Audiopraise VanityPro Review (HDMI Audio Extractor)

[DL325]

I have an HDMI cable from my Sony X800 disc player going to my Essence HDACC-II 4k which has upscaling like a Violectric V590 along with an excellent DAC and headphone amp. It has digital coaxial and optical out but my understanding is that these cannot pass the full SACD signal,
not enough bandwidth.

 

[pLudio]

S/PDIF has enough bandwidth for SACD/DSD64 DoP but support in players for sending DoP is probably poor.

 

[Dennis_FL]

Yes DoP is not the same as DSD to PCM conversion. @Amir said "it converts to PCM" Which is it?

It does both

 

[amirm]

For stereo (OPPO to RME ADI-2 DAC), I use this $40 thingy

Home

HDMI 2.0 Audio ExtractorAdding equipment to your home theater system is difficult when devices don't share the same technology. It is often necessary to find a work-around such as connecting an HDMI to the television and running a Toslink cable back to the AV receiver. This is a difficult and...

www.parts-express.com

There are a lot of stereo ones. This one is 8 channel which is much more unique.

 

[PeteL]

REED: "The PCM format with the next higher bit rate is 24 bits at a sample rate of 176.4kHz. This gives us 8 bits for this marker of identifier. It seems a bit overkill if all we need is 2 states (8 bits give us 256 states)".

Were you replying to someone else?

 

[Sancus]

Lets say surround audiophile audio, like apple music or tidal. its becoming more popular and atmos music is getting more releases. And you would have to play it via your SACD player or stream box into your AVR (if you have one).

All of those streaming sources use Atmos and this device will not decode or extract Atmos.

In fact, this device does not support any Dolby decoding at all. In order to use it, you must have PCM output from your source device.(see: VanityPro FAQ) Considering how poor the decoders are in some of those source devices, it seems like a borderline useless product to me, frankly.

Absolute best case, it will allow you to get 5.1 or 7.1 audio out digitally, which is pretty limited for a $1600 single purpose device.

 

[Robbo99999]

All of those streaming sources use Atmos and this device will not decode or extract Atmos.

In fact, this device does not support any Dolby decoding at all. In order to use it, you must have PCM output from your source device.(see: VanityPro FAQ) Considering how poor the decoders are in some of those source devices, it seems like a borderline useless product to me, frankly.

Absolute best case, it will allow you to get 5.1 or 7.1 audio out digitally, which is pretty limited for a $1600 single purpose device.

I don't really see it either!

 

[ZolaIII]

Were you replying to someone else?

Well yes if you ware replaying to me.
It whose already said it does both (and again especially for you) and only packing differs.

 

[PeteL]

Well yes if you ware replaying to me.
It whose already said it does both (and again especially for you) and only packing differs.

I have to apologize, I don't really understand your sentence, does it do both DSD to PCM correction and DSD over PCM, or does it do only DSD to PCM conversion?

 

[Kal Rubinson]

I have to apologize, I don't really understand your sentence, does it do both DSD to PCM correction and DSD over PCM, or does it do only DSD to PCM conversion?

It can to either of them but not at the same time.

 

[Kal Rubinson]

There are a lot of stereo ones. This one is 8 channel which is much more unique.

How do you get analog multichannel out of it? I see only L/R analog and the only other audio output is TOSlink which cannot support discrete multichannel, only "LPCM 2 Ch, and DTS 2~5.1 Ch."

 

[ZolaIII]

I have to apologize, I don't really understand your sentence, does it do both DSD to PCM correction and DSD over PCM, or does it do only DSD to PCM conversion.

It's DSD to PCM (176400 Hz 16 bit). In DoP it's just packed in 24 bits PCM frame.
Sorry for misunderstanding, that's why I tell read the reference what it is (DoP).

DoP open Standard | DSD-Guide.com

Best regards.

 

[amirm]

How do you get analog multichannel out of it? I see only L/R analog and the only other audio output is TOSlink which cannot support discrete multichannel, only "LPCM 2 Ch, and DTS 2~5.1 Ch."

When I said "this one" I meant Vanity Pro doing 8 channel. Not that box. Sorry was not more clear.

 

[Spkrdctr]

I consider it dead-on-arrival due to it being limited to HDMI 2.0a.

A product like this needs to be fully HDMI 2.1 compliant in order to be as future proof as possible and in order to include support for eARC (Enhanced audio return channel), so that sources with DTS-HD Master Audio, DTS:X, Dolby TrueHD and Dolby Atmos can be extracted.

The next step-up after that would be to include the following:

• Ability in the device to control the conversion parameters to PCM
• Ability to do custom down-mixing (e.g. 7.1 to 2.0, but including the LFE channel)
• Ability to specify a desired output delay (e.g. if you are separately splitting the HDMI video signal prior to the HDMI signal coming into this device for audio splitting)

But that would make it a $2500 device. Just sayin.

 

[aj625]

Yes it's converted to 16 bit 176400 Hz PCM which is bit perfect. Now divide (44100 Hz x64) with 16 and tell me what you get?
Read about DoP please!

Dsd64 requires at least 24bit 176.4khz for dop container not 16bit as some bits are required for dsd flags.

 

[noel_fs]

1600 is just too much but atleast is a quality product

 

[gondorff]

Considering how poor the decoders are in some of those source devices, it seems like a borderline useless product to me, frankly.

