PIANO 2.1 HI-FI DAC

My office setup as it stands now a pi4 with volumio and a Allo volt+ d out to my B&W 601 s2 speakers and a Dayton audio sub 1000. The piano allowed me to get rid of the my desktop DAC (Schiit modi v1) it sounds great and has dedicated sub outs. Once I got my volumes balanced between my amp and sub it has turned into a really convenient system. Allo is a great company I love both products I have from them definitely a useful product

Didn't expect much from this DAC, but its 2.1 output allowed me to simplify our bedroom system. The Piano installed quickly on a Pi 3, configured easily under Raspbian using either ALSA or the vendor's GUI app, and getting a clean, good-sounding crossover between subwoofer and the satellites didn't take very long. Allo may be onto something with the Piano topology - by using two relatively inexpensive DAC chips to split the signal processing, they appear to have made a DAC that plays well above its low price - it's imaging is exceptional with precise, and very stable, placements within a well-defined presentation. There's no lack of detail and definition either, soaring massed voices like Mozart's Requiem, or Beethoven's 9th are displayed gracefully, stably, and with appropriate impact. I'm suitably impressed - within the limits of our room and system, this relatively cheap DAC has delivered far more than what we asked it to do, which comes as a very pleasant surprise indeed

Sounds great, and this is the only way to have a 4 channel dac at this price point! getting it running was a bit tricky. The dual stereo and dual mono drivers are included with the Linux kernel and work in moode without issue. but having a 2.1 or 2.2 setup requires downloading separate files from Allo’s GitHub repo and moving them into the /boot directory. There are no instructions on the allo website (that I could find) which tell you how to do this. I spent a few hours of searching the internet to finally get it working. Clear instructions would have made this much easier.

This is a great add on to any Raspberry Pi. It especially good for older version to get outstanding sound quality from the device. I highly recommend this HAT/DAC.

I like that it works as designed. However, the output is not as loud as I would like, and the audio quality is not the best. However, if used with an amp with tone controls, I bet it would sound great.

Really enjoying the piano 2.1 with my raspberry pi 3b. Very easy to install the DAC to the pi. I’m using volumio with my setup and in my opinion, the sound with the DAC attached to the pi is the best my setup has ever sounded!