Strange DAP / DAC Foepoe UD951C - DSD Multichannel support?

[AresLuna]

With the standard 30khz filter applied, 88.2khz is more than enough for DSD>PCM conversion.

This is true. I have been researching lately and doing lots of experimentation with pure DSD and DSD->PCM conversions using a Topping DM7 that i have borrowed for some testing from a forum internet "friend" that wants to sell it. To my ears (trained ones) i can't hear any differences between modes. I do admit that sometimes the placebo effect is doing its nasty tricks when i am converting to higher sampling rates. But measurements and testing have shown that i do have intermodulation distortion with my equipment with high sampling rates. So i am starting to believe that the mastering and the tuning of each component (DAC chip) along with the overall design of a DAC and amplifier are the main factors that determine the sonic signature on what i am hearing from my speakers and that the actual content presents no real difference between a 24/192 FLAC, a DSD256 file or a 24/96 or maybe a nicely done 16/44.1 file. I am not going to start another debate on pure DSD or if hi-res audio is really much superior compared to 16/44.1 PCM CD quality audio. So i think you are right.

Although i need to point out that a whole generation of Universal DVD Video/SACD/ DVD-Audio players from reputable manufacturers including Yamaha, Pioneer, Philips and others, aimed to bring SACD and DVD-Audio to the mass market segment. These used single chip (SoC) solutions that downconverted DSD to 88.2KHz and the loss in quality (increased noise floor and distortion products) was very much evident and certainly audible. Loss of clarity, definition, muffled audio, certainly not a nice implementation.

In comparison, the most affordable implementations that used DSD capable DAC chips and a separate DSD decoder chip from Philips or Sony and a carefully designed circuitry (for example the Yamaha DVD-S1700 or the Samsung DVD-HD945) they were much better performers!

All these were multichannel SACD players. The high-end equipment were (are) almost all 2-channel stereo SACD players.

Hello, I have been using an RH-899x as described further up this post.
I use a PC with HDMI out into the DAC And then the return HDMI into a monitor. There is a toslink from the TV box and various other peripherals. I have another PC with a pcm coax. Output primarily for redundancy. Left and right channels feeding into a QUAD 44 that has been extensively modernised And that feeds to QUAD 405RM that are vertically bi- amped . The Centre Channel is a home-made active speaker system. Using an extron Power amp converted to mono and surrounds by a lovely old Sony ta-ax2. This is further fed into another extron stereo power amp to boost the rears. Also, there is a lf bass speaker To control and balance all this I use four stereo volume controls Left and right front, Centre, rear surrounds and bass.
The mods to the quads mean there is silence during running; no hiss or hum. My main speakers are B&W matrix threes.
Using the PC / foobar2000 to play DSD iso files or multi channel Flac files I am more than impressed. The sound is nothing short of stupendous. The sound is crystal clear there is zero distortion it sounds warm luxurious involving very three dimensional. It is impossible to tell where the sound is actually coming from because the stage is so wide it is perfectly possible to place the instruments exactly as they are. It is so revealing, for example when listening to the song remains the same you can literally hear the floor where John Bonham drums are sitting on vibrating.
I have a large SD DSd collection and thoroughly enjoyed the immersive experience from these recordings. I have no one favourite but lots of Billy Cobham, war of the worlds, the Beatles Abbey Road The Moody Blues and jean Michelle jarre and tubular bells all explode with absolute incredible multichannel vitality. All from this little box the RH899X.. Even my brother who is critical said it would not sound better had you spent £20,000 on this system. The RH899X is very versatile, has many inputs. HDMI coax toslink analog so card usb etc. The remote controls the volume and the inputs. If it was trash, I would’ve canned it long ago. Occasionally I search for a more mainstream device which is how I found this forum and without spending thousands or making sacrifices on inputs yet to find anything. Realistically, there’s no reason to replace the RX899. Purists may it’s not pure DSD it’s dsd converted to pcm or whatever but I use my ears. I invite anyone to come and listen to what I’m hearing and criticise so for £150. This box does the job.