I have not heard that one. Can you point me to an example? Dolby specifies TrueHD "as a lossless coding system for use on high-quality digital audio data originally represented as linear PCM". If I am not mistaken, there should no decoding(and reencoding) going on, just decompression. Source is https://developer.dolby.com/globala.../dolbytruehdhighlevelbitstreamdescription.pdf

What would be a typical "Flow Diagram" usage of this product, I'm a little bit confused by it's purpose & integration? I'm imagining that it's partially replacing the use of an AVR, but I can't fully visualise just how this product would be used in a setup?

EDIT: that's a coincidence @peniku8 , I wrote this without reading any of the comments, just the review, so we're barking up the same tree or at least in the same park!

What is this device for? It doesn't decode any of the Dolby formats, so I suppose it's not for home theater. But then, the HDMI interface makes it seem like it's not aimed at the professional market either, who'd typically use dedicated audio interfaces, connected via USB/TB/Ethernet instead.
What is multichannel PCM operation via HDMI used for?

I do not know what the creators of this box intended, but, as far as I am concerned, there is at least one killer app, so to speak, in the home cinema region. The chain would go as follows:
[TrueHD & DTS-MA LPCM source] -> [VanityPro] -> [Genelec 9301A] -> [Genelec Speakers + D/A]

Source could be a BD-Player, sub crossover and room response EQ happening with GLM. Volume control digitally with a GLM-Remote, or digitally with the VanityPro. Connection between BD-player and Vanity happening over HDMI, all remaining connections are AES3. The chain is digital up to the latest stage, D/A is happening there, and only once. It is even possible to remove the 9301 by using a previous generation Genelec sub, which had the 8 AES connectors build-in. I would describe this as extremely elegant.
Drawbacks are: Downmix only to 4.0, nothing in between, so this exact example, seen above, works somewhat only if you are already sitting on a 7.1 Genelec system and the necessity to downmix is not there to start with. I would like to have a second HDMI input, too.

There is the question if this justifies the whole endeavour (it is fo me!) but that is up for everyone to decide.

 

[amirm]

I have not heard that one. Can you point me to an example? Dolby specifies TrueHD "as a lossless coding system for use on high-quality digital audio data originally represented as linear PCM". If I am not mistaken, there should no decoding(and reencoding) going on, just decompression. Source is https://developer.dolby.com/globala.../dolbytruehdhighlevelbitstreamdescription.pdf

Decompression and decoding are interchangeable in this context. TrueHD is Meridians MLP lossless coding which like flac, requires a decoder to PCM. Without it, you just have jumbled bits that are not playable.

 

[Sancus]

I have not heard that one. Can you point me to an example? Dolby specifies TrueHD "as a lossless coding system for use on high-quality digital audio data originally represented as linear PCM". If I am not mistaken, there should no decoding(and reencoding) going on, just decompression. Source is

There's a lot more to this than reencoding audio channels, which I agree isn't a problem. Dolby Atmos is an object-based format, not a channel-based one. If you rely on the source device for PCM, then you're expecting the source device to mix the Atmos correctly down to 5.1 and 7.1. Now, most devices don't even support Atmos -> 5.1 AT ALL, what they do is fallback to the 5.1 DD encode embedded in most Atmos streams. The minimum for real Atmos object-based decoding is usually 7.1 or 5.1.2. In particular, on the Shield TV, I don't think it will even do multi-channel PCM, it will do DD5.1 but that is a legacy compatibility feature with fairly janky implementation. Apparently the AppleTV will output 7.1 PCM from an Atmos source. What exactly it's doing there or whether it's doing it well is another story, this is obviously a feature that almost nobody will use, so you're hoping that a compatibility feature will work well.

The VanityPro requires channel-based PCM audio and doesn't do Atmos at all. So you better be sure that your source device does PCM 5.1 or 7.1 output and that it's good at downmixing from immersive audio sources. This isn't something you can just assume will be supported. And after spending $1600 on this($100 less than a Denon 4700H, which also has room EQ and great upmixing builtin...), you're stuck with a system that can never use height channels.

The 1 use case I can see for this is basically: I have a pure-music 5.1 or 7.1 multichannel system, I have no interest in using an AVR or ever having height channels, I am using Apple Music with an Apple TV or a Bluray player and I'm fine with the 5.1/7.1 downmixes. That is... an extremely specific set of circumstances, lol. Most people with those kinds of systems already have a 5.1 signal chain that works fine with standard 5.1 music.

Speaking as someone who actually owns a 5.2.4 multi-channel music and HT hybrid system, I don't really understand why someone would want to spend so much money and lock themselves out of height channels AND(as a consequence) Auro3D upmixing at the same time, just so they can have digital outputs.

It's not like this device is even a cheap, replaceable buffer between your system and HDMI compatibility changes. It's more expensive than most AVRs...if it was like, $200-$400 then it would make a lot more sense to me, as then we are talking about something that is much cheaper and less wasteful than replacing big AVRs every 5-10 years.

 

[Tom C]

Some active monitors that accept analog input have digital crossovers, like my JBL 705p’s, which requires the monitor to have ADC conversion, implement the crossover in the digital domain, apply any DSP that has been selected, then do DAC conversion and route the signal to each power amp and driver that is inside the cabinet. Most commonly, AVR’s will be used to send an analog line level signal to the active monitor, but if the user wants to skip one step of DAC to ADC and back to DAC, the device tested here will let you do send a digital signal to the monitor, eliminating one DAC, using a blu-ray player as a source. In that way, it’s unique.