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TV as streamer: Shocking measurements

Rednaxela

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The Spotify app on my phone, I can select my TV but it says nothing about it being Chromecast and Spotify Connect.
It doesn’t?

My TV is listed twice on my phone. Can’t double check RN, but I can tell from the options which one is CC and which one SC. It’s something visual but I forgot what exactly. Anyway I always choose SC.
 

ThatM1key

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It doesn’t?

My TV is listed twice on my phone. Can’t double check RN, but I can tell from the options which one is CC and which one SC. It’s something visual but I forgot what exactly. Anyway I always choose SC.
Can't set anything on my TV

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Cars-N-Cans

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@McFly
Sadly there isn't a volume control when using optical (pcm). It just locks the volume control on the tv and outputs full volume.
That pretty much doesn't leave you many options unless you want to use another output on the TV (if there are any). For what its worth, this is the headphone out on my Sony Bravia. Its not half-bad, and would be fine for general use if your TV has one. Capture was with the output at 50% volume via my TASCAM recorder then analysis of the WAV file using REW. This would be fine for music in my opinion, but I guess it all depends on what options you have with the specific TV. At any rate, it does show the TVs can provide decent audio, but I had the same issue you did in that its hard to get it not to go into clipping with certain sources. Edit: On second thought this would obviously eliminate the DAC. But, is there any reason its specifically needed, i.e. you have other digital audio sources you use in conjunction with the TV? That also has me assuming your TV supports analog outputs and they are not fixed like the PCM is.
 

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Cars-N-Cans

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I never understood why someone would use a TV as music streamer. There are plenty of cheap options out there that are better, smaller and consume so much less power.

On top of that a TV resamples everything to 48khz
Its one less device to have if the TV is there, and you use it in conjunction with the rest of the system it makes sense. Just makes things simpler.
 

Rednaxela

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One thing I’d like to investigate myself one day is whether my (Sony) TV’s sound options affect its digital output. It has four different sound modes and something called ‘ClearAudio+’ and a couple of other things.

Could something like this explain your findings @3cx15000a7?
 

MCH

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You can use this to measure without the need of using external signal to measure them as single units.
Hi Sokel, i am not sure who you are answering to so sorry for the confusion if I misunderstood your post.
Are you saying you can use the multitone loopback analyzer to measure a tv digital outputs? How would that work? Is there a way to connect a tv as if it was an external card of the computer (and then capture the toslink signal with a second USB card I guess)?
Just wanted to confirm I understood it well before investing time reading the loopback analyzer thread :)
 

Sokel

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Hi Sokel, i am not sure who you are answering to so sorry for the confusion if I misunderstood your post.
Are you saying you can use the multitone loopback analyzer to measure a tv digital outputs? How would that work? Is there a way to connect a tv as if it was an external card of the computer (and then capture the toslink signal with a second USB card I guess)?
Just wanted to confirm I understood it well before investing time reading the loopback analyzer thread :)
I was suggesting to measure the whole loop.TV>dac analog output>U24XL.
Or you can just measure TV toshlink output>U24XL Toshlink input.
Multitone has a large variety of measurements.
 
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Rednaxela

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Tangband

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Hi all!

At first, compliments for all the good objective reviews with detailed measurements ! Nice to see there are also review places where cables not magically make stereo from mono.

I have the following setup:

LG Oled55C8 - > Optical out -> Musical Fidelity V-Dac 2 -> Marantz SR6001 -> B&W CM9 (stereo pair, I went away from surround long ago)

I mostly stream music from spotify using my tv.

I was wondering if it was worth to upgrade to a stand-alone streamer instead of using my TV as streamer. Therefore I borrowed a U24XL USB audio interface to do some measurements. I know, it's not an AP, but if it is really bad, I will see it was the idea.

So I connected the output of the V-DAC to the U24XL and I played a 1KHz tone from spotify. The results were shocking. More interesting, if I play a 1KHz tone from youtube, all seems fine!

I checked if I was not clipping the U24XL, but it wasn't. Turning down the volume did not changed the the relative strength of the harmonics. The youtube tone is quiter, but I can put it to the 0dBr before seeing clipping issues.

I used " Audiolab - Audio Test Tones" and " Pure Tone 1000 Hertz - Signal" on spotify and both gave the same results.

Does someone know why spotify seems to perform so badly? Shocking is, I enjoyed it all that time, wondering if I am just used to it or if there's going something wrong with my measurements . .

Edit: I now listened to my normal setup and I can clearly hear spotify distort where youtube don't (with the test tones) Also streaming through my chromecast dongle instead of using the spotify app on my tv give the same result . . .
Yes - spotify is that bad . Dont use it . Dont pay for it. It should be for free. Its not even hifi.
What you see is the lossy codec of audiolabs test tone record from spotify. Its useless to make measurements using Spotify.

In the movie and TV world, everything is sampled at 48 kHz . Music is often 44.1 kHz . The chance that a TV have a good SRC is very low. Its probably the cheapest solution one can buy .

I have , ofcourse, tried a TV as source and also an Apple tv v.5. The Apple TV sounded slightly better , but the leap to a yamaha wxc50 is clearly audible where the Yamaha , without being especially good, is a better sounding streamer with spotify as source. Using a TV as a streamer is not likely to produce a good sound.

A chromecast dongle is a very bad sounding solution. If youre not using ROON as a source , the jitter results are like from a horror movie. Look at the review here on audiosciencereview.

You can do much better soundwise with a dedicated streamer like WiiM (99 dollar ) , and slightly better than that with a laptop and a good, dedicated DDC.

The test tone from audiolab via Spotify and your LG tv seems to have a SINAD of…. 30 .
3BFFF3EC-23E3-42A3-9041-963C1AD5EC22.jpeg


Here is chromecast without ROON :
C2A5DE6D-A7B6-47E7-886E-69FD519ACB6D.png


Here is WiiM :
CA919A17-D4D8-4E8C-927D-79E12E51B44D.png


The sence morality of this is : dont use lossy codecs for hifi and dont use stuff thats only made for 48 kHz, as a streamer for music.
 
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