[darrylgoblue]

i also just picked up an A306 to replace my Sony NW-S755 walkman mainly for streaming purpose.

remember to turn off all animation scale settings in developer options for less laggy feel in operation.

pretty satisfy with the A306, if the ClearAudio+ feature could be replaced with Clear Bass and Clear Stereo then i will be happier.

I followed your A306 advice and I am amazed how much more responsive the device is. Many thanks. Now I am really glad I replaced my R5-turned-paperweight with the Sony product instead of another Hiby.

 

[stevenojobs]

Here's a pic of A306 playing a hi-res Tidal track to external DAC, which confirms audio is output as hi-res (green light = 88.2kHz-192kHz). It didn't change when I switched to a CD quality track so it looks like Tidal might be upsampling. This is with hi-res streaming turned off.

Edit/add: when using native Walkman app, the resolution changed to align with the resolution of the file that was being played, confirming that the native app outputs bit perfect audio.

Edit/add 2: (source) "Tidal (after the version 2.90.0 for Android) STOPPED using an external DAC. Tidal requests permission to use USB DAC - BUT (!) transfers audio to the Android audio path."

Ok thanks for the tests !

The comments are from 2023 so maybe Tidal was fixed since then ?

Because right now, getting downsampled to 48khz to be upsampled right after looks like a no brainer to me… android is really broken ! Can’t buy this right now.


@ttt123
So it’s clear now, that they use « upsampled » in purpose on the help page…

 

[thr4]

Ok thanks for the tests !

The comments are from 2023 so maybe Tidal was fixed since then ?

Because right now, getting downsampled to 48khz to be upsampled right after looks like a no brainer to me… android is really broken ! Can’t buy this right now.


@ttt123
So it’s clear now, that they use « upsampled » in purpose on the help page… it was clear to me !

If you scroll through the thread, it seems to still be an issue as of now, for Tidal specifically. Not sure about Qobuz as I am not using it. The net of it is that Tidal routes audio via Android mixer, not directly to DAC. It's not dependent on the streaming setting (it's off, yet Android still outputs in hi-res).

Native app sends bit-perfect audio to DAC.

 

[captblaze]

Ok thanks for the tests !

The comments are from 2023 so maybe Tidal was fixed since then ?

Because right now, getting downsampled to 48khz to be upsampled right after looks like a no brainer to me… android is really broken ! Can’t buy this right now.


@ttt123
So it’s clear now, that they use « upsampled » in purpose on the help page… it was clear to me !

If you scroll through the thread, it seems to still be an issue as of now, for Tidal specifically. Not sure about Qobuz as I am not using it. The net of it is that Tidal routes audio via Android mixer, not directly to DAC. It's not dependent on the streaming setting (it's off, yet Android still outputs in hi-res).

Native app sends bit-perfect audio to DAC.

Looks like Qobuz is locked to 96kHz and files get up and down sampled

UPDATE - I tried again and this time the rate was locked to 44kHz, so I have no idea what Sony or Android is doing outside of the native player. FYI - the native player asks for permission to use the external DAC (Hugo2 in this instance), but Qobuz does not ask for permission to use the external DAC

 

[stevenojobs]

Looks like Qobuz is locked to 96kHz and files get up and down sampled

UPDATE - I tried again and this time the rate was locked to 44kHz, so I have no idea what Sony or Android is doing outside of the native player. FYI - the native player asks for permission to use the external DAC (Hugo2 in this instance), but Qobuz does not ask for permission to use the external DAC

So guys, i'm gonna need one of you with a set of skills and time to lose lol.

I was having doubt about the famous "USB audio" app that claims to use the external DAC, with all the streaming services integrated.

I look it up, and it's a relatively small company that claims to bypass the android SRC and to connect to the DAC...
but if they can do it, without any problems, i'm pretty sure Qobuz and others huge players of streaming, who can literally call googles devs to work with them, would manage to make this work... The only other company that manage to do this is Fiio with their M11 but from what i read, they outright develop a custom version of android.

But they seems to know their crap !
On the android play store page, i clicked on about and end up reading this really informative page about hi-res driver.

With that sort of info :

1.

Note that this direct driver is used with the internal audio of the phone in combination with headphones connected to the phone directly and is completely unrelated to the situation where you would use our USB audio driver in combination with a USB DAC.

2.

Note that if the app plays after selecting the HiRes audio driver and your device is not listed here, it does NOT automatically mean that your device is playing in HiRes, even if the current song display says 'Direct'. Some devices just fall back to a non-HiRes audio path instead of giving an error message.

It's a goldmine of information !! And if someone wants to try

3.

VERIYFING THE CORRECT WORKING OF THE DRIVER​

There are a couple of ways to inspect whether the HiRes driver is really playing without resampling and in 24-bit mode. If you want to try with ADB, it can be found in the Android platform tools: https://developer.android.com/studio/releases/platform-tools.html

• Frequency analysis: the best proof is when you playback a sine sweep on the Android device and analyze it on another device, for example with Rightmark Audio Analyzer. You'll need a sine sweep, like this: http://www.audio-evolution.com/downloads/SweepToneStereoFrom5000To96000Hz_192kHz.wav . Play this 192kHz WAV file containing a sine wave from 5000Hz up to 96kHz (half the nyquist frequency) and record it at 192kHz with a good audio interface (that can record up to 192kHz!). On a PC, preferably use a ASIO driver. There should be frequency content from the start to end.
• AudioFlinger output: use ADB (Android debug bridge) on a desktop machine to log onto your Android device:
  Download SDK platform tools (for Windows). After unzipping the file, enter the platform-tools folder. Here you should see a number of files, including adb.exe or just adb. Hold the left SHIFT key on your keyboard and press the right mouse button somewhere in the directory and select 'Open Powershell here'. Now connect your Android device to your PC. Then open Android settings on your Android device, select About and then find an entry called 'Build number'. Tap it 7 times until it says that you are now a developer. Press back and in the settings find the new 'Developer options' entry. Tap on that and then enable the developer options at the top-right and also enable 'USB debugging'. It may ask you to allow connection from your PC, allow it.
  
  Now, in the shell, type
  ./adb shell
  Start playback in UAPP of a 192kHz file with the HiRes driver enabled.
  In the ADB shell, type:
  dumpsys media.audio_flinger
  Search for a section that has a DIRECT in it. This mostly happens at the end of the dumpsys output and see if it is playing at 24-bit at 192000Hz.
• adb shell
  logcat or logcat > /mnt/sdcard/log.txt
  Search for 'rate' in the log and see if you can determine which sample rate was really used.

 

[stevenojobs]

And a last quote sorry
4.

Note: selecting the HiRes direct driver and the display of 'Direct' in the player is no guarantee that the app actually plays through the direct audio path! The app (or any app for that matter) cannot know or query the system if the request to play in direct mode is honoured or if Android choses another non-direct path. In some occassions, the player will give a failure at playback, but often this is not the case. Only inspection of system logs, listening tests and frequency analysis of the output will prove it. However, if your device is listed below as compatible, you can be reasonably sure that the direct path is used.

Maybe google will update their audio driver in the next iteration of android

 

[BOTAK WAI]

I followed your A306 advice and I am amazed how much more responsive the device is. Many thanks. Now I am really glad I replaced my R5-turned-paperweight with the Sony product instead of another Hiby.

if you would like to further optimize it, there is a guide here:
https://www.head-fi.org/threads/new...ries-android-12.966467/page-199#post-17506864