Some notes on Fiio KA17

[CuriousAli]

There are some conflicting info on Fiio KA17, so I'm providing these for those who may get confused about Fiio's KA17 features and limits:

1. It now has a web interface you can control on your computer, Mac or PC, which lets you customize the PEQ. There is still the Android app too.

2. You can only update its firmware using Windows, so far its web control panel doesn't offer this feature.

3. After one of the firmware updates, you can use both UAC V1 and PEQ.

4. You can use PEQ on the SPDIF Coaxial output too.

5. You can't use UAC V1 with SPDIF out, that's very frustrating, I needed to use it as digital out for my PS5, and now I see it doesn't work.
When you turn on the SPDIF, it switches back to UAC V2.

6. For SPDIF out they provide a schematic here:

11.How to use SPDIF output in KA17?-FIIO---BORN FOR MUSIC

www.fiio.com

And the ready made cables for that 3.5mm to RCA Coaxial cables are hard to find.
What I have found is you can use a simple 3.5mm to RCA adapter, just don't insert it all the way in, use it like this:

7. This one is not specific to this DAC, but a limit of macOS, on macOS can only use DSD using DoP, and it can only handle up to DSD 256 via DoP.
Not that I care about DSD, it was just an experiment.

 

[guigui]

Do you like it?

 

[WondrousHippo]

I have the KA15, so I have two notes/questions:

1) You might not like the PS5 experience anyway — the KA15 doesn’t account for the default reduced USB volume issue. I haven’t tested SPDIF with UAC1 myself.

2) Does the SPDIF output convert everything to 44.1 kHz for you on the KA17?

 

[CuriousAli]

Do you like it?

It sounds good (can't say better or worse than other DACs, seemed detailed and transparent) and has interesting features like PEQ and SPDIF out, but to be honest I regret buying it a bit.
As a portable DAC/Amp it gets a little too warm, it hasn't overheated for me so far, but it is too warm for me to put in my pocket and forget about it, if you compare it to Apple's dongle for example.
As a desktop DAC/Amp it is better as you are not going to touch it and feel the warm case of it, but it has outputs just for headphones, no line out for speakers, so that is limiting you, although I have connected its headphone out to speakers too for testing and of course it works, I mean it doesn't do both at the same time.
If only it had SPDIF + UAC 1.0 at the same time it would be my perfect digital out for my console to my Audient Audio interface, but it only offers SPDIF out for UAC 2.0 support.

I have the KA15, so I have two notes/questions:

1) You might not like the PS5 experience anyway — the KA15 doesn’t account for the default reduced USB volume issue. I haven’t tested SPDIF with UAC1 myself.

2) Does the SPDIF output convert everything to 44.1 kHz for you on the KA17?

1) I don't listen to loud volumes so it was loud enough for me, have you tried both high gain and desktop mode and it still wasn't good for KA15?

2) I don't think so, its manual says it supports up to 96 kHz on SPDIF and I tried setting it to 96 kHz and my Audient interface received 96 kHz. On macOS there is this utility called Audio MIDI Setup which allows setting sample rates for each device, while SPDIF out was on it allowed me to select up to 192 kHz too, but my Audient device doesn't support more than 96 kHz so I don't know if it really works.

 

[WondrousHippo]

1) I don't listen to loud volumes so it was loud enough for me, have you tried both high gain and desktop mode and it still wasn't good for KA15?

Yes, my test case was specifically my Audeze LCD-2C with EQ which is really the max of what the KA15 can do, and it was noticeably quieter on PS5 than other sources, but this has been an issue requiring workarounds since the PS4 days, unfortunately. The Qudelix-5K has a mode that handles PS5 properly.

 

[CuriousAli]

Yes, my test case was specifically my Audeze LCD-2C with EQ which is really the max of what the KA15 can do, and it was noticeably quieter on PS5 than other sources, but this has been an issue requiring workarounds since the PS4 days, unfortunately. The Qudelix-5K has a mode that handles PS5 properly.

I see, I wasn't aware of this issue.