Fiio BTA30 Pro Bluetooth Transmitter and Receiver + DAC - Review

[Moderate Dionysianism]

No reply from Fiio support so far
Si I updated the conclusions.

Bummer, I was really close to ordering one of these. Any chance you could lay your hands on another LDAC-capable smartphone and re-test the 24-bit handshake in near future?

 

[Rja4000]

Bummer, I was really close to ordering one of these. Any chance you could lay your hands on another LDAC-capable smartphone and re-test the 24-bit handshake in near future?

I got an answer from Fiio support with instructions to test further.
I'll try to do it later today.

 

[Rja4000]

Measurements with Fiio support proposed work around have been added to the "Part III - Receiver mode"
I also updated the conclusion, which is now final.

This then closes my review.

 

[Romario]

What a great review and willpower to carry on. Much appreciated.

 

[Atanasi]

Bummer, I was really close to ordering one of these. Any chance you could lay your hands on another LDAC-capable smartphone and re-test the 24-bit handshake in near future?

I have tried another Samsung, S20 FE, which also didn't negotiate 24-bit LDAC. There may also be garbled sound at first, which requires reconnecting the phone or changing the codec to AAC. These bugs are unfortunate.

 

[Rja4000]

I wrote to the support again, asking if they could foresee a firmware update to fix this.

 

[Asking Dumb Questions]

Can this Device convert wired USB C Audio to Digital Optical Out?

 

[Romario]

Can this Device convert wired USB C Audio to Digital Optical Out?

Allthough I haven't tested that there's something to consider. The USB is also the power fed in to the device. When changing from usb to " bypass" ( toslink in to toslink out) it will lose the usb connection to the pc/ chromebook/ telephone.
But there's also a coax out. Maybe that is " on" all the time? I doubt it, but I can give it a go tomorrow.

 

[Viriato]

Can this Device convert wired USB C Audio to Digital Optical Out?

The plain answer is yes. I have mine in the car, using an iPhone as source. I linked it with a Lightning to USB adapter from Apple, which is also linked to the power source. I get both analog and optical outputs (the analog goes to the car's stereo aux input and the optical goes directly to the DSP/amplifier). It does the same if you use Bluetooth as the input and not the USB. It is really the swiss knife of receivers. Sounds perfectly fine, too.

 

[Romario]

Fiio.com/ bta30 pro
There's a lot of features memtioned on the product page, but this is not mentioned explicitely. So I too was somewhat second guessing.

 

[Rja4000]

I have tried another Samsung, S20 FE, which also didn't negotiate 24-bit LDAC. There may also be garbled sound at first, which requires reconnecting the phone or changing the codec to AAC. These bugs are unfortunate.

I gave a try to a Alternative A2DP driver for Windows.

I get the exact same limitation to 16 bits, while the driver works perfectly with the Topping BC3 and the Topping D90LE.

See my measurements here.


BC3

BTA30 Pro

 

[Viriato]

Fiio.com/ bta30 pro
There's a lot of features memtioned on the product page, but this is not mentioned explicitely. So I too was somewhat second guessing.

The Topping D10s does the same trick with USB audio in: analog and optical out simultaneously.