I recently picked up this dac, and man is it cool for the price (friend pushed me to try it out lol). So much to tweak on it, and it honestly sounds pretty dang great (I got the xmos version one since I use windows). Something really cool is that you can enable or disable oversampling, personally I think the bypass sounds better imo, but not bypassing also sounds pretty great (still oversampling though), generally sounds more natural. And also there are the common filters there too for when you use oversampling mode (right now using minimum phase slow roll off atm, generally prefer slow roll off for the most part if I want to smooth something, still playing around with these, so much to try on this dac).
You can use sync or async usb (I used async), you can adjust the harmonics control which is really cool (2nd and 3rd) which can really help make the treble smoother and add more body and space, more enjoyable to listen to imo, honestly really sick. From my experience so far messing with the 2nd order was more organic sounding as they increased, whereas going on the 3rd made it sound a bit more analytical almost. I also decided to order the shanti lps and it did sound a decent bit better imo, improvement in control and impact, generally in increase in performance overall, tightens things up well (this does decrease the value prop tho). Otherwise just grab a decent but cheaper 5v psu, allo sells like a 15 buck one that is nice, but the nicer the psu the nicer the sq (for testing without the higher end psu I just used a random decent quality 5v laying around)
This is surprisingly well done for an ess at this price point, not many other dacs I have heard have gave you this much flexibility and tune-ability while actually holding it’s own in sound quality. Generally an impressive dac for what they charge, easily something that is pretty great overall for what it can offer in sound and features. Had it for a few days, and still figuring out what it can do, it’s hard to really say what signature it is since you can adjust it so much lol. You might be able to swap op amps in there too (edit: you can’t), but honestly I don’t think I will open it up as I really like it as is tbh. While I don’t think it competes with the higher end stuff, it really is surprising for the price imo, almost reminds me of my resonessence labs dac in some ways (almost lol), I would typically say that there is a performance gap between 200-700 for most dacs I have heard (off new prices), but this sits in between that gap and offers performance deserving of it’s price imo
So messing around in oversampling mode with some of the filters, you can get this thing really sharp and bright lol. By setting to brickwall and adjusting 3rd order to 8 and 2nd order to 0, it can be pretty dang aggressive and bright lol, not the most pleasant. So far I’m coming back to minimum phase either slow or fast, still deciding which one I like more. I can’t say I prefer the linear phase filters that much. The apodizing filter is not for me, almost sounds compressed and a bit lifeless. I am liking the corrected minimum phase fast roll off, but I need more time to decide how I feel about it.
Previously I had found a balance between 2nd and 3rd that more heavily favored the 2nd and with no oversampling it was pretty smooth sounding, pretty enjoyable, and for more warmer and thicker amps I could increase the 3rd order harmonics to offset the warmth of the amp, or switch back to oversampling mode
Update 1:
I guess quick update, so I ended up buying another one of these things lol, this time with the thesycon firmware because I actually started getting into streamers recently (gave the xmos version to a friend). I was also curious to see if the different driver models have any sonic difference (spoiler, not really lol). Also ordered their usbridge signature player with moode as a stack with the allo dac. And I gotta say it’s pretty sweet for a streaming setup, I can power both with the shanti, and it sounds pretty damn great and it’s pretty easy to use overall, if I needed something networked this would prob be my go to streamer for the price (and there aren’t many fully assembled/non diy streamers at this price lol). Also for shits and giggles I decided to hook the allo up to my living room setup (which I rarely ever do for any dac besides the kassandra, like seriously I haven’t tried most of my other dacs in my living room) but decided to use my main streamer to feed the rev dac (an auralic aries g2.1 with a leo gx.1 clock) and man was that really good lol, that just elevated that little dac way more than I was expecting vs going from a nearby pc. The usbridge still sounded good but nowhere near as good as the auralic. Something I did notice was that I think I preferred sync mode when on the auralic, but async on the pc and the usbridge, which is interesting.
Update 2:
Was another victim of my downsizing, but it’s hard to deny what this dac has for the price. Personally it’s one of my favorite budget dacs given you don’t need balance or spdif input, it has so much to offer for a very reasonable price, and can be easily upgraded later on so it can become a really nice stopgap until you reach things like a bifrost 2 or ares ii. Easily worthwhile if you are looking for one in the range. If you can go for the nirvana smps right off the bat that’s suggested, but if you can’t it still sounds good with their 15 buck psu. But you can experiment with whatever psu you want to later on
