Very curious about your impressions about the AMP9 tube amp. On paper it looks like a wonderful sounding piece of equipment.
I have the R6 using FLAC and balanced, no EQ, one closed- and one open-ended ZMF, Grado GH2 (SE). Iām sensitive to treble and the R6 is not a problem. Plus the R6 has a great EQ approach with tons of tweaking options.
BTW, R6 2020 incomingā¦
2 Likes
I was thinking about getting the Sony nw zx-507, but I read that it doesnāt have much power to drive headphones (I have the Ananda, Grado RE 2e, iBasso SR2, etc.). Is that your experience? I will be using them mostly to stream Amazon music HD, Spotify, etc. Finally, are they reasonably easy to operate? Thanks.
Iāve tried several DAPs and have decided the Hiby R6 works. It easily drives Grado GH2s, and a few ZMF cans. Plus itās balanced. I should be getting the new R6 2020 by monthās end.
3 Likes
Something to note on this is that hiby claims it has bypassed android auto resampling for all apps. If this works with roon (and their app doesnāt do something dumbā¦) that makes it the only native file roon ready dap on the market
3 Likes
In terms of SQ I would say the Shanling M8.
So I canāt edit my post anymore, but I have had it confirmed that roon on hiby daps still resamples as its local output directly calls the Android mixer.
Back to the initial question, I havent had hands on any of them, but when I was hunting for a dap everyone seemed to focus on the DX300, DX220 Max, R8 and M8 as the best SQ tier of Android daps
2 Likes
How does one use Roon on a Hiby DAP?
Roon remote on Android
1 Like
I highly recommend the iBasso DX300. Iām working on a full review for it now, but Iāve been A/B testing it and the HiBy 2020 R6 the last week or so to figure out which one Iām keeping. I wrote up my A/B findings in iBasso dx300 vs Hiby r6 2020 - #29 by eru_illuvitar if that helps with your research!
8 Likes
Curious- how did you discover this? It was my impression nothing on Hiby players goes through the Android stack.
Its not that nothing using android mixer but instead that android mixer isnāt called for all sound output. Apps taht call android mixer specificaly (like roon) will still resample. This was confirmed by a few users in hiby threads over on headfi
1 Like
The only reliable way around Androidās native audio-system performing forced, power-optimized (rather than quality-optimized) re-sampling, is to use something that completely replaces that subsystem.
Both FiiO and HiBy bypass it to a certain extent (some other units do to), but thatās not the same thing as replacing it (whereby anything trying to invoke it specifically would still be getting the manufacturerās custom implementation).
To my knowledge, only A&K currently do a total replacement of the Android audio-subsystem.
2 Likes
I have the FiiO M11 Pro and with the recent firmware update, TIDAL, Qobuz, and UAPP streaming does seem to be bypassing Android-audio and allowing bit-perfect playback.
A recent development has been that Davyāthe developer of UAPPā (with the help of some Head-fiāers) has figured out how to get the Sony ZX507 to play bit-perfect from that Walkman, even though it is an Android 9-based system and a proprietary Sony DAC chip.
I have the ZX507, and can confirm that UAPP bypasses the Android audio stack now. The zx507 is still underpowered though; woefully so in the EU where max-output restrictions have crippled the device.
Is this doable for 3rd party applications? I stream with various apps primarily.
I just ordered a zx507 for IEMs.
1 Like
3rd-party streaming apps on the ZX507 have two options, via the Sony audio setting āHi-Res Streamingā: when set to On, all audio from 3rd-party apps is upscaled to 32b/192kHz; when set to Off, all music is passed to the Android audio mixer and resampled to 16b/48kHz.
The latest version of USB Audio Player Pro (UAPP) will detect the hi-res-capable internal DAC of the ZX507 now and bypass Android audio (and the āHigh-Res Streamingā On/Off 32b/192k SRC setting) and output bit-perfect. Thatās the only 3rd-party app that will bypass the Android audio stack currently.
The native Walkman Music app for local music is bit-perfect though.
So, this is a part of streaming I havenāt explored. Does bit perfect really mean āplay at the source file settingā. So If I am streaming something that is 16/44 it will play that?
While if I have the hi res thing on it upscales that to 32/192?
And if no hi res I get 16/48 no matter the source?
And UAPP bypasses that and plays at source file whatever it may be?
Is that understanding correct?
Close.
UAPP will play local files and also is a front-end for TIDAL and Qobuz (log in with your TIDAL and/or Qobuz credentials in UAPP and it uses those servicesā APIs to stream through UAPP). On the ZX507 (and many other supported Android phones and DAPs) UAPP will tell you upon launch that it has detected a high-res capable internal DAC and will play directly to it rather than go through the Android mixer, and play at the bit/sample-rate of the source file/stream.
To clarify one thing (and Iām only paraphrasing from the experts who actually view the Android logs or write custom firmware for Walkman kit) but the Sony S-Master DAC either plays at 16bits or 32bits, so even with natively-stored 24bit FLAC, the S-Master will zero-pad to 32bit.
So to summarize, with the Sony ZX507, if you go to the Android Settings:Audio:High-Res Streaming ā On, then 3rd-party apps will have all audio upscaled by Sonyās proprietary code to 32b/192kHz. If High-Res Streaming = Off, all 3rd-party apps will pass their audio through the Android mixer and be resampled to 16b/48kHz. If you use UAPP (and have the UAPP setting Bit Perfect = On) then UAPP bypasses both the Android mixer and the Sony High-Res streaming code and plays at whatever the original bit*/sample-rate of the file/stream was.
The internal Sony Walkman Music app also plays everything at the original bit*/sample-rate of locally stored files.
Cheers
*zero-padding 24bit music to 32bit, but thatās fine.
3 Likes
Understood.
This, so far, has not mattered to me at all. In a/b testing I havenāt been able to detect differences across any sources if all are 16/44 or higher. I doubt I would hear sampling changes, but, as usual, I will a/b test more.
As a software engineer I just wanted to understand what is going on.
Thanks!
From a purely SQ perspective I heartily rec the Shanling DAPs. Their M8 is remarkable.