Can you please download multichannel DSD files and do some testing? It seems like you registered just to advertise this product. I am not judging that, but you need to give some more information about its capabilities on whether it can play multichannel DSD / FLAC files correctly through its own built in player (Not as a DAC) and what kind of DSD->PCM conversion it is doing.

Oops I meant onkyo not denon in that post

I remember there were issues with that line of receivers from Onkyo. Some Texas Instruments chips including the TMDS chip and the DSP chip were recalled and new revisions replaced them. Perhaps that could be the issue with your case too? Try to do an investigation.

Question: will the rx899 control a usb hard drive or spinning disc drive? If so how much memory can it handle? It would be too sweet if this thing could be a one-stop streaming center

I see no reason why the RX899 wouldn't supply enough power to a spinning hard disk drive. If that doesn't work you can always purchase a portable SSD USB drive which requires much less power.

Are you thinking of pulling the trigger and ordering this device?

 

[Carznmusic]

I have some work to do first, gotta build a rack with wheels so I can get to connections easier (system is on shelves in a closet, real pita to work with), then do some testing with my monoprice blackbird hdmi switch / extractor which stopped making sound a couple weeks ago that’s why I’m looking at the rx899. I don’t like to accumulate much stuff so if I can figure out what’s up the blackbird I’ll probably wait.

The onkyo is working fine now- I’m kind of mystified what happened but I (or my wife?) may have changed Settings accidentally. I went through all the connections, then used a Blu-ray player to stream instead off fire stick and voila! ???? Btw now fire stick also works fine

 

[Carznmusic]

I also re-did three surround tuning so lost any ability to trace the error. All's well that ends well!

 

[Carznmusic]

The not three. Stupid smart phone

 

[Carznmusic]

FYI I'm into "retrofitting" as much as possible, not only is newer tech often not as good as old school, but expensive and complicated. But feeding new digital formats is often challenging so I'm always scouting alternatives. I'm intrigued by Atmos but see no cost effective way to get into it. My experience with the Yamaha receiver has me very gun-shy of mainstream audio gear.

 

[scottm_dj]

I used to do this. Get your SACDs into an image format and use J River to read them. Then send that signal via USB to a multi-channel EXASOUND DAC (USB In with 8 analog channels out)....you can find them reasonably priced used now. The E28 was audio bliss for me for a while until I got the Oppo 205...which now plays them directly off the SSD drives.

Multichannel analog-output DACs are now as extinct as the dodo and a lot of them are not great quality... but these Canadian built models (and possibly the Octo Pro) are definitely the exception.

 

[richardm]

Multichannel analog-output DACs are now as extinct as the dodo and a lot of them are not great quality... but these Canadian built models (and possibly the Octo Pro) are definitely the exception.

Perhaps 4-5 different models of USB "sound cards" with the CM6206 chip and 7.1 outputs (unbalanced) are floating around on Ali, eBay, Amazon, etc for $15-35. I'm guessing most are terrible but my fingers are crossed at least one is "good enough" which I define as not noticeably worsening the already-mediocre and antiquated CM6206.
16-bit/48kHz max and "only" 96db S/N but that's fine for me. The extra 12-14db from a quality part would either slot in at the top where my ears are already bleeding or down at the bottom underneath my home's noise floor.

The trick is figuring out which one is worthy. The 5.1 variant in the blue anodized box found use long ago as a cheap-as-chips measuring device, seemed to be accurate enough, and they're still available on Ali. Haven't turned up much on 7.1 units.

 

[RoedeBaer]

I stumbled over this unit when looking for a surround processor, preamplifier, AVR or any other replacement for my old Marantz SR6007 AVR.
The UD951C comes with 3x ES9023P DACs and is sold at aliexpress ( https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007458787699.html ).


