I just got the Sonata HD Pro, and it sounds like its barely louder than the Apple dongle. Not trusting my ear in testing loudness though. ...
I received the Sonata HD Pro today (still waiting for the S8), ...
I received mine yesterday and used it to drive Noble X Massdrop and Senn IE40 Pro IEMs, HE400is, and the same headphones when I connect the output of the Sonata HD Pro to a Heresy. I used the Tidal app, Windows Groove, and Foobar in both WASAPI push and event modes.
It sounds fine to me, as in indistinguishable from my Topping D30 when driving those cans via the Heresy, and it clearly sounds better with less noise than my FiiO K1. However, it has a number of usability issues, so I am curious to see if you have noted the same things.
1. It sends a big click or two to any connected device when I wake my Win 10 PC from sleep mode.
2. Those volume control buttons on the device flat out suck. The only way to effectively control volume when driving the HE400i is to set it at max and use the app volume control. It's a little better when driving the IEMs but the steps are too big.
3. It seems to click loudly or randomly drop the first 1.3 seconds or so of some tracks when starting a playlist or switching between cuts in Foobar or Tidal. That happens in both event and push WASAPI mode in Foobar, no matter where I set the buffer from 50 ms to 2000 ms. I'm not sure which mode Tidal uses when set to run the Sonata in exclusive mode. It sometimes drops a similar amount of audio when skipping ahead in a test track, or switching between tracks in a playlist or album in Tidal or Foobar.
I didn't note the problems when running Windows Groove on those same files.
I took a look at the Tempotec web site and found a driver package for the Sonata HD, so I installed that and found that I could then select the Sonata HD as an ASIO device in Foobar, and that seemed to
partially mitigate the drops on 44.1/16 FLACs, but when I switched to a 48/24 cut, it was distorted. Double clicking on the entry in the ASIO drivers list in Foobar brought up the Tempotec ASIO device panel, which I found very confusing. I believe the issue was that it was outputting 48k source material as 32 bit rather than 24 bit, and it seemed to work on any 44.1/48/88.2/96 FLACs after I clicked on 24 bit output for all sampling frequencies (or at least I thought I did, like I noted, the device panel isn't a model of clarity.)
Does anyone know for sure that the HD and HD Pro use the same USB interface chip/firmware? Anyone know if the HD suffers from some of the same issues as the HD Pro with Foobar or other players in WASAPI mode? I've never experienced that problem with my Foobar installation using any of the 5 or so other USB DACs I've owned or auditioned over the years.
4. It seems to drive the HE400i adequately when playing Tidal HiFi or Master cuts, but when using Foobar or Groove and playing FLACs of those same albums, it falls a little short. (More evidence that Tidal uses some form of compression in those modes.)
However, by "adequately" I mean setting the volume to max on the device and then applying a little attenuation in the app. If I play a classical cut that is mastered at a level that results in a 600 kbps or less FLAC file, I must run Foobar at max volume and not use any headphone EQ that cuts the output by the typical 6 dB.
Thanks for any insights you can share.