Apex domains cannot have CNAME records.
Question and response
Question
dig allophone.net. NS
Answer
allophone.net. 2 NS ns2.allophone.net.
allophone.net. 2 NS ns1.allophone.net.
Authority
The response has no authority records.
Additional
ns1.allophone.net. 2 A 216.75.112.221
ns2.allophone.net. 2 A 216.75.120.221
. 0 OPT ; payload 1232, xrcode 0, version 0, flags 0