It‘s design is ugly as hell, reminding me of an old 1980s CB radio, but at least it‘s small enough to hide it inside an old shoe box if needed

The clou is: The UD951C not only has stereo outputs like most streaming devices/DACs, but delivers full analog 5.1 RCAs (on the downside it is limited to 5.1 systems).

It therefore theoretically can be used as a surround processor having 3x HDMI (one with ARC), has digital inputs (1x optical, 1x coaxial, 1x USB) as well as one analog input via RCA. It also handles Bluetooth AptX (as far as I understand) and can pass trough 4k/60hz video.

The second clou is, there is also a PRO version using the ES9038PRO DAC which also has replaceable Op-amps. So the PRO version is clearly designed for the more enthusiastic listeners.

Unfortunately the PRO version is not availabe right now (if not in stock or discontinued I don’t know).


Since my Hifi/Home Cinema system is 4.1 anyway, without the plan of adding any more channels to it in the future, also since I already have active front speakers and want to drive the passive backs via a higher quality stereo amp rather than one of 11 AVR internal amps, I was thinking about getting a UD951PRO and use it as an AVR replacement. Also as a file streamer (I don’t use online streaming services) and a DAC replacement.

I have no needs of any kind of surround upscaler or video functions. The latter can also be done by my TV or by the video streaming device. In fact I just need a sourround decoder which decodes the surround signal into separate signals, which I then can pass on to a high quality DAC and/or to a high quality amplifier.

I have no idea about the quality of the UD951C, but the existence of the PRO version makes me somewhat optimistic. So I ordered the only now available standard version with the ES9023P and will see if it does the job and if the sound quality can compete with my old Marantz SR6007 AVR at least.

If you guys are interested I will keep you up to date.

Cheers, Roede

 

[AresLuna]

Perhaps 4-5 different models of USB "sound cards" with the CM6206 chip and 7.1 outputs (unbalanced) are floating around on Ali, eBay, Amazon, etc for $15-35. I'm guessing most are terrible but my fingers are crossed at least one is "good enough" which I define as not noticeably worsening the already-mediocre and antiquated CM6206.
16-bit/48kHz max and "only" 96db S/N but that's fine for me. The extra 12-14db from a quality part would either slot in at the top where my ears are already bleeding or down at the bottom underneath my home's noise floor.

The trick is figuring out which one is worthy. The 5.1 variant in the blue anodized box found use long ago as a cheap-as-chips measuring device, seemed to be accurate enough, and they're still available on Ali. Haven't turned up much on 7.1 units.

This is indeed a cheap way to get multichannel audio playback but the performance is completely mediocre. In my search for a solution to replace my old SACD physical disc players i happened to test one of those cheap boxes a few years ago and the performance was terrible.

I also tested a Terratec Aureon 5.1 USB MKII and a Sound Blaster X-FI USB Surround Pro 5.1 which also does 96KHz if i remember correctly. I liked the output from the SB X-Fi USB but still it was worse than my Yamaha DVD-S1700 player.

If anyone wants a simple solution to listen to some multichannel audio, then maybe yes, but to my ears those chinese usb sound cards have nothing to do with audio quality and that thing is reflected on their price apparently.

I stumbled over this unit when looking for a surround processor, preamplifier, AVR or any other replacement for my old Marantz SR6007 AVR.
The UD951C comes with 3x ES9023P DACs and is sold at aliexpress ( https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005007458787699.html ).


It‘s design is ugly as hell, reminding me of an old 1980s CB radio, but at least it‘s small enough to hide it inside an old shoe box if needed

The clou is: The UD951C not only has stereo outputs like most streaming devices/DACs, but delivers full analog 5.1 RCAs (on the downside it is limited to 5.1 systems).

It therefore theoretically can be used as a surround processor having 3x HDMI (one with ARC), has digital inputs (1x optical, 1x coaxial, 1x USB) as well as one analog input via RCA. It also handles Bluetooth AptX (as far as I understand) and can pass trough 4k/60hz video.

The second clou is, there is also a PRO version using the ES9038PRO DAC which also has replaceable Op-amps. So the PRO version is clearly designed for the more enthusiastic listeners.

Unfortunately the PRO version is not availabe right now (if not in stock or discontinued I don’t know).


Since my Hifi/Home Cinema system is 4.1 anyway, without the plan of adding any more channels to it in the future, also since I already have active front speakers and want to drive the passive backs via a higher quality stereo amp rather than one of 11 AVR internal amps, I was thinking about getting a UD951PRO and use it as an AVR replacement. Also as a file streamer (I don’t use online streaming services) and a DAC replacement.

I have no needs of any kind of surround upscaler or video functions. The latter can also be done by my TV or by the video streaming device. In fact I just need a sourround decoder which decodes the surround signal into separate signals, which I then can pass on to a high quality DAC and/or to a high quality amplifier.

I have no idea about the quality of the UD951C, but the existence of the PRO version makes me somewhat optimistic. So I ordered the only now available standard version with the ES9023P and will see if it does the job and if the sound quality can compete with my old Marantz SR6007 AVR at least.

If you guys are interested I will keep you up to date.

Cheers, Roede

Now THAT would be awesome!

I would be veeery interested if it can output multichannel hi-res flac and dsd audio files. We all know that the DSD playback would almost certainly be possible after an on the fly DSD--->PCM conversion, maybe at 88.2KHz as usual.

So, yes please, i would love a feedback from this when you get the unit. Maybe a small overall presentation if you have the time to do this.

I am mainly interested in:

1) Sound quality especially when playing back hi-res audio.

2) Noise / hiss when nothing is playing

3) If the player can handle 5.1 DSD playback.

A few photos would be also much welcome!!




Now, i found a very interesting approach to getting a high quality audio playback for my DSD/SACD collection (so many physical discs that are deteriorating and need to be ripped to be able to listen to them without breaks or clicks/crackling during playback).

I was looking for a used Exasound e28 or a Topping DM7 as mentioned earlier. After a lot of research i found out that there were a handful of Audio Interfaces that could do up to 24bit/192KHz with respectable DACs inside and an even more respectable design overall.

I had the opportunity to listen to a Topping DM7 which is a DSD capable DAC with unbalanced connections to my amplifiers, at my own audio system with my own speakers at my own place. Despite the fact that due to the balanced --> unbalanced connection that led to a decreased output level, the audio quality from the Topping was remarkable indeed!!!! What a great DAC, unbelievable!!

But the seller (whom i happen to know personally) asked for 500 euros which i found a little bit on the high side but it would solve my problems once and for all.

Then i was wondering how an old Firewire interface like a Focusrite or an M-Audio capable of 24/192 PCM would sound? How much worse would it be compared to the Topping?

Then i found a used M-Audio with multi-channel balanced/unbalanced outpupts for just 15 EUROS!!!! I had a refurbished tiny USFF PC lying around, with a powerful enough Intel i5 4570 with Windows 7 SP1 and a low profile PCI-E Firewire 1394 card with the latest Texas Instruments pci-e chipset (TI chips are known to be highly compatible with audio interfaces and not dropping any packets that would lead to crackles and pops or even blue screens).

Firewire audio interfaces are known to be a real pain, but i thought that the worst case scenario would be the one where i would have thrown away 15 euros for the M-Audio. In the end the loss would be negligible if this didn't work as i wanted. But i was completely surprised when i heard the audio coming out from this audio interface.

After careful setting of both my software players and the correct settings on the M-Audio i was able to get a wonderful sound (DSD ---> PCM 24/176.4) from it. At the same time i was able to do some A-B comparisons with the Topping DM7. I found the differences so subtle that would not justify the ~500 euros difference for me.

So for now, i am happily listening to all my multichannel hi-res audio files through the M-Audio.