Hiby FC3 Portable DAC & HP Amp Review

[CedarX]

Does the dongle app provide an eq or peq?

No. You have to jump to the FC5 to get full, 10x filters, PEQ.
Unfortunately, the FC5 is affected by the “Cirrus hump” and HiBy is one of these companies who has not reacted to the issue…

 

[Jimster480]

Yea this doesn't have any sort of PEQ.
I haven't honestly needed it. My wife uses this dongle these days and has no problems with it how it is.

 

[donjoe0]

Does the dongle app provide an eq or peq?

There is no dongle app for the FC3, so no. But why would you even want some dongle-specific limited-options PEQ implementation when you can have full-fledged PEQ with all the bells and whistles in a phone app, usable with all your dongles?

 

[CedarX]

There is no dongle app for the FC3, so no. But why would you even want some dongle-specific limited-options PEQ implementation when you can have full-fledged PEQ with all the bells and whistles in a phone app, usable with all your dongles?

One reason: if you’re on iPhone. There is no full-fledged PEQ with all the bells and whistles available on iOS.
Another reason: if you leave your dongles permanently attached to your HP/IEMs. You can tailor a PEQ for each HP/IEMs that carry over to all the devices you connect them to.

 

[ZolaIII]

Does the dongle app provide an eq or peq?

Hiby Music provides 10 PEQ basic filters (for headphones) among other things (USB A 2.0 driver, MSAB, GEQ...). But this will work only for what you play trough the app. On Android just use Wavelet.

 

[Hark01]

There is no dongle app for the FC3, so no. But why would you even want some dongle-specific limited-options PEQ implementation when you can have full-fledged PEQ with all the bells and whistles in a phone app, usable with all your dongles?

Because Google totally nuked the EQ functionality in Android 15+:

Google Issue Tracker

issuetracker.google.com

 

[feconicu]

Because Google totally nuked the EQ functionality in Android 15+:

Google Issue Tracker

issuetracker.google.com

Are daps following close the smartphone Android release schedule? I was under the impression daps are usually behind 1 or more Android releases.
I've never owned a dap since I'm satisfied with dongles. My phone is a year behind.

 

[donjoe0]

Because Google totally nuked the EQ functionality in Android 15+:

OK, then maybe Rootless JamesDSP will still be able to get around that? At least for the subset of apps it does apply to (sadly it's only tentatively-system-wide, with a list of limitations, because that's all that can be done rootless). Seems to have some highly capable EQ function in addition to its convolver, never tried it myself since I'm fine with always using Neutron Player with its 60-band capable PEQ for my critical listening, then I fall back to ViPER4Android for everything else, which works because I'm insisting on running a rooted phone even in this day and age.

 

[Hark01]

Are daps following close the smartphone Android release schedule? I was under the impression daps are usually behind 1 or more Android releases.
I've never owned a dap since I'm satisfied with dongles. My phone is a year behind.

My phone got upgraded in the middle of August and everything is in shambles from then on. First there were glitches with applying EQ and now EQ apps just can't detect music players. Was hoping that FC3, which I rarely use, had HW EQ so I can work around the issue, but, it seems no.

 

[Alexium]

I can't take Cirrus Logic DACs seriously as alternatives to ESS DACs in the same price range. My investigation is not over, but I still think the superb performance of the ES9281A in 200+ multitone FR tests vs. everything else's wavy response does correlate to audible differences some of the time, with some recordings.

I know I'm a year late, but I'm looking for those huge multitone tests and can't find anything, could you please say where you found that info?

 

[Jimster480]

My phone got upgraded in the middle of August and everything is in shambles from then on. First there were glitches with applying EQ and now EQ apps just can't detect music players. Was hoping that FC3, which I rarely use, had HW EQ so I can work around the issue, but, it seems no.

Sounds like it's some kind of driver issue on your phone itself.

Hiby Music provides 10 PEQ basic filters (for headphones) among other things (USB A 2.0 driver, MSAB, GEQ...). But this will work only for what you play trough the app. On Android just use Wavelet.

I did install the app, but I don't have music really on my phone to test that out.

 

[donjoe0]

I know I'm a year late, but I'm looking for those huge multitone tests and can't find anything, could you please say where you found that info?

I measured that stuff with pkane's Multitone program on Windows, recording through my motherboard's Realtek integrated audio chip. As was later clarified in the Multitone tool's dedicated thread, most of the wiggles I was seeing on my graphs were due to some mathematical artifacts from my choice of FFT parameters, possibly also ADC problems. Still, it's impossible to claim there was zero correlation between the overall graph shapes and the relative performance of several different tested devices. The FC3 was always head and shoulders above all others in FR graph flatness, and that's how I heard its treble in all listening comparisons before I even thought to measure it.

Pre-discussion graphs here: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...they-measure-as-transparent.9245/post-2140400
Also here, where I tried to work around the issues of multitone by just repeatedly looping white noise through each DUT: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...they-measure-as-transparent.9245/post-2271173

 

[ParadisDruid]

So I got one of these and there's a few things that irk me about it:

-When the device is powered on but not playing (Red light) as it starts playback (Turns to Blue light in my case) it pops and crackles, not really loudly but noticeable enough.

-Whenever you Rewing or Fast Forward any playback, the volume goes to 0 and rises slowly over a second or so.
(Edit: Apparently this is just Youtube, on Windows it doesn't happen on neither Foobar nor VLC.)

Has anyone else experience this behavior? is there a fix/workaround?

(EDIT2: Finally sorted out everything - an user over at Head-Fi managed to figure it out. Pops and cracks due to startup can be fixed via installing the Windows Hiby Driver, editing the Control panel .xml file to show the behaviour options and set the device to "Always On". Indirectly, this also fixes the fade ins on Youtube. Those were due to the device idling on Rewind or Fast Forward, but only on Firefox.)

(EDIT3: Well I don't know if my unit is a dud or something but if I connect my Dayton iMM-6 plus a no-mic cable, the pops and click won't stop whenever audio plays - It's actually infuriating. To add insult to injury, If I were to ask for a refund (bought through AliExpress) I'd have to send back this unit all the way to China, which is way more expensive that just buying a new dongle outright. Any recommendation for a Mic + inline control supporting dongle?)

 

[donjoe0]

-When the device is powered on but not playing (Red light) as it starts playback (Turns to Blue light in my case) it pops and crackles, not really loudly but noticeable enough.

-Whenever you Rewing or Fast Forward any playback, the volume goes to 0 and rises slowly over a second or so.
(Edit: Apparently this is just Youtube, on Windows it doesn't happen on neither Foobar nor VLC.)

Has anyone else experience this behavior? is there a fix/workaround?

I've only been using mine on my Android phone, and I do get the slow-start issue consistently, whereas the crackle is rare, and only on playback start. I can live with both of these for music listening sessions, in exchange for the super-flat frequency response that I never got from any other DAC before this one.

BUT. These days I'm trialling it for desktop duties to feed my monitors, and this could be a whole 'notha story - I remember the iFi Micro iDSD used to have this slow-start behavior and it got really infuriating in the YouTube-watching scenario because you really want to hear everything the person is saying in the video, including the first few words. If it can't be set to always-on somehow on Linux... I'm gonna have a problem on my hands.

LE:
OK, first results:

Windows 10 Home - without installing or tweaking anything special, it has slow-start from red-light state, such that on YouTube I lose about half a second at the beginning of each video, which could be the first 2-3 words in some cases. Not nice. (For now I'm not going to bother installing anything special as I barely use Windows anyway.)

GNU/Linux Xubuntu 20.04 - without installing or tweaking anything in software(!), it seems to be always-on (blue light), so it has no delay when starting any playback of anything.
BUT! With Linux it doesn't get initialized properly on boot-up and doesn't output any sound despite the blue light being on, this is even if I hook up something else to it like headphones. Meanwhile all other connected DACs, Bluetooth-out through the Avantree Leaf adapter, HDMI sound to the TV, everything else works. I have to unplug the FC3 and only plug it in after boot-up - with the stereo jack pre-inserted - for it properly initialize on Linux. This could be almost as annoying as the slow-start and would damage the USB port way faster (some people had problems with it very soon after purchase, I've been lucky/careful enough to not see this for my 2.5 years with it so far).

 

[ParadisDruid]

New update!

So, crackling and popping is present as long as there's any sort or recognized mic input. Tested with the Dayton iMM-6 (Supposedly a CTIA device) and a couple inline mic cables. Asked support about it and they instructed me to flash the DAC, unfortunately to no change.

If I use Device Manager to roll back the driver to "USB Composite (Compound?) Device" it works just fine, except for the previously mentioned micro-sleep plus the resulting crackling and some awful microphone quality/volume.

Oh forgot to mention, the HiBy USB Audio device Control Panel software is absolutely dreadful.