Warming up digital in my setup

@martinman I'm intrigued by your Pi/Allo setup.  Early on, my first headphone setup used a Pi w/ HiFiBerry Hat.  It worked out really well to stream Spotify -- it was basically set and forget.  I still have a few raspberryPi 3 and 4, so I'll check this out and report back! 

Worth a shot. I run mine with Moode, but Volumio is good too. Also use this low cost LPS:

I will be interested to hear your results.

If you have a tape loop, get a tube buffer. That should warm it up a bit. 

Definitely the phone setup.  Get a used Lumin u1 mini, Kimber Kable D60 spdif, used RME ADI2 dac fs. You will be happy. Quboz subscription. I use this setup in my den with PS Audio BHK signature pre and m700 monoblocks into Kef R11.  No glass.

I would definitely start with upgrading your source.

I started out feeding my dac with an iPhone, and it was terrible. I bought an Auralic Aries, and it was a night and day difference. My streaming (Tidal masters) SQ now beats the pants off red book CD audio fed into the same dac. Auralic’s Lightning DS app is incredibly easy to use. I love this unit.

There’s an Aries for sale on eBay right now for $599 which is a great deal.

Here’s a couple reviews of the Aries

If you’re feeding the DAC via USB, then the Laboga Emerald is significantly warm and "analogue" compared to any other I’ve tried.

A more expensive option is the Innuos Phoenix USB - this will bring benefits across the board, as well as taming the treble