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Hi all, I have an Allo Digione Signature powered by Shanti and connected via a BNC cable into Naim nDAC -> Naim SuperNAIT 2 -> Dynaudio C1 Platinum. It all works and sounds fine, but I would like to optimise the grounding of the Allo in case I can extract a bit more out of it! It's been hard to find concentrated information about this topic, so hopefully we can have it all gathered here. As you may know, Naim Audio is all about star-earthing and having a single signal earth point, which is provided by the nDAC in my case. In this context, is there any suggestion on how to connect with the Allo stuff? First of all, I suppose I should connect the RPi/Digione with the grounding post of the Shanti. Can I do this using a USB cable connected to the RPi on the one side, take apart the other side and connect only the USB ground? Then, should I also connect the Shanti grounding post with the SuperNAIT grounding post? A simple cable would suffice here I suppose. Some information along this line (connection to Gold Note DS-10) can be found here: https://darko.audio/2020/06/allos-usbridge-signature-review/. Not sure however if this is consistent with Naim star-earthing or not. Any feedback based on your experience or knowledge would be very useful; not only for me but for everyone with a similar system.

Ahh, since you have a CDX analog out connected to the pre-amp, this is enforced to be your signal earth reference (no option for "chassis"/"floating" there) so you are right to have the nDAC as "floating". That should be the optimal indeed. Thanks for the clarification!

Thanks for the response. Not sure if nDAC can get its signal grounding via the SPDIF connection, and therefore if "Floating" is the "correct" setting. That's probably a question for the Naim forum though! 🙂 Anyway, it seems safe to ground the RPI via a USB port as far as I can tell, so I will try it out in due course. The experiment should only cost 2-3 euros for the cheapest USB cable I can find! Cheers!

Hi all. I've got a Digione Signature/Rpi 3B+ powered by a Shanti and connected to a Naim nDAC. All is working well but I was wondering if I should also ground the Digione via the Shanti grounding connector. Not sure if it is necessary as the nDAC provides the signal ground for the HiFi system. Anyway, in case I want to experiment, what is the easiest way to do so? Going via the GPIO connectors seems a bit fiddly. I was wondering if I could plug in a cheap USB cable in one of the USB ports, dismantle the other side and connect the GND cable to Shanti. Is there any risk or potential issue by doing so? Thanks in advance for any replies!

I don't do DSD, but I tried out several FLAC 24/192 from 2L just now via my DigiOneSig+Volumio and they play just fine. So there might be an issue in your chain (coaxial cable? faulty digione?). Please note that ~24/192 is the rated limit for SPDIF IIRC. So that creates limitations for DSD/DXD files. I think DSD64 should work, not so sure for DXD. Others, feel free to chip in if I am mistaken!

There is a green led light on the Digione board. If I recall correctly, it comes on when you power the clean side. For sure it should be on when you power up everything. However it can be disabled by the removal of one jumper (which I have now done). I got the Digione card separately, so it might be that the player has the led jumper disconnected from the beginning..

I was planning to buy the Digione soon, but this changes my plans a bit... I have a question to Allo: Compared to the standard Digione, should I expect an improvement in the sound if I use two simple 5V SPMS for now? Getting a good power supply for the clear side is something that requires a bit of research, so it will take me some time to get there... Also, using a battery is not very practical due to the need for restarts, as the rest of the family should be able to use it without much fiddling. For the sake of completeness, I am currently using a hifiberry+volumio. PS: the two power supply plugs are USB-C, right?