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First impressions of Meizu Hifi dongle

Veri

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Veri, ok but how cmedia makes cm6642 works anywhere, without driver no problem?
Schiit has used cmedia until this year, the year when W7 becomes deprecated/end-of-life. Now they go forward with their own 'unison' USB, requiring UAC 2.0 (W10, OSX and Linux, Android and iOS all have UAC2 support).

So, it can be assumed cmedia is fully W7 compatible while others, are not (or no longer).
 

bravomail

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August, so that DAC simply incompatible with W7, right?
pozz, I measured the DAC and got THD+N .0055%@32ohm -1dbfs, of course without A-weighting.

So that's 89dB SINAD. Is there a chance u'd get and measure "Pro" version of their DAC?
And sorry to hear you gotta upgrade to Windows 10. I did about a year ago, and never looked back. It's faster, more compatible, and the spying telemetry can be blocked with third party utilities and firewal blocks.
 

staticV3

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Meizu non pro owner here to report my findings:

-the millisecond cutouts can only be heard on Android and with UAPP. YouTube, Spotify, SoundCloud, Neutron, all are fine on Android. On Windows as well, I couldn't hear any pops even with foobar Wasapi output.

-HW volume steps: I recorded a 1000hz sine wave and did a volume sweep in UAPP. Then I opened it in Audacity and counted the now visible steps. Halfway through the recording, at 52 steps, the Dynamic range of my recorder can no longer see any steps, but it should be 100. Windows will actually recognize the HW volume function and the normal SW volume bar in the bottom right corner will automatically switch to changing the Meizu's HW volume. Here as well, every numerical step (e.g. 14-->15) represents an actual volume step reaffirming 100 total.

-strangely, Windows will not recognize the Meizu dongle as an Audio output device unless a headphone is plugged in. If it's not, Windows will list it in "Other Devices"

-Output Power: with foobar playback, 1-2%, maybe 3% is all that you get with 102dB/mW Blon BL-03 IEMs. Everything above that is too loud.
With 105 dB SPL/V AKG K712 Pro headphones, you'll be listening at between 4% and 8% so im really clueless as to why Josh Valour thinks theses are power hungry.

-UAPP fix: I wrote the UAPP devs about the problem and they are aware of it but sadly don't see a fix possible in the near future. The problem is that the Meizu DAC only handles multiples of 48kHz correctly. Everything else causes stuttering. HOWEVER, by enabling upsampling in the USB audio settings and disabling bit perfect output, the issue is gone. No more cutouts.

If you want a recording of the cutouts or the volume sweep, just tell me and I'll give you the link.
 

bravomail

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-UAPP fix: I wrote the UAPP devs about the problem and they are aware of it but sadly don't see a fix possible in the near future. The problem is that the Meizu DAC only handles multiples of 48kHz correctly. Everything else causes stuttering.

This is really bad. I think we should avoid this DAC. Unless stated otherwise. :)
 

staticV3

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This is really bad. I think we should avoid this DAC. Unless stated otherwise. :)
I mean there's one little and easily fixable bug with an otherwise perfectly working product. I am seriously struggling to understand where your "this is really bad" is coming from.
 

JohnYang1997

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So that's 89dB SINAD. Is there a chance u'd get and measure "Pro" version of their DAC?
And sorry to hear you gotta upgrade to Windows 10. I did about a year ago, and never looked back. It's faster, more compatible, and the spying telemetry can be blocked with third party utilities and firewal blocks.
One thing to point out is that ivx was measuring with 32ohm which you can't directly compare to other sinad number. Without load, it can get 0.0003% easily. And the pro version with opa1622 should improve the driving capability.
 

mgmate

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One question, Why IVX does not want the pro version? It seems that comes with better amplifier. Are there in the pro version other internal changes that make it less desirable?
 

JohnYang1997

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One question, Why IVX does not want the pro version? It seems that comes with better amplifier. Are there in the pro version other internal changes that make it less desirable?
Because he doesn't need it i think.
 

JohnYang1997

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Thanks JohnYang, but regarding performance, Will it be better than standard version?
For direct connecting to headphones yes. But I don't have it, so this is just theoretical.
 

bravomail

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I mean there's one little and easily fixable bug with an otherwise perfectly working product. I am seriously struggling to understand where your "this is really bad" is coming from.

it is fixable. if u force ur player to reencode everything to 48kHz. If u try to play 44.1 kHz source (say ripped CD FLAC) as-is aka bitperfect - u r out of luck. Android does this reencode to 48kHz for u on the fly, with some loss of quality. It's just if u use Onkyo or USb Player in "direct" mode - u r in trouble. Problem is - this is how audiphiles want to use it.
 
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