Review and Measurements of Chromecast Audio Digital Output

[amirm]

While I enjoyed the sound quality of lossless material


Is there a good recommendations engine that uses your play history to suggest new artists? I find R&B, Rap, and Hip-Hop centric approach that Tidal forces on you lacking and plain annoying.

Yes, there is one. It also generates a "radio" stream based on that and what is in your library.

 

[gvl]

Yes, there is one. It also generates a "radio" stream based on that and what is in your library.

Ouch. I have a lot of weird stuff in my library that I rarely listen to

 

[amirm]

Ouch. I have a lot of weird stuff in my library that I rarely listen to

As long as what you start the play with, is not weird, then it does a very good job of following up with other stuff like it.

 

[gvl]

I recently pulled the plug on Tidal due to several reasons, one of them being the lack of remote playback a la Spotify Connect. Does Roon fully integrate with Tidal and can send Tidal stream as-is to a Roon endpoint? If so maybe I should revisit Tidal with Roon. I have a somewhat Frankenstein setup at the moment with external oversampling to a NOS DAC, and using HQ Player as Roon endpoint for Tidal sounds like an interesting experiment.

 

[amirm]

Does Roon fully integrate with Tidal and can send Tidal stream as-is to a Roon endpoint?

Yes.

 

[gvl]

Yes.

Nice. Maybe I don't have to settle on 320kbps OGG Vorbis after all and Spotify Lossless is nowhere close.

 

[johan]

I think that those test show that using Roon with chromecast and having a good DAC (with good jitter reduction on spdif) you can use Chromcast as a source

Chromcast by itself has jitter even with Roon (but it can be cleaned after by DAC jitter reduction circuit)

Also I belive that Chromcast audio and Chromcast using Roon are both limited at 24/48Khz or 24/96Khz (to be verified)

 

[Wombat]

So, which cheapie DAC to use with Chromecast Audio?

Will old SoundBlaster Extigy be OK for RBCD or less?

 

[Soniclife]

Also I belive that Chromcast audio and Chromcast using Roon are both limited at 24/48Khz or 24/96Khz (to be verified)

The CCA supports 24/96, not sure about the video one but I think it's lower.

 

[Wombat]

It may be timely to link this again: http://archimago.blogspot.com/2016/02/measurements-google-chromecast-audio.html

 

[Soniclife]

No I don't. The distortions are very different. It seems to suffer from compression artifacts. And I can't figure out why they would resample from 44.1 to something else.

Thanks. My logic was the browser probably supports more formats than the CCA does, so i wondered if they just standardised to a sample rate before the lossy encoder all the time, rather than as needed. It seems the lossy encoder is always on, which isn't surprising.

 

[Soniclife]

So, which cheapie DAC to use with Chromecast Audio?

Will old SoundBlaster Extigy be OK for RBCD or less?

How about the one built in to the CCA? If going external I would want one with known good jitter rejection.

 

[johan]

The CCA supports 24/96, not sure about the video one but I think it's lower.

Video one is limited at 24/48Khz

I think that test data and Amir comments are very clear.

Chromcast audio used with Roon is recommended (very low jitter)

If you use it with chrome to cast something, jitter is very high

Your DAC has a jitter reduction mechanism so jitter will be attenuated (level of attenuation depends on your DAC)

Disclaimer. We also sell a coax/bnc output device.

 

[Soniclife]

Does Roon really cost USD$119 per year? To manage you own music?

It is really expensive, but as Amir has said it's the your existing digital library + tidal integration that makes it worth it. I had a 3 month trial, after 2 months I realised I was going to have to buy it, but I was not happy about the expense, but before the trial had run out I bought it happily, I'm still glad I did. Some people don't like it though, this sort of software isn't one size fits all.

 

[Blumlein 88]

What is not yet determined is whether some of the Android player apps that work with the Chromecast (including higher sample rates) are jittery or not? They might well be an alternative for some people without needing Roon. Android phone or tablet already in someone's possession would perhaps do the trick with the inexpensive CCA.

 

[Soniclife]

What is not yet determined is whether some of the Android player apps that work with the Chromecast (including higher sample rates) are jittery or not? They might well be an alternative for some people without needing Roon. Android phone or tablet already in someone's possession would perhaps do the trick with the inexpensive CCA.

Are you aware of any that claim to be bit perfect to a CCA? I agree it would be good to find some that work well.

 

[johan]

What is not yet determined is whether some of the Android player apps that work with the Chromecast (including higher sample rates) are jittery or not? They might well be an alternative for some people without needing Roon. Android phone or tablet already in someone's possession would perhaps do the trick with the inexpensive CCA.

From what I have read on forums, there is no such app. Digital output of Chromcast audio seems to be jittery (but we have not independently measured every app )

The only question mark is the J test toslink spectrum using Roon . Toslink by definition has 1-2ns of jitter and that does not appear in the test data. Is there a jitter reduction on the AP machine ?? In that case its not that GCA/Roon is good...is that AP machine is great .

Look at the Moodi 2 test data (chromecast using roon and fed into the DAC). Jitter is clearly present even using Roon ( that DAC has mediocre jitter reduction )

As far as I understand the data Amir presented , no matter how you drive the GCA (roon , android) , jitter is present on the output of the hardware.

Now, data also shows that a good Dac will reduce the jitter to very low levels. (using dpll or asrc ).

 

[johan]

In the digital input case, the data stays in digital domain into the graph analysis. For that reason, as long as jitter does not cause data drops, it will never appear.

In contrast, when fed to a DAC and its analog output is analyzed, jitter can modify the DAC clock, reference voltage, or its analog output, all of which shows up in the FFT.

In other words, in digital audio, the only time jitter is a performance problem is when we convert it to analog. As long as it says in digital domain, it doesn't matter. The traces in your computer for example have jitter. Yet moving data around there is immune to such interference (again, until it causes data errors).

Ok I understood the graph is in the digital domain . (jitter does not apear in digital unless there is a loss of data)

One interesting test will be Chromcast driven by Roon tested in AP analog domain. It should be better than driven by chrom .

 

[CheapskateCCAOwner]

As far as I understand the data Amir presented , no matter how you drive the GCA (roon , android) , jitter is present on the output of the hardware.

Now, data also shows that a good Dac will reduce the jitter to very low levels. (using dpll or asrc )

Given the above statement from johan, I am in agreement with Blumlein 88; I'd love to know if an Android app streaming to the CCA causes the same noise and distortion as the Chrome browser.

I use an Android app (Hi-Fi Cast) to stream all of my music (stored on a NAS and served through a DLNA music server) to my main stereo system via CCA using the CCA's built-in DAC. As an improvement, I am considering inserting a decent DAC such as the Topping D50 or D30 to the output of my CCA, so it is of great interest to me to see if the Android app I use (or another representative Android app such as Media Monkey or BubbleUPnP) fares better than the Chrome browser.

I don't have any interest in purchasing Roon at this point (I'm far too cheap for that), so I'm curious if Hi-Fi Cast (or another representative Android App) streaming to CCA shows similar performance to Roon streaming to CCA.

 

[envydd]

Has someone compared the cca output when you point it to a YouTube red album. Or any hi res album on YouTube in general. I use YouTube red -> cca -> dac as my casual listening. Sounds pretty good. There was a slight improvement with the iFi adapter