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Android and Hifi Audio


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The problem with charging and otg led me to Android X86 . I am running Phoenix OS on windows laptop connected to Aqvox dac. , UAPP runs flawless, you do not need OTG, standard cable work.Unlike phone or tablet, laptop has power and Ethernet. I am only listening to Tidal now, and UAPP is fantastic with Tidal.

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It would be quite interesting to power an energy efficient Android device with Uptone Audio LPS-1, though it's quite a challenge to find something that's capable of running just under 5V/1.1A without any batteries.

 

This one says 90-230V,50/60Hz input, max. power: 5W, Output: 5V/1A so maybe that could be feasible?

 

http://www.ebay.ca/itm/NEW-MK808B-Mini-PC-TV-BOX-Bluetooth-Android-4-2-RK3066-Dual-Core-8GB-WiFi-HDMI-/181501802344

http://freaktab.com/forum/tv-player-support/rk3066-devices/mk-models-mk808-802-etc/4156-mk808b-clones-how-to-identify-them

 

KitKat upgrade might be good for Android Wear via Bluetooth as well?

 

http://www.android-hilfe.de/thema/mk808b-stock-rom-collection-rk3066-ap6210.582005/

 

http://chinagadgetsreviews.blogspot.com/2014/11/download-android-kitkat-44-stock_28.html

 

http://freaktab.com/forum/tv-player-support/rk3066-devices/mk-models-mk808-802-etc/16637-mk808b-kitkat-kernel-working-wifi-bt

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  • 1 year later...
On 4/28/2016 at 1:48 AM, ginetto61 said:

 

Hi ! thanks a lot for the very helpful advice.

I am thinking seriously to the Himedia Q10 pro even if i have just bought another Android TV box, the Nvidia Shield TV 16GB.

As i said your words about its sound bettering the one from your pc system has confirmed my feeling, that an Android device can be a very good digital source

The main issue, as usual, can be the lack of drivers for dacs.

Lately i have been "playing" with usb to spdif converters and at least one seems to work with Android.

Then i can drive any dac around with decent results.

Interestingly some dac manufacturers start to provide drivers also for Android OS (like iFi Audio).

Thanks a lot again.

Have a nice day, gino

 

Reviving an ancient thread --- I recently got a NVIDIA Shield and I am finding that I get a big improvement in sound quality using the USB output of the Shield as a digital source (feeding into a Benchmark DAC1 HDR) versus using the SPDIF output from my Squeezebox or using a USB connection to a Windows PC.  That's the good news.  The bad news is that I only get that improvement in sound quality when using UAPP (USB Audio Player Pro) on the Shield and I'm having stability issues with that.  What I'm encountering is that every few minutes the music will pause (as if someone had pressed the pause button) and then you need to hit "play" again to make it continue.  The unwanted pausing happens with FLAC files and with WAV files, with the files on local storage and on networked drives, and happens even when no DAC is connected to the Shield.  And there seems to be no pattern to it - it seems to be random on which songs it will happen and where in the song it happens.  So what I'm is  whether this is a problem inherent in the Shield or if my experience an aberration.  Have you been using the Shield with UAPP successfully?

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8 hours ago, Somsak said:

 

Reviving an ancient thread --- I recently got a NVIDIA Shield and I am finding that I get a big improvement in sound quality using the USB output of the Shield as a digital source (feeding into a Benchmark DAC1 HDR) versus using the SPDIF output from my Squeezebox or using a USB connection to a Windows PC.  That's the good news.  The bad news is that I only get that improvement in sound quality when using UAPP (USB Audio Player Pro) on the Shield and I'm having stability issues with that.  What I'm encountering is that every few minutes the music will pause (as if someone had pressed the pause button) and then you need to hit "play" again to make it continue.  The unwanted pausing happens with FLAC files and with WAV files, with the files on local storage and on networked drives, and happens even when no DAC is connected to the Shield.  And there seems to be no pattern to it - it seems to be random on which songs it will happen and where in the song it happens.  So what I'm is  whether this is a problem inherent in the Shield or if my experience an aberration.  Have you been using the Shield with UAPP successfully?

Email the uapp developer, Davy: [email protected] he is super helpful.

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On 6/2/2018 at 10:47 AM, Rexp said:

Email the uapp developer, Davy: [email protected] he is super helpful.

 

With the help of the developer, it seems as though the source of the issue has been isolated.  It turns out that the culprit was (or all things) the Shield’s remote control unit.  Disable the remote by taking the batteries out and the problem goes away.  Though I can’t be sure of the reason why, I suspect that it’s because the remote has a built-in microphone to listen to voice commands such as “OK Google, stop the music” and it was picking up ambient noise that caused it to send a “pause” signal to UAPP.

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3 minutes ago, Rexp said:

Ha! Glad you solved it. How would you rate the sound to say analog sources?

 

I think that it’s superb, far better than any other digital source that I’ve used in my system, but I no longer have an analogue source to which to compare it.  

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5 minutes ago, Somsak said:

 

I think that it’s superb, far better than any other digital source that I’ve used in my system, but I no longer have an analogue source to which to compare it.  

Cool, have you compared Tidal against your local files?

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9 hours ago, Rexp said:

Cool, have you compared Tidal against your local files?


I haven’t tried Tidal (yet).  This whole exercise has been a nice surprise for me.  I bought the Shield because it was supposed to be the gold standard for streaming video and it didn’t even occur to me to try using it as a Squeezebox replacement until I read in the manual that its USB supported up to 192/24 audio.  And while I’ve always been satisfied with the Benchmark DAC1 HDR via its SPDIF inputs, I previously thought that with USB input it was poor.  So I was surprised and excited when I wound up with an improvement in my system on par with getting new speakers.

Someone like Stereophile really should write a review of Android audio and all the ins and outs of it.  I think that it would be a popular article, especially considering how cheap Android TV boxes are and the level of sound that's achievable.  But without documentation you need to have some time on your hands to get the most out of it.  From playing with it for a few days, I found that while NVIDIA has native highres support over USB in the Shield but it is poorly implemented, so you really need UAPP to bypass that.  And I briefly tried UAPP on other devices (a Huawaei tablet, a Samsung View 18.4, and a cheap Chinese AndroidTV box) and found that it worked but that the first two (but not the Chinese box) but the sound, while still arguably better than my Squeezebox , wasn’t as good as from the Shield.  So from my limited fiddling around, I’m thinking that the key is to use UAPP plus a powerful android device is the key.

 

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2 hours ago, m.i.c.k.e.y said:

Be sure to enable Bitperfect on your UAPP. 

 

On my android box, an additional LPS helps improved the SQ. 


UAPP has three Bit Perfect settings: “Off” “On” and “When Possible”.  I’ve been using “When Possible” because my DAC cannot support bitrates over 96KHz via its USB input but I’m not sure how that differs from “Off”.  It seems like when you select “Off” it only resamples to a different bitrate than in the original file when your DAC doesn’t support the bitrate that’s in the file, but that’s the same thing that the documentation says that “When Possible” does.  Maybe the difference is just that it disables any volume and EQ adjustments.  When set to “On” it will out at the same bitrate as in the original file regardless of whether your DAC can handle that bitrate, which I guess would be useful in cases where the software is unable to detect what bitrates the DAC can support.

 

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As I have understood...

 

When OFF, Android will upsample to a very high rate and downsample to a target rate (esp to what your DAC supports). You can apply DSP or EQ adjustments on this setting.

 

When ON or "When possible", no processing is performed, audio is passed unchanged (therefore no bits lost during upsample and downsample conversions). "When possible" plays bit perfect when DAC supports the sample rate of the file. 

 

Have fun!

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  • 1 month later...

Gave UAPP another go this week and dont know whats changed but it sounds significantly  better! Tidal for example is now much clearer than with the Tidal app. Now thinking of getting a dap with optical out (not a fan of usb and want to keep everything battery operated), any suggestions?

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1 hour ago, Rexp said:

Gave UAPP another go this week and dont know whats changed but it sounds significantly  better! Tidal for example is now much clearer than with the Tidal app. Now thinking of getting a dap with optical out (not a fan of usb and want to keep everything battery operated), any suggestions?

 

I can't comment on older versions of UAPP but the present version is the bee's knees.  Since I switch from the Squeezebox Touch to a NVIDIA Shield with UAPP it's been hard to stop listening to my stereo.  User friendliness is low but I can live with that.

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15 hours ago, Rexp said:

Gave UAPP another go this week and dont know whats changed but it sounds significantly  better! Tidal for example is now much clearer than with the Tidal app. Now thinking of getting a dap with optical out (not a fan of usb and want to keep everything battery operated), any suggestions?

I did a quick search on Amazon and iBasso models are the only ones that came up.  Another search came up with Opus and A&K (which are on Amazon).

QNAP TS453Pro w/QLMS->Netgear Switch->Netgear RAX43 Router->Ethernet (50 ft)->Netgear switch->SBTouch ->SABAJ A10d->Linn Majik-IL (preamp)->Linn 2250->Linn Keilidh; Control Points: iPeng (iPad Air & iPhone); Also: Rega P3-24 w/ DV 10x5; OPPO 103; PC Playback: Foobar2000 & JRiver; Portable: iPhone 12 ProMax & Radio Paradise or NAS streaming; Sony NWZ ZX2 w/ PHA-3; SMSL IQ, Fiio Q5, iFi Nano iDSD BL; Garage: Edifier S1000DB Active Speakers  

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18 hours ago, Rexp said:

Gave UAPP another go this week and dont know whats changed but it sounds significantly  better! Tidal for example is now much clearer than with the Tidal app. Now thinking of getting a dap with optical out (not a fan of usb and want to keep everything battery operated), any suggestions?

 

Fiio x7 Mark II has optical and coaxial.  Fiio x5 gen 3 has coaxial

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  • 2 months later...

With the new crop of Android 7 TV boxes, has anyone successfully used on with a DAC or DAP??

 

What I would like to do is attach an external drive with my music collection to the Android TV box, then connect the digital output of the Android TV box to a DAC which outputs to my analog stereo system.

It seems like it should be doable.

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