• WANTED: Happy members who like to discuss audio and other topics related to our interest. Desire to learn and share knowledge of science required. There are many reviews of audio hardware and expert members to help answer your questions. Click here to have your audio equipment measured for free!

Review and Measurements of Sony HAP-S1 Streamer/Server

BYRTT

Addicted to Fun and Learning
Forum Donor
Joined
Nov 2, 2018
Messages
956
Likes
2,452
Location
Denmark (Jutland)
Transients don't look like Impulses.

Two small hardwood blocks, clapped together (loud) and recorded in-room. It's a real snappy sound......

.....The mic is flat on out to the right end 20kHz, there's just not much content there in this little experiment.

And filter ringing? Don't see any...

Thanks and think know what you mean there :) for fun and research if you share a download via PM for that marked transient could see if i can replicate accurate those same Audacity graphs side by side a version where that transient is convoluted with that sythetic 3-way speaker impulse.
 

audioeclectic

Member
Joined
Mar 1, 2019
Messages
22
Likes
3
is it possible to mesure with some archive with signals played from the internal Hard Disc ? may bey do better than S/PDIF input signal!
 
OP
amirm

amirm

Founder/Admin
Staff Member
CFO (Chief Fun Officer)
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Messages
44,368
Likes
234,388
Location
Seattle Area
is it possible to mesure with some archive with signals played from the internal Hard Disc ? may bey do better than S/PDIF input signal!
I have returned the unit. I don't think it can do better using the internal hard disk anyway.
 

PierreV

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Nov 6, 2018
Messages
1,437
Likes
4,686
is it possible to mesure with some archive with signals played from the internal Hard Disc ? may bey do better than S/PDIF input signal!

Yeah, the most important thing we need is a differential test between WD Red, Blue, Black and Purple, on SATA 1.5, 3 and 6 Gbps, using standard and audiophile SATA cable... It's only a set of 24 measurements, really puzzled why the device wasn't updated to "true audiophile" standard.

It's all explained here https://jcat.eu/audiophile-sata-cable/
:facepalm::facepalm::facepalm:
 

Ryelane

Member
Joined
Jun 10, 2019
Messages
5
Likes
0
I read this in astonishment. I have owned a Sony Hap S1 since 2014 connected to LS3/5as in my living room for a long time. I haven’t ever used the headphone output. But to say this can’t resolve CD quality, let alone hi res audio is just plain wrong. You can clearly hear the quality difference between old fashioned mpeg, red book , flac, WAV and dsd. Clearly. The analogue line ins are average, but not below average in any way, the DAC is not low quality. I use it in preference to the Dac in an ARCAM dr dock. In itself an excellent performer. It doesn’t compare with the QUAD esl 63s run by a Net Audio 405/3 and Technics SP10 in my main system But the Hap is no slouch. Are you sure the unit you’ve tested is not faulty? Because no review of this product has ever highlighted the issues you say you’ve measured....
 

maty

Major Contributor
Joined
Dec 12, 2017
Messages
4,596
Likes
3,160
Location
Tarragona (Spain)

Ryelane

Member
Joined
Jun 10, 2019
Messages
5
Likes
0
Well. I’m not going to say anyone is wrong in their conclusions about this Sony box. But my experience of these measurements don’t tally with the conclusions here. Perhaps it is a crap bit of gear and my old ears, 59, have been fooled by marketing weasel words and good reviews. But I was trained as a sound engineer by Decca in London and I know what I hear, although age doesn’t permit me to have “ golden ears” anymore. I have just been listening to the Tidal MQA stream of Fleetwood Mac’s greatest hits on the Sony Hap S1. Using the Tidal app through lightning connector, an Arcam dock outputting co-ax to the Hap digital input. It’s clearly high quality. Does have the distinct “flavour” of MQA processing (Good bottom end and eq’d top), but is nevertheless a very high quality stream through my LS3/5as. These measurements say that shouldn't be the case....
 

rmo

Member
Joined
Jun 25, 2018
Messages
67
Likes
52
Well. I’m not going to say anyone is wrong in their conclusions about this Sony box. But my experience of these measurements don’t tally with the conclusions here. Perhaps it is a crap bit of gear and my old ears, 59, have been fooled by marketing weasel words and good reviews. But I was trained as a sound engineer by Decca in London and I know what I hear, although age doesn’t permit me to have “ golden ears” anymore. I have just been listening to the Tidal MQA stream of Fleetwood Mac’s greatest hits on the Sony Hap S1. Using the Tidal app through lightning connector, an Arcam dock outputting co-ax to the Hap digital input. It’s clearly high quality. Does have the distinct “flavour” of MQA processing (Good bottom end and eq’d top), but is nevertheless a very high quality stream through my LS3/5as. These measurements say that shouldn't be the case....
You realize MQA is lossy ? That’s right you are an engineer !
 

Ryelane

Member
Joined
Jun 10, 2019
Messages
5
Likes
0
Hi

I realise all digital streaming is lossy. Either at source, or somewhere in the playback chain. I wasn’t using MQA as a holy grail, just that it is a high quality stream and it sounded it. When you say I’m an engineer, I was trained as a balance engineer, I always tip my hat to electronic and audio engineers. That is why I won’t criticise these findings. Just make the point that as a listener, the conclusions don’t reflect my experience of the product.
 

JJB70

Major Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Aug 17, 2018
Messages
2,905
Likes
6,148
Location
Singapore
I think that the reason people might be happy with the product is that its audible, as opposed to its measured, performance is probably fine. I am guessing that any inadequacies of the amplifier and DAC are not especially important alongside the influence of speakers and speaker set up.
 

folzag

Member
Joined
Jul 24, 2018
Messages
99
Likes
131
Are you sure the unit you’ve tested is not faulty? Because no review of this product has ever highlighted the issues you say you’ve measured....

Given how closely it measured to its sister product, the Sony UDA-1 DAC & power amp, I think it's safe that whatever fault there may be is entirely in Sony's design.
 

rmo

Member
Joined
Jun 25, 2018
Messages
67
Likes
52
Hi

I realise all digital streaming is lossy. Either at source, or somewhere in the playback chain. I wasn’t using MQA as a holy grail, just that it is a high quality stream and it sounded it. When you say I’m an engineer, I was trained as a balance engineer, I always tip my hat to electronic and audio engineers. That is why I won’t criticise these findings. Just make the point that as a listener, the conclusions don’t reflect my experience of the product.
Hi

I realise all digital streaming is lossy. Either at source, or somewhere in the playback chain. I wasn’t using MQA as a holy grail, just that it is a high quality stream and it sounded it. When you say I’m an engineer, I was trained as a balance engineer, I always tip my hat to electronic and audio engineers. That is why I won’t criticise these findings. Just make the point that as a listener, the conclusions don’t reflect my experience of the product.
Everybody has a right to get upset when they pay good money for electronics and end up finding out the measurements are poor . It would be nice to see more companies provide measurements like Benchmark does .
There is a definite lack of transparency in the audio biz.
 
OP
amirm

amirm

Founder/Admin
Staff Member
CFO (Chief Fun Officer)
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Messages
44,368
Likes
234,388
Location
Seattle Area
You can clearly hear the quality difference between old fashioned mpeg, red book , flac, WAV and dsd.
You can tell the difference between FLAC and WAV? I sure hope not. :)

I can tell the difference and prove the same in double blind tests of MP3 versus red book with just my laptop analog out and an IEM. The distortions in lossy compression easily rise up and well above any in electronic equipment. That is not evidentiary as a result.

As to your suggestion that the unit is broken, I very much doubt it. When something breaks, the performance is much, much worse. It is also unlikely that something breaks in a way that impacts both channels this way.

If you want to pay shipping both ways, I am happy to measure your unit.

Otherwise, as noted, chances of you hearing the distortions at -83 dB down is very, very low. Linearity is also good to 18 bits so pretty good in that department too in that regard.
 

Ryelane

Member
Joined
Jun 10, 2019
Messages
5
Likes
0
I work with WAV every day. You can hear a difference. Just as you can hear differences between NAB and IEC standards. So hang on. If I understand you correctly. This product is being derided as a bad design by you, despite nearly every review and you can’t hear these appalling shortcomings? So it’s just a numbers game? The criticism is one of band width, not of sound quality? Because you can certainly hear a difference between DSD and standard res using the machine.
 
OP
amirm

amirm

Founder/Admin
Staff Member
CFO (Chief Fun Officer)
Joined
Feb 13, 2016
Messages
44,368
Likes
234,388
Location
Seattle Area
I work with WAV every day.
What difference? Flac and Wav? If so, how did you test that hypothesis?

So hang on. If I understand you correctly. This product is being derided as a bad design by you, despite nearly every review and you can’t hear these appalling shortcomings?
I didn't say I can't hear it (I didn't try). I said most likely you can't because instrumentation clearly shows the distortions. Yet you say it is clean as a whistle. Ergo, nothing is wrong with the instrumentation. It is just that when distortions get this small, almost every audiophile or pro audio gear fails to hear them.

Bottom line, your observations are consistent with the review. They do not in any way invalidate the measurements. Nor do they point to a broken device.

As for "every other review" this forum exist because those reviews can be trivially shown to be wrong. They are full of non-scientific, random subjective reviews that has been shown to be totally unreliable. That is on top of 99% of them being positive.

Here, we are about what we can prove, not what earns advertising dollars. Measurements are provable attributes of engineering and many times can indicate audible problems. If this is not your cup of tea, you will be disappointed and sour.

The hope is that you hang around here for a while, read what we discuss, the authoritative references we use to back our opinion, and provide a compass for future purchases that are based on sound audio science and engineering. And no, no amount of "working with .wav" would have taught you any of this.
 

artnoi

Member
Joined
Dec 9, 2018
Messages
48
Likes
27
Location
Bangkok, Thailand
Well most other “audiophile” forums and reviews also praise Audio-GD as audio god, despite very terrible performance. This plus the science of how (bad) we can hear (and think) makes it very hard (for me) to trust any subjective reviews without “number game”.
 

LTig

Master Contributor
Forum Donor
Joined
Feb 27, 2019
Messages
5,760
Likes
9,442
Location
Europe
It isn't, tidal and some other services provide lossless, and MQA is only lossy for the frequencies you cannot hear.
MQA is lossy when the DAC doesn't support MQA decoding. AFAIK 3 bits lost which hopefully appear as uncorrelated noise (this hope is very small).
 

JohnYang1997

Master Contributor
Technical Expert
Audio Company
Joined
Dec 28, 2018
Messages
7,175
Likes
18,292
Location
China
I'm kind of an audible guy. I blind switched 448k aac and wav and heard clear difference in smoothness when I was 13.
But flac and wav? Seriously? Seriously.....
 
Top Bottom