Arylic BP50 review

[bogdansrb]

Just got my Arylic BP50 a few days ago and thought I'd do a small review.
First off some inside pictures. The unit comes in a nice box with a manual and a guide inside and another smaller box with the remote, BT antennas and a power adapter.

The unit itself is all aluminium and it feels nicely built.

On the inside there's not much, the PCB is quite small and doesn't take up the entire space. At the DC input jack there's a large chinese-brand capacitor and some switching converters.

The residue is probably from the PCB cleaning process.
Next there's the DAC chip and the line driver. Some soldering touch-ups on some components too. The GND post for the turntable is connected to the PCB via a thick wire.

Phono preamp.

From left to right: optical in/out section, the audio processing/DSP chip, BT module and USB switch. The cables on the top are for the front panel.

Sound:
I'm not the kind of audiophile listener that can describe all the nuances of a sound. What matters to me is that there is no obvious frequency response, distortion or noise. And I can report that even on the flat preset there seems to be a noticeable response. I don't know if flat means that any processing is turned off or if the response is added by the analog section at the output, but I will try to do a measurement and see exactly what response I get.
The sound is clean, there is some noise when switching between inputs but nothing too bad. The phono preamp sounds fine, nothing to report here.
What I don't like is that Line In also passes through the DSP and DAC, I would've preffered a direct output here.
I also tested the USB DAC option with my Raspberry Pi streamer and the unit was detected and worked fine.

 

[TonyJZX]

thanks for those pics

i think everyone would agree that the OOTB and presentation is great

but those caps:

Beware of Chongx capacitors - Page 1

Beware of Chongx capacitors - Page 1

www.eevblog.com

everyone is complaining about the B50/BP50 as they all run the same digital processing and they have the same bugs

i also think it would not have been reasonable to expect an analog bypass - everything gets passed thru the dsp which operates at 48kz so any kind of hi-res input would be a waste of time

 

[bogdansrb]

I forgot to mention there's very audible hissing which I can hear from my listening position further away from the speakers, the kind of hissing you get with high gain stages (probably coming from the line driver). Though I couldn't hear any other kind of noise. And when there's no audio, the output is turned off, which makes a small pop and the noise disappears. I also had an issue with a youtube video that had speech and when there was silence between phrases the output would decouple and come back again. I wonder if they could increase the delay from software.

 

[TonyJZX]

i have tested mine with two amps... one a/b one digital and the noise floor is fine on mine

there's a slew of bugs that should be fixed in firmware but we will see

i would hope the thing works ok off any input OTHER than type=c which seems to be most problematic

 

[bogdansrb]

I connected an external DAC via coaxial and I can confirm that the issues are gone. So it's either the DAC or line driver that's causing te noise, though looking at the line driver datasheet it does have an undervoltage protection circuit that disconnects the output when there's no audio.

 

[CURRUPIPI]

For me, the Arylic BP50 is disappointing in some aspects:

-DAC is unreliable ,sometimes connects with my Raspberry Pi`s running Moodeaudio, others times no at all.
-USB play fails with lot of FLAC files, specially with high resolution ones. Maybe a decoding timing problem.
-USB there is no way to select folders to play from, and you can only read in the index the first words of the song title. If you put e.g 10 folders with 100 songs, is makes an unique list of all, and is a nightmare to go scrolling ti the desired ones.
- Side by side with a Topping E30 II lite for line out, for me the Topping wins. The Arylic BP50 has no ¿soundstage?; for me the sound has no full life.
-The GO control always ask for loging, but you can skip it. But if you go with the smartphone to another app and want to enter Go control, you need to login again. And 75% of times the app is unresponsive on reconnecting, you need to kill the app and start all again.
-There is so bugs and glitches that is not friendly for use of other family members.

My impression is that is some ways an unfinished product. There is no support at all at Arylic forums.

 

[TonyJZX]

what is sad is basically they took a B50 and stripped its amps out... and so the issues you see in the BP50 are the same as the B50 which has been on the market for quite a while

the product needs a firmware release at the very least

it promises a lot and if you use it in a way that flatters the unit you will like it

ie. use the phono? should be ok

but as a pc dac its useless (which is fine, its not purporting to be that)

since its pure digital then you are limited to being a 24/192 conventional sp/dif dac which is ok

as a BT receiver and distro its ok

the USB flash drive feature is stupid... i expect it to be dumb and it is

the app needs work

 

[Punchrulle]

When digital in (optical, hdmi) to digital out (optical) is used does the signal go through dac to adc? Or is it digital all the way, is the volume adjusted in digital domain or analog?

 

[Punchrulle]

When digital in (optical, hdmi) to digital out (optical) is used does the signal go through dac to adc? Or is it digital all the way, is the volume adjusted in digital domain or analog?

I’ll answere my self . Signal seems to be kept in digital domain all the way.


How usefull is the equalizer for room correction?

 

[wask]

ASR review:

Arylic BP50 Preamp with HDMI ARC Review

This is a review and detailed measurements of Arylic BP50 preamp with internal DAC, phono stage, HDMI ARC and Bluetooth. It was kindly drop shipped to me by a member and costs US $99. Front panel doesn't hint at the immense amount of functionality BP50 provides. You get that from the back...

www.audiosciencereview.com