it.
Finally, let's look at jitter and noise:
Now we are talking! Jitter measurement is often were we separate the good from OK implementations as any interference into power supply or clock shows up. The high number of FFT points used here (256,000) extracts even the smallest jitter and spurious responses. Despite the very low cost of this DAC, we see a very clean output of just our noise and the main tone in the source at 12 kHz.
Conclusions
The Allo BOSS DAC sets modest performance goals and nails them. For $100 you get a networked streaming DAC without any glaring faults.
Yes, I would have liked to see it reach up to performance of Topping D10 DAC ($90). Perhaps we would get there in BOSS DAC version 2.0.
Given the total cost of just $100 for a total networked DAC with no warts or design problems, I am going to put the Allo BOSS on my recommendation list.
If you like to have reference quality version of this DAC, I will repeat my recommendation for Allo Katana.
-------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
If you like this review, please consider donating using Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or upgrading your membership here though PayPal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).
Allo is one of the few audio companies that performs real measurements of their device and the Boss was no exception. They are also quite active on forums which makes it a plus in my book as far as support and listening to customers. They have been a supporter and long time fan of ASR Forum since inception for which, I am appreciative.
The package as sent to me had both the RPI and Allo BOSS DAC in a cute acrylic enclosure, complete with "DietPi" version of Linux on micro-SD card:
Dietpi is one of a few canned versions of Linux operating system that turns the RPI into a dedicated networked/streamer DAC. It is a turnkey operation, not requiring any configuration or technical knowledge.
Nicely for me, DietPi comes with Roon's remote protocol, RAAT. This immediately exposed it as a networked DAC and after enabling it in Roon audio setup, I was good to go "beaming" files to it (I used hardwired Ethernet though). Previously I had tested Volumio which sadly does not yet support RAAT yet.
Because my Audio Precision analyzer cannot control networked DACs, I have to play static files manually in Roon and then measure using the analyzer. This limits the number of tests I can run but the core data is there. Let's get into that.
Measurements
As usual, we start with the response of 1 kHz 24-bit tone @44.1 kHz sampling rate:
I am showing just one channel. The other is the same.
Output is a nice, 2.1 volt which easily meets the requirement of nominal 2 volt RMS output for unbalanced RCA connections. As such, there should be no problem driving the downstream amplification to full power.
SINAD (signal over power of noise and distortion) is 93 dB. Audio Precision measurement report from Allo shows 88 dB so my unit is easily outperforming that.
Ranking the SINAD among recently reviewed DACs regardless of price we get:
The Allo BOSS DAC falls in good company of JDS Labs Element DAC and ifi iDSD Black. Then again, it is not reference quality by any means. For higher performance levels, Allo makes the Katana DAC.
Performance can be improved by lowering the volume some. Here are the results with lower amplitude source file:
So seems like the output stage is saturating some.
Dynamic range follows SINAD numbers more or less:
Frequency response was flat from 20 Hz to 20 kHz so I am not going to show it.
Finally, let's look at jitter and noise:
Now we are talking! Jitter measurement is often were we separate the good from OK implementations as any interference into power supply or clock shows up. The high number of FFT points used here (256,000) extracts even the smallest jitter and spurious responses. Despite the very low cost of this DAC, we see a very clean output of just our noise and the main tone in the source at 12 kHz.
Conclusions
The Allo BOSS DAC sets modest performance goals and nails them. For $100 you get a networked streaming DAC without any glaring faults.
Yes, I would have liked to see it reach up to performance of Topping D10 DAC ($90). Perhaps we would get there in BOSS DAC version 2.0.
Given the total cost of just $100 for a total networked DAC with no warts or design problems, I am going to put the Allo BOSS on my recommendation list.
If you like to have reference quality version of this DAC, I will repeat my recommendation for Allo Katana.
-------------
As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.
If you like this review, please consider donating using Patreon (https://www.patreon.com/audiosciencereview), or upgrading your membership here though PayPal (https://audiosciencereview.com/foru...eview-and-measurements.2164/page-3#post-59054).