Following Slinger's example, I have decided to move on up to the 'next level' of dedicated music-streaming micro-computer devices: the Asus Tinker Board.
Okay, I'll agree, it does look remarkably like a Raspberry Pi. And that is intentional as it is meant to fit into Pi casings and be compatible with (some) Pi add-ons.
So, my Tinker Board S has arrived today along with an Inakustik Excellence USB cable (more on that another time). Pricewise, the Asus is about 90 euros, roughly the same as a Pi plus Hifiberry Digi+ PRO. The Allo DigiOne Signature alone costs more than twice that amount.
Had a spare plastic Pi casing handy, there is an official Asus aluminium one on the way. A hefty heatsink block comes with the board and needs to be placed onto the CPU chip with a self-adhesive strip. You notice that this board is more solidly constructed with far more components than a Pi board.
A pre-prepared microSD card with the right version of Volumio loaded got popped in. Then hooked up the Tinkerboard in place of current resident Pi & Allo DigiOne Signature. Running power from the Tomanek LPSU and the USB plugged into the Teradak Chameleon.
The higher-spec Asus unit showed its superior number-crunching abilities immediately as setup went smoothly, finding and loading the music library on my NAS. But then the hiccups started. It couldn't find the DAC.
A half-hour of irritated panic ensued but finally it seems to have sorted itself out. Similar to the Pi/DigiOne SIG, you need to turn the DAC on first and then the Tinkerboard.
At last there was music!
I'm not sure if the AQ Jitterbug was causing a problem, but things don't seem to work to well when the USB cable is plugged via the filter. However putting the J-bug into another socket alongside the Inakustik lead was no trouble and seems to help SQ slightly.
First impressions on SQ are very promising. The sound is meatier, more organic and immediate. There is the sense of an extra dimension of solidity/realism over the Allo, but I will have to do some proper comparisons soon.
Another niggle is that the connection doesn't like my 24bit music files, it started churning out some nastily distorted mush when I tried to play some. Went into the options in Volumio and set 'Audio Resampling' on with everything being kept to 16bit. Works fine and sounds just terrific at the moment. This might just be specific to the Teradak's use of old-fashioned 16bit TDA1543 chips.
I have high hopes for this combination. The Teradak processes USB input in a completely different way to SPDIF, converting the datastream to I2S and reclocking it. Also the Tinkerboard has far more processing power than the Pi, is designed with audio/media streaming in mind and has a USB bus that is separate from other systems.
Next problem. If the Tinkerboard stays in place, the headphone side of the main system will need to be changed considerably.
