Having read countless reviews for other DACs I decided to give this one a look. Unable to find a single review for it all I had to go off was the manufacturers description. On paper its numbers don’t seem to be anything like some other dacs on sale. Its components aren’t the latest or ground breaking in anyway but don’t let that deter you.
I am comparing this to my old system (Teac vrds transport, teac dac, Rotel pre and an AMC valve power amp with Acoustic Energy AE1 speakers) which i no longer have -sold to free up space, opting for an all in one box system, a Teac h-750np. A nice sounding bit of kit with a built in dac. Streaming from a Synology nas drive it was clunky to use -thats when I decided to give Volumio a go. Connected via the usb output into the Teacs dac the sound was nice but nothing special. Very listenable but not as revealing as my old system -something that can be a negative because hearing something warts and all isn’t always nice!!
4 years ago I bought a Geekroo pi cobler dac -this uses the rpi internal clock, and you can tell. Flat sounding and lacking clarity and detail, making me realise just how good the little Teac was.
At this point I was wondering if this is as good as it was going to get with mp3’s and a nas drive.
Geekroo pi cobbler dac
The Audiophonics TDA 1387 X8 is fantastic. It has everything. A sound stage so wide and deep that goes beyond the physical space of the room. Separation of each instrument making following and focusing on a particular musical part a joy. Listening to a well known track and hearing something new is always a delight -for instance Pink Floyds Wish you were here and hearing each individual guitar string as its strummed
Depth of Bass and attack it there too. Jamie XX album In colour is revealed -electronic sounds are twisting in 3D not just a flat 2 dimensional as before.
Revealing to much? Possibly- as demonstrated on the Aphex Twin track Avril 14th. The solo piano here is accompanied with the mechanical clunking of each key being pressed sounding like the piano had seen better days. Insightful? We are all trying to hear what the original artist heard on the day, so here it is!
I haven’t heard any of the current run of in trend dacs -the Boss or Mamboberry. Their specs tick all the boxes. I would be interested to see how this compares -I live in Manchester uk. Anyone local with an Allo Kali set up?
I won’t be looking at any other dacs myself. I am more than happy with this one.
I’m very tempted by this; Chord DACs are still using this way of working, rather than the delta sigma approach… Does the TDA1387 power the Pi or vice-versa? More specifically, does the TDA1387 need the 5v feed or is it optional (I can’t tell from their website) ?
I have 5v into the dac which then powers the pi. This is done by joining two pin using a jumper.
It looks like to me you can power the dac seperately from the rpi. Or power the rpi from the dac.
I haven’t tried the rpi powering the dac.
I intend to make an upgraded clean 5v power supply.
I am currently using a cheap power adapter that came with an android box. So improving this should improve the sound even more!
Have you had a look at the enclosures they sell? Pricey but look amazing!
Having read a handful of reviews on this board, I decided to go for it. I am running this board with a RPI3 B, Ifi power suppy, straight into a McCormack ALD-1/DNA .5 combo and my trusted Dynaudio Gemini’s (DIY custom built) and, of course, Volumio’s latest build. Setup is straight forward, “Generic I2S DAC” works fine and I got sound on the first try. Setup “no resampling” and “DSD to DoP”. I won’t bore you with more details, the main reason for this post is to share (again) the opinion of the amazing sound quality to be had with a low budget setup.
Whatever the source material is thrown at it, the DAC handles it well. Had a little trouble with DSD64 sources and because of the N wifi interface, it seems to be choking on larger file sizes streamed from a NAS. No problem with 24/192 FLAC sources.
The sound quality is close to “vinyl-like”, but with more detail and the resolution of digital interface. Low end is more pronounced, the top end slightly recessed but smooth and without any typical DAC brightness. The soundstage is improved.
Based on these initial results, I have decided to pair this unit up with a Kali reclocker (specifically built to support NOS type DAC’s, with 22/24 clock frequencies). I hope to be able to improve this setup further by providing enhanced clock support.
A year and a half later, here is the verdict: pure awesomeness! I probably have 3-4 different DAC’s or Digi’s running at any given time, but I am always coming back to the Pi3B+/TDA1387/Kali/Volumio combo. My system has evolved since, it is very revealing, detailed, dynamic, with expensive speakers etc. The early impressions of the TDA1387 (Teradak) hold up well and stand the test of time. The Audiophonics version sounds a touch darker (has one extra filtering stage). Never tiring, very analogue sounding, and close to my vinyl setup, closer to vinyl than any other DAC in my arsenal, which includes expensive ESS9038 based DAC’s. The 1387 will probably never become my #1, but rather, it firmly belongs into the DAC arsenal for specific sound signatures. And YES, if you deploy a 22/44 MHz KALI with it, the world just melts away. Well worth it.
Both of them are modded with ELNA caps in the output stage.
The KALI re-clocker comes in two different editions and for the a NOS type of DAC, like the TDA1387, you need the 22/24Mhz clock frequency with corresponds to the Nyquist frequency of 22khz. (I mistakenly said 22/44 in my post). The operation is well explained on the Audiophonics website. The TDA1387 sound opens up dramatically because of the superior clocking signal from the KALI board and because you can apply DC power directly to the board itself, which feeds the RPI and DAC. This reduces power-related noise from the RPI. I also use a low-noise power supply (IFI) as the DC source.
I am unable to get this DAC to play in Volumio. I tried the modifications listed by Teradak in thier page but no success. I used the generic I2S DAC option.
DAC is connected to GPIO in RPI and RPI is powered by a 5V Powerbank .
I have this same DAC and am really enjoying. I go back and forth between this and the Allo Boss. This one has an amazing sound stage and voicing separation.
