Post by stevew on Jul 12, 2020 9:14:36 GMT
Having been introduced by Oliver, I have been very impressed with the performance of Orchard Audio’s Pecan pi dac.
It was always far better than other HAT dacs I have tried and various other dacs through a digi one/pi combo.
However having made significant investments in vinyl I’d found that even through the Pecan that digital streaming was a poor relation. A bit flat?
Always considered that the sound quality from a raspberry pi was likely to be the part of the system that compromised the sound.
One solution was to move away from the pi towards generic solutions such as the Innuos Zen.
Well reviewed, but I really didn’t need a cd ripper. Just a really good digital transport.. but I really rate the Pecan which is designed to be part of the raspberry pi system.
An accident with the Pecan caused me to ponder which direction to go forward with.
I have several pi setups on my home network which are fed upnp by Audirvana on a Mac mini. I wanted to stick with a pi upnp system and Ethernet fed.
Then I read a revue by Phil Wright on Darko audio about the Allo USbridge signature. At its heart is a Pi (the compute module) but with the extraneous noise from usb and Ethernet attended to.
I checked with Allo - the cleaned up signal is not only sent through the usb out, but also through the 40pin connector so allowing the Pecan pi to receive a much improved signal.
So I pulled the trigger and made the decision to get linear power supplies for both the USbridge and the newly ordered Pecan pi dac. Probably overkill PSU for the Pecan, but felt that I would always be curious if I didn’t.
After a lot of faffing about ( mainly because the SD card from Allo didn’t work properly.. Fing identified it as a Volumio when MOode was loaded. Don’t think it had been formatted properly after being loaded with Volumio earlier). A quick proper format and reload of MOode image fixed it.
The end result is a compromised 2 box solution with a ribbon connection. I found the screws on the Allo back plate were the same as cartridge screws so used slightly longer ones to avoid squashing the ribbon.
Found an old case for the Pecan (it needs protection from me). It looks a bit Sh#t, but will be hidden away at the back of a rack.
I’m more than delighted with the way it has changed the sound quality.
A major improvement with better soundstage, instrument sounds, separation, detail etc etc.
Qobuz streaming has never sounded this good before.
Even at low volumes (early morning stuff), I’m really hearing significant improvement in the whole atmosphere projected.
In fact it is now a real pleasure to listen to music through.
