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Amazon Basics 4K HDMI Extractor Review

Rate this HDMI Extractor

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 6 3.5%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 24 14.1%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther

    Votes: 78 45.9%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 62 36.5%

  • Total voters
    170

capslock

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I am a friend of lean systems. Avoid anything superfluous. Smartphone as controller, Raspberry Pi as renderer and DSP (xover, room correction), DM7 as Dac, 4 channel Amp, raw Speaker.
People have been known to run their DSP XO on a PC or Raspberry using HDMI out and an AVR as multichannel DAC and power amplifier. Hard to beat in terms of a lean setup, but unfortunately, there's no such thing as a well implemented AVR.
 

tinnitus

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Those were my first combinations too, but many AVRs have a hard time with LPCM input. And the AVRs have countless features that you do not need if DSP has already done in advance.
 

pablolie

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Measures well for the price, but sometimes I wonder about the use case for these products. I most certainly have no idea what I'd consider it for - and I don't mean because of anything terrible with the measured performance, my question is "why?". :)
 

Trell

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Measures well for the price, but sometimes I wonder about the use case for these products. I most certainly have no idea what I'd consider it for - and I don't mean because of anything terrible with the measured performance, my question is "why?". :)
I’ve used a similar device for ripping SACDs where there is no CD layer, but then I used the TOSLINK output.
 

sarumbear

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Measures well for the price, but sometimes I wonder about the use case for these products. I most certainly have no idea what I'd consider it for - and I don't mean because of anything terrible with the measured performance, my question is "why?". :)
If you have a TV and want to send its audio to an amplifier, which only has SPDIF inputs.
 

D1N0

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Measures well for the price, but sometimes I wonder about the use case for these products. I most certainly have no idea what I'd consider it for - and I don't mean because of anything terrible with the measured performance, my question is "why?". :)
If you want to play sound on a non digital amplifier or active speaker from a HDMI source. TV's don't have analogue outputs anymore so you split of the sound with this device, and put through the image to the screen. To split of the sound a DAC is needed, since HDMI sound is digital. I use it to send an analogue signal from a chromecast to an old Sansui 331 receiver. I use a pc monitor for TV (In my den).
 

pablolie

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I’ve used a similar device for ripping SACDs where there is no CD layer, but then I used the TOSLINK output.
That makes sense ... but, at "nearly 16 bits DR" is it the best tool of choice for that?
 

pablolie

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OK - but even my 12 year old flatscreen has a Toslink output - isn't that standard? Since this box provides only digital outputs I am not sure I "get it", since you'd need a DAC behind it anyhow... just like if you just used the Toslink out on the TV - and in theory Toslink supports 5.1...?

I am strictly ole-fashioned 2.1, so this is more of a question in order to learn, more than anything else. :)
 

Trell

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OK - but even my 12 year old flatscreen has a Toslink output - isn't that standard? Since this box provides only digital outputs I am not sure I "get it", since you'd need a DAC behind it anyhow... just like if you just used the Toslink out on the TV - and in theory Toslink supports 5.1...?

I am strictly ole-fashioned 2.1, so this is more of a question in order to learn, more than anything else. :)
SPDIF over Toslink does support 5.1 but that is a lossy format and the DAC must be able to decode it.

ADAT is also over Toslink and supports 8 channels 24 bits/48 kHz, but you won’t find that in consumer products. A doubling of sampling rate will halve the number of channels. RME products with ADAT allows at least one such port to be configured as SPDIF.
 

pablolie

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SPDIF over Toslink does support 5.1 but that is a lossy format and the DAC must be able to decode it.

Thank you, I didn't know that. To me TV use is secondary :)

Does that mean that in my personal use (Toslink out to DAC and 2.1 -not 5.1- system) I am getting semi-lossy audio output from the TV at the aforementioned "nearly 16 bits"?
 

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Trell

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Thank you, I didn't know that. To me TV use is secondary :)

Does that mean that in my personal use (Toslink out to DAC and 2.1 -not 5.1- system) I am getting semi-lossy audio output from the TV at the aforementioned "nearly 16 bits"?

Depends on how your system is configured. As you have a 2.1 you could setup your TV to output PCM (just stereo, not bitstream). Your receiver will then handle the bass management, that is, output stereo. I don’t think this will necessarily matter that much as your receiver will do the same with the same lossy source, streaming over internet.

Just select what sounds best to you. Personally I would just let the receiver decode the 5.1 bitstream and down mix to 2.1.
 

mdsimon2

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Thank you, I didn't know that. To me TV use is secondary :)

Does that mean that in my personal use (Toslink out to DAC and 2.1 -not 5.1- system) I am getting semi-lossy audio output from the TV at the aforementioned "nearly 16 bits"?

You are misinterpreting the 16 bit dynamic range measurement, that is for the analog output of the DAC, not the TOSLINK output. The TOSLINK output is transparent to 24 bits.

A classic reason to use one of these is you have a device that only has a HDMI output like the AppleTV 4 or 4K and want a SPDIF output. I agree that a lot of TVs have TOSLINK outputs but a lot of these also implement very poor resampling that will not retain 16 bit dynamic range.

See this example of a measurement of the TOSLINK output from my TV compared to a HDMI extractor -> https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...nd-path-for-tvs-optical-out.24076/post-811823.

Michael
 

Tks

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Glad to see the extractor function works as expected. Really nice to see given that things like game consoles have gotten rid of their TOSLINK support for some dumb reason.
 

pseudoid

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I think that there maybe some intermixing of HDMI terms here.
From the amazon website a direct quote:
....Supports up to 4k video resolution; 8-bit 4K (30 Hz),
[on August 18, 2020]This is HDMI v1.4, it does not support HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2. You can still use it in HDMI 2.0 system, but you will get 1080P or 4K@30Hz, you can't get 4K@60Hz and no HDR.
Get the latest HDMI 2.0 extractor instead, at about the same price, such as the "UAEP" model see less
Few "Thenaudio Sharc" eARC processor ($200) look worthy (but w/o specs).
The 2022 "true" 4K OLED TVs do not deserve this thing just because it is selling for $20.69
We tend to get quite finicky about a few dB audio spec details but tend to look the other way when trying to marry the HiDef video functions to our audio needs. :(
 
OP
amirm

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@amirm you may want to change power supply voltage from 9V to 5V. The label says, 5V and USB is also 5V.
The round connector used to be called the "9 volt" because that was the most common voltage for it back in the days. That was the reason I put that in parenthesis, not that the voltage is 9 volts.
 

sarumbear

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The round connector used to be called the "9 volt" because that was the most common voltage for it back in the days. That was the reason I put that in parenthesis, not that the voltage is 9 volts.
All due respect @amirm that doesn't make sense and is misleading. Besides, the same connector had been used on all sorts of different voltages from the very early days. They are standardised by IEC almost 30 years ago as SELV plugs and sockets for varying voltages.

Most guitar effects from early 80s used the same connector at 12V. My Sinclair/Cambridge Z88 from late 80s used the same connector at 6V. How far in history you want to go? :)
 

srkbear

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This is built from a standard motherboard that has been circulated on eBay and elsewhere in myriad conformations for a few years—I’m pretty sure it’s the same internals KanexPro uses for their HAECOAX model, but this iteration is at a much lower price.

I’m not sure why you have to select the multichannel toggle to get high sampling rate passthrough to coax, but you do. I use the KanexPro version to output from the HDMI Audio Out on my (discontinued) Sony UBP-x1000ES Blu ray/SACD player, running to the digital coax input on my Topping d90SE.

When I have the multichannel output selected on this board and Sony’s DSEE Extreme enabled on the player, I get 88.2khz for Red Book CDs and 176.4khz for SACD discs—this is how I figured out that the DSEE Extreme engine upsamples the signal by a factor of two. The same tech is still available in the current production UBP-x8002–whether the upsampling makes any audible difference is questionable, but to my ears this setup sounds great!
 

MCH

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This is built from a standard motherboard that has been circulated on eBay and elsewhere in myriad conformations for a few years—I’m pretty sure it’s the same internals KanexPro uses for their HAECOAX model, but this iteration is at a much lower price.

I’m not sure why you have to select the multichannel toggle to get high sampling rate passthrough to coax, but you do. I use the KanexPro version to output from the HDMI Audio Out on my (discontinued) Sony UBP-x1000ES Blu ray/SACD player, running to the digital coax input on my Topping d90SE.

When I have the multichannel output selected on this board and Sony’s DSEE Extreme enabled on the player, I get 88.2khz for Red Book CDs and 176.4khz for SACD discs—this is how I figured out that the DSEE Extreme engine upsamples the signal by a factor of two. The same tech is still available in the current production UBP-x8002–whether the upsampling makes any audible difference is questionable, but to my ears this setup sounds great!
the connectors layout is indeed identical, the rest looks different i guess, but the sticker is screaming "we are brothers!" (amazon to the right)
1669744254427.png
 
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