Qudelix-5K Bluetooth DAC & Headphone Amp

[Jimbob54]

No the Audio player pro is usb dac

Well you have just kind of proven to yourself that to your ears, headphones and how you eq them makes a far bigger difference to what you hear than either source file or electronic chain.

Relatively cheap lesson in the grand scheme of audiophilia. Sane folk would say choose your streaming service based on the user experience, library and price far more than the encoding method used.

As for bluetooth- I prefer wired when stationary, but not having a cable tied to my phone when out and about is worth a lot. I havent bothered to test if the Qudelix sounds better wired compared to LDAC playing the same content.

 

[Daveya.]

No I hadn't bothered either until just had some time and was curious

For my usage a good phone the Qudelix and Sundara are great, out and about I use an older pair of B&W P5s. Both are fine for my needs and Amazon Music has the music I like.

But was curious to see if I could hear any difference spending an extra tenner on USB Audio pro with Tidal MQA and I can't . Tidal would be more expensive as well as I get a discount on Amazon Music as a prime member .

Dunno what I've learned apart from the Qudelix and Sony phones are bloody good.

 

[Jimbob54]

No I hadn't bothered either until just had some time and was curious

For my usage a good phone the Qudelix and Sundara are great, out and about I use an older pair of B&W P5s. Both are fine for my needs and Amazon Music has the music I like.

But was curious to see if I could hear any difference spending an extra tenner on USB Audio pro with Tidal MQA and I can't . Tidal would be more expensive as well as I get a discount on Amazon Music as a prime member .

Dunno what I've learned apart from the Qudelix and Sony phones are bloody good.

PS any modern android phone has ldac baked in.

 

[Daveya.]

Yeah but Sony LDAC sounds better

 

[staticV3]

why would that be?
Afaik the LDAC encoder is the same in all phones, not like AAC where there are different implementations.

 

[Daveya.]

why would that be?
Afaik the LDAC encoder is the same in all phones, not like AAC where there are different implementations.

I was joking ......

 

[Berwhale]

PS any modern android phone has ldac baked in.

I wish it was this simple and I thought the same until recently, but it turns out that not all Android phone manufactures enable LDAC in their ROMs. A friend recently tried buying a cheap Android phone to use with a Fiio BTR7 and found that neither a Motorola or an Oppo would connect with LDAC (the codec was either missing or permanently greyed out in Dev settings). He ended up buying a Poco M4 Pro and replacing the BTR7 with a Qudelix 5K. Poco (Xiaomi) don't officially support LDAC, but it is available on my F3, my son's X3 Pro and the M4 Pro.

Note: I had to disable the APTX Adaptive codec on my Q5K to get it to connect with LDAC consistently (The connection would always revert to APTX Adaptive upon re-connection, even if I tried to force it to LDAC from the phone)

 

[Jimbob54]

I wish it was this simple and I thought the same until recently, but it turns out that not all Android phone manufactures enable LDAC in their ROMs. A friend recently tried buying a cheap Android phone to use with a Fiio BTR7 and found that neither a Motorola or an Oppo would connect with LDAC (the codec was either missing or permanently greyed out in Dev settings). He ended up buying a Poco M4 Pro and replacing the BTR7 with a Qudelix 5K. Poco (Xiaomi) don't officially support LDAC, but it is available on my F3, my son's X3 Pro and the M4 Pro.

Note: I had to disable the APTX Adaptive codec on my Q5K to get it to connect with LDAC consistently (The connection would always revert to APTX Adaptive upon re-connection, even if I tried to force it to LDAC from the phone)

Bonkers!

 

[Oso Polar]

I had to disable the APTX Adaptive codec on my Q5K to get it to connect with LDAC

Same experience - aptX Adaptive had to be disabled in order for phone to connect using LDAC. BTW, aptX sounds very noticeably worse.

 

[Berwhale]

Same experience - aptX Adaptive had to be disabled in order for phone to connect using LDAC. BTW, aptX sounds very noticeably worse.

It certainly does. You can see why here: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...measurements-of-bluetooth-codecs-video.23771/

And here: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...th-transmitter-and-receiver-dac-review.38910/

 

[SalutaryGraveness]

Ugh, I just got this and already the first bummer: Very noticeable distortion with the LDAC codec on the left channel.
However I am 99% sure this is the phone's fault.
Setting the bluetooth audio bits per sample to 16 bits in developer settings solves the issue temporarily until the next bluetooth connection .
Come on!

Beyond that the sound quality is great and the PEQ/crossfeed combo is just delightful

 

[GaryH]

What LDAC bit rate are you getting?

 

[SalutaryGraveness]

What LDAC bit rate are you getting?

909 Kbps.

 

[GaryH]

Odd...and even odder that it's only in the left channel.

 

[SalutaryGraveness]

Odd...and even odder that it's only in the left channel.

I'll figure it out. It must be the stupid phone. But if a set the output to mono the distortion also goes mono. Only LDAC at 24/32 bits per sample is affected. Everything else works great

 

[SalutaryGraveness]

Oh I am loving this little marvel.

I discovered that you can use it for real time direct monitoring.

The output of my guitar multi-effects processor can be plugged into the Qudelix and voila! zero latency input monitoring to play along and recording. Of course this was intended for microphones but this works too! Amazing

 

[MayaTlab]

Quite a significant update : https://forum.qudelix.com/post/all-new-qudelix5k-v2-0-software-12519138?pid=1334083623

 

[AdamG]

Quite a significant update : https://forum.qudelix.com/post/all-new-qudelix5k-v2-0-software-12519138?pid=1334083623

Lots of new features and functionality. Thanks for posting this update. Look forward to this Christmas update release!

 

[Berwhale]

Lots of new features and functionality. Thanks for posting this update. Look forward to this Christmas update release!

Fingers crossed...

 

[Berwhale]

It seems to have worked...

*EDIT* Actually, maybe not! It said it need to be updated when I plugged it back in.

*EDIT2* FW update worked the